Empty Schools
The problem of the empty school is also one which hundreds of small villages are now facing. Many children have been taken to schools in larger towns. How soon before an inter- national flare-up sends them back? To country people the empty school house is, in fact, a sore point and a problem. Such schools, built in the 'sixties or 'seventies of the last cen- tury, were also communal efforts in a time when schools were as necessary as A.R.P. today. Raised and often kept together by public subscription, they became important parts of village life. In my own village the school—a stout stone building put up in the 'sixties, now stands empty. Nobody knows what to do with it. The village, producing seven pounds on a penny rate, can never hope to buy it; its cost as a builder's speculation is no doubt too high. It will probably be put up for auction. That being so, it is a fair bet that the village will lose it. Yet the village, ordered during the Munich crisis
to accept 30o evacuated children, needs it very badly. It cannot afford to buy it and cannot afford to lose it. In such a building, already provided with electric light, heating and sanitation, it could house many children in comfort. It would certainly house them in greater comfort than in its many already crowded cottages. It could not house or feed them, it could educate them. Meanwhile, all over the country, hundreds of villages sit holding this same absurd white elephant that is both a problem and a solution to a problem in one. For at least one of the ans-vers to the Government- authorised query, " How many children can you take? " lies in the empty country school.
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