The promotion of healthy and hygienic environments for children became a national agenda during the early years of the Turkish Republic, driven by scientific progress and moral considerations. The evolution of scientific child-rearing spurred debates among medical experts and the intelligentsia, leading to the translation of preventive healthcare principles into spatial prescriptions for school environments. Schools came to be regarded as potential sources of eye and orthopedic diseases, as well as hotspots for contagion, where diseases could rapidly spread. The debates surrounding the issues of school hygiene in 1930s Turkey touched upon both ideologically charged metaphorical elements and western-originated scientific prescriptions, with their narratives occasionally intertwining. In this paper, I explore these two parallel narrative streams: the metaphorical depictions of non-hygienic conditions in former schools, and the scientific guidelines for creating new hygienic school environments. Early republican descriptions of Ottoman school buildings frequently emphasized their unhygienic conditions, reflecting the overall state of the education system and its adverse impact on students' physical and mental well-being. Metaphors of darkness, decay, corruption, dampness, dust, foul smells and cobwebs were often used to illustrate this decline. While school hygiene manuals set a series of principles that were found in architects' discussions and official directives, as well as criteria outlined in critiques of school buildings in popular media, indicate a tangible connection between hygiene discourse and its application in theory and practice. In essence, the intricate interplay among the education system, architectural thought, and hygiene considerations during the 1930s demonstrates a multifaceted interweaving of cultural, ideological, and pragmatic dynamics.