SCHOOL HYGIENE
In regard to hygiene we are, in Spain, dominated by the abominable
ideas of the Catholic Church. Saint Aloysius and Saint Benedict J.
Labré are not the only, or the most characteristic, saints in the list
of the supposed citizens of the kingdom of heaven, but they are the
most popular with the masters of uncleanliness. With such types of
perfection, [4] in an atmosphere of ignorance, cleverly and maliciously
sustained by the clergy and the middle-class Liberals, it was to be
expected that the children who would come to our school would be
wanting in cleanliness; dirt is traditional in their world.
We began a discreet and systematic campaign against it, showing the
children how a dirty person or object inspires repugnance, and how
cleanliness attracts esteem and sympathy; how one instinctively moves
towards the cleanly person and away from the dirty and malodorous; and
how we should be pleased to win the regard of those who see us and
ashamed to excite their disgust.
We then explained cleanliness as an aspect of beauty, and uncleanliness
as a part of ugliness; and we at length entered expressly into the
province of hygiene, pointing out that dirt was a cause of disease and
a constant possible source of infection and epidemic, while cleanliness
was one of the chief conditions of health. We thus soon succeeded in
disposing the children in favour of cleanliness, and making them
understand the scientific principles of hygiene.
The influence of these lessons spread to their families, as the new
demands of the children disturbed traditional habits. One child would
ask urgently for its feet to be washed, another would ask to be bathed,
another wanted a brush and powder for its teeth, another new clothes or
boots, and so on. The poor mothers, burdened with their daily tasks,
sometimes crushed by the hardness of the circumstances in which their
life was passed, and probably under the influence of religious
teaching, endeavoured to stop their petitions; but in the end the new
life introduced into the home by the child triumphed, a welcome presage
of the regeneration which rational education will one day accomplish.
I entrusted the expounding of the principles of scholastic hygiene to
competent men, and Dr. Martínez Vargas and others wrote able and
detailed articles on the subject in the Bulletin. Other articles were
written on the subject of games and play, on the lines of modern
pædagogy. [5]