Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/313

Rh the best colors for this purpose, in the order of their efficiency, are white, light yellow, light gray, light green, light blue and light pink. (3) The schoolroom should be narrow and the windows facing an unobstructed area, so that from any seat in the room a large amount of sky is visible. (4) The windows should be provided with white Holland screens, or others of a similar sort, which obstruct the direct rays of the sun, but which, when drawn down, emit into the room a maximum of diffused light. (0) There should be at hand light colored curtains which may be used to cover up all blackboards as soon as the darker parts of the room are inadequately lighted.

It is apparent to all that the construction of our school rooms has not conformed to these five simple rules. There are many rooms in which the window space is one fifth of the floor space, but certainly not a majority of all schoolrooms in America. The second rule, concerning the reflecting surfaces within the schoolroom, is broken by the extensive surfaces of black-boards and by the dingy color of the walls. Walls soon fade and become dirty and need frequent attention to keep their reflecting power approximately at its maximum. The third rule is broken by constructing rooms so large that they will accommodate fifty pupils, and by placing school buildings too close to adjoining buildings. The fourth rule is broken by the use of opaque shades which, when drawn to escape the brilliancy of the sun, leave the room darker than it would otherwise be on a dark and cloudy day. Because of this fact the schoolrooms with a southern exposure are perhaps our most poorly lighted rooms. The fifth rule, concerning the use of white screens for the black-boards, is never observed and to many may seem insignificant. The justification of the rule is found in the following facts.

The ordinary school room has the light from one side. The five rows of desks are so arranged that one row is next to the windows and the last row next to the black-board on the side of the room opposite the windows. It is well known that the desks next to the black-board and farthest from the windows receive less light than the desks next the windows. That the difference between the first and fifth rows is great enough to occasion any alarm seems not to have been suspected. In the ordinary schoolroom the light reflected from the pupil's book on the first row is eight times as great as the light reflected from the book of the pupil who is so unfortunate as to sit in the row next to the black-board. The decrease of the light as the distance from the window increases is different in each room. The law of the square of the distance is not even approximately correct but it is safe to say that in the great majority of school rooms in the United States the row of desks next to the windows has many-fold more light than the rows next to the black-boards. Professor Basquin and I tested school rooms