ABSTRACT
From dysgenic school playgrounds to open-air schools, through to open-plan schools, the 20th century gathered in fresh bouts of moral panics associated with the school's physical environment, along with their moral provocateurs and moral entrepreneurs and political elites pushing their various causes. Indeed, by the 21st century, in a time of international economic crisis, moral panics associated with school buildings were being orchestrated and used as a political weapon in an attempt to bring down national governments. In his annual report to Parliament, W. T. McCoy was forced to defend the classrooms against "well-meaning, but ill-informed persons", who had persisted in creating "'scare in regard to the building, ycelpt by them the 'freezing works'". Open-plan school education buildings of the 1970s and 1980s comprised special school architecture usually of between two and four class groups placed in large open-plan rooms, with little or no internal walls, and teachers working in teams.
