THE PHYSICAL WELFARE OF CHILDREN
Intellectual development, and more especially intellectual
efficiency, are conditioned in no mean degree by one’s physical
condition. Schools have too frequently, and with justice, been
accused of producing physical defects in children. It is coming to
be recognized that we must in increasing measure take account of
the hygienic conditions under which school work is done, as well as
provide for the elimination or amelioration of physical defects. We
now have open-air schools for consumptives, medical inspection, and
dental clinics. There are some schools which provide school lunches
at a nominal price or without cost to the pupils. Corrective physical
training is coming to be recognized, along with special playground
work. Everywhere appreciation of the importance of physical health
as a condition prerequisite to intellectual vigor is leading those
who have the welfare of the community at heart to demand that active
measures be taken to protect and nourish the bodies of school
children. It is the purpose of this chapter to indicate briefly the
relation of teachers to this movement for physical well-being.
The demand that light be sufficient and that it come from the right
direction is familiar to all teachers. It may be argued that teachers
cannot control the lighting of their rooms. The author has known
teachers who have had blinds properly placed, walls and ceilings
painted or papered with respect to proper distribution of light.
Some teachers have even been instrumental in securing alterations in
buildings or the erection of new buildings. Teachers who know that
the area of windows should be one fourth of the floor space, that
the light should be admitted from one side of the room, and that it
should come over the children’s left shoulders, may not be able to
meet all of these conditions; but they can do all that is possible to
ameliorate defects, and can call attention to the dangers which the
situation possesses for their pupils’ eyesight by giving or having
given tests and making known the results.
Modern school buildings are built with artificial ventilating
systems. The success with which any system works depends in no
inconsiderable measure upon the teacher. By opening windows in one
room the efficiency of the ventilation of all other rooms in the
building may be impaired. Failure to note the temperature may mean
that children and teacher are suffering from a condition easily
remedied by the janitor or engineer. Every teacher should have the
temperature of her room recorded on the blackboard, where every one
can see it, at least twice during each school session. Needless to
say, the thermometer should be accurate, and, if possible, hung in
the center of the room, not more than four or five feet from the
floor.
Teachers are responsible for right habits of posture. If seats need
to be adjusted, the teacher should note the fact and notify the
principal. Although special cases may demand expert advice and care,
the teacher must hold herself responsible for the posture of the
majority of the class. Defects of vision may be either the cause or
the effect of improper position of the body, and should bring from
the teacher an urgent appeal for careful examination and correction.
Frequent rest periods should be provided, the habit of correct
posture insisted upon, and simple corrective exercises given by the
teacher.
Schoolrooms are not infrequently the center of infection for the
community. Any teacher can insist upon separate drinking cups,
if sanitary fountains are not provided in the building. When a
child appears with a rash, with an abnormal temperature, and not
infrequently with _only_ a cough, the teacher should appeal to the
principal, the health inspector, or others in authority for the
elimination of the child from the group. The author has been in
schoolrooms where two or three children in the incipient stages of
whooping cough were allowed to infect the whole class. A school
superintendent was distressed with what proved to be a veritable
scourge of scarlet fever in one of his schools. Upon visiting the
school he found one child on the playground proudly showing the
other children how he could take flakes of skin from his arm. No
one expects teachers to be expert diagnosticians, but any teacher
should acquaint herself with the more common indications of childish
diseases, and should act promptly when her suspicion is aroused,
even though she prove to be wrong in half the cases. If anything is
wrong, eliminate the child from the group, suggest that a physician
be consulted, and await developments: this is the only safe rule.
In addition to her activity in eliminating contagious diseases, the
teacher may often be the first to detect deficiencies in sight or
hearing. Children who are inattentive and apparently dull may often
be found to hear indistinctly. A very simple test for hearing is to
tap a pencil against a desk out of sight of the child, and ask him to
tell how many taps he hears. Headaches, squinting, the position in
which the book is held, often indicate to the teacher eye deficiency
which parents have not suspected. Any child who gives indications of
eye trouble should be tested by teacher or principal, and, if any
indications of difficulty are found, the parents should be urged to
consult a competent oculist.
Dr. William H. Allen gives the following suggestions to teachers who
would discover cases of adenoids and enlarged tonsils:[20]
“1. Inability to breathe through the nose.
“2. A chronically running nose, accompanied by frequent nosebleeds
and a cough to clear the throat.
“3. Stuffy speech and delayed learning to talk. ‘Common’ is
pronounced ‘cobbed,’ ‘nose,’ ‘dose,’ and ‘song,’ ‘sogg.’
“4. A narrow upper jaw and irregular crowding of the teeth.
“5. Deafness.
“6. Chorea or nervousness.
“7. Inflamed eyes and conjunctivitis.”
Any one who has known a child with a bad case of adenoids or enlarged
tonsils, and who has followed the progress of the same child after
the removal of the defect, will not think it too much trouble to
insist that suspected cases receive the attention of a physician. In
these cases, and where the child is suffering because of the ills
superinduced by bad teeth, the teacher must work with the parents.
Often through mothers’ clubs or parents’ associations, addressed by
a physician and by teacher, the necessity for action, from a purely
economic point of view, if from no other, can be impressed upon
parents. It is possible that we shall have to resort to an appeal to
private charity to save the child, or perhaps we shall in time have
free compulsory dental, surgical, and medical clinics.
The children are society’s greatest asset, from whatever point of
view we consider them, and teachers should be most active in all
movements which make for child welfare. There is no other group of
people better acquainted with the needs of children, none other which
stands in so strategic a position with relation to parents and the
community at large. Parents should be taught the necessity of plenty
of sleep, wholesome food, and clean skins for children. Better devote
time and energy to this education of parents than attempt to teach
children handicapped by the lack of proper living conditions. The
anti-tuberculosis campaign, the pure milk crusade, the demand for
medical inspection, should be earnestly supported, if not instituted,
by the teachers of children. Health is not an individual matter. The
welfare of the whole group is bound up in conditions which spell
disaster for the individual.
Finally the teacher has a right to good health. Living under bad
hygienic conditions, with children who are unclean and diseased,
should not be demanded of any teacher. The efficiency of the work
which the teacher does, no less than that of the children, is
conditioned by her health. If it is true that the teacher may suffer
because of diseased children, it is none the less true that a teacher
in poor physical condition injures all of the children she is pledged
to help. Happy, healthful lives for children and teachers is a
condition which will be brought to pass when all teachers work for
this end.
FOR COLLATERAL READING
S. H. Rowe, _The Physical Nature of the Child_.
_Exercises._
1. How may the school superinduce physical defects in children?
2. Why are schoolroom floors oiled and swept rather than scrubbed
and swept?
3. What suggestions for the improvement of all schoolrooms do you
gather from the establishment of open-air schools for the anemic
and tubercular?
4. What would you do to provide relaxation and plenty of fresh air
on a day so stormy that children could not go out of doors for
recess?
5. What could a teacher do to help a near-sighted boy or girl?
6. Is it safe to trust your feeling that it is too warm or too cold
in regulating the temperature of the room?
7. When do you get your best work, when it is too warm, or when
the thermometer is between 65° and 68° Fahrenheit? (If there is
sufficient moisture in the air, a temperature as low as 65° will
not seem colder than a temperature of 70° when the air carries very
little moisture.)
8. What is the reason for using only pencils with large, soft lead
or crayons for writing during the first year?
9. What can a teacher do to protect the community against
contagious diseases?
10. If the school has no playground, what provision would you make
for recreation in the schoolroom?
11. A large percentage of children have decayed teeth; how would
you hope to provide that proper treatment should be given?
12. Why may we not consider health as an individual matter?
13. Why has the teacher a right to demand hygienic conditions in
the schoolroom?
14. Why has the community a right to demand good health as a
prerequisite for teaching?
15. How might teachers hope to secure hygienic conditions for
children in their homes?
16. If a schoolroom needs redecorating on account of improper
lighting, or a new heating and ventilating plant, and the school
board does not supply these necessities, how would you hope to
secure such improvements?