Teaching in matters pertaining to health is given but a meagre amount
of time in the elementary schools. While the school program shows one
15-minute period each week in the first four grades, and one 30-minute
period each week in the four upper grades, it appears that in actual
practice the subject receives even less time than this. In the attempt
to observe the class work in physiology and hygiene, a member of the
Survey staff went on one day to four different classrooms at the hour
scheduled on the program. In two cases the time was given over to
grammar, in one to arithmetic, and in one to music. This represents
practice that is not unusual. The subject gets pushed off the program
by one of the so-called "essentials." It is difficult to see why
health-training is not an essential. In a letter to the School Board,
February 8, 1915, Superintendent Frederick wrote:
"The teaching of physiology and hygiene should become a matter
of serious moment in our course of study. At present it is not
systematically presented in the elementary schools: and in the high
schools it is an elective study only in the senior year. My judgment
is that it should become a definite part of the program, as a required
study in the seventh and eighth grades."
The small nominal amount of time as compared with the time usually
expended is partially shown in Table 12. Professor Holmes' figures for
the 50 cities include elementary science along with the physiology and
hygiene.
TABLE 12.--TIME GIVEN TO SCIENCE, PHYSIOLOGY, HYGIENE
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
1 | 10 | 37 | 1.3 | 4.3
2 | 10 | 41 | 1.1 | 4.5
3 | 10 | 40 | 1.1 | 4.4
4 | 10 | 37 | 1.1 | 3.8
5 | 19 | 34 | 2.1 | 3.5
6 | 19 | 40 | 2.1 | 4.2
7 | 19 | 45 | 2.1 | 4.5
8 | 19 | 57 | 2.1 | 5.7
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
Total | 116 | 331 | 1.7 | 4.4
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
In addition to the work of the regular teachers in this subject, a
certain amount of instruction is given by the school physicians and
nurses. In his report to the Board, 1913, Dr. Peterson writes:
"Health instruction is given by doctors and nurses in personal talks
to pupils, talks to whole schools, tooth-brush drills conducted in
many schools, and in visits into the homes by the nurses. Conscious
effort is continually made by all doctors and nurses to inspire to
right living all of the children with whom they come in contact."
Looking somewhat to the future, it can be affirmed that the school
physicians and nurses are the ones who ought to give the teaching in
this subject. After giving the preliminary ideas in the classrooms,
they alone are in position to follow up the various matters and see
that the ideas are assimilated through being put into practice both at
school and at home. At present, however, 16 physicians and 27 nurses
have 75,000 children to inspect, of whom more than half have defects
that require following up. It is a physical impossibility for them
to do much teaching until the force of school nurses is greatly
increased.
For the present certain things may well be done:
1. A course in hygiene and sanitation, based upon an abundance of
reading, should be drawn up and taught by the regular teachers in the
grammar school grades. This course should be looked upon as merely
preliminary to the more substantial portions of education in this
field. The physicians and nurses should select the readings
and supervise the course to see that the materials are covered
conscientiously and not slighted.
2. The schools should arrange for practical applications of the
preparatory knowledge in as many ways as possible. Children in relays
can look after the ventilation, temperature, humidity, dust, light,
and other sanitary conditions of school-rooms and grounds. They can
make sanitary surveys of their home district; engage in anti-fly,
anti-mosquito, anti-dirt, and other campaigns; and report--for credit
possibly--practical sanitary and hygienic activities carried on
outside of school. Only as knowledge is put to work is it assimilated
and the prime purpose of education accomplished.
3. The corps of school nurses should be gradually enlarged, and after
a time they can be given any needed training for teaching that will
enable them, as the work is departmentalized in the grammar grades,
to become departmental teachers in this subject for a portion of
their time. Their "follow-up" work will always give them their chief
educational opportunity; but to prepare for this the classwork must
give some systematized preparatory ideas.
In the high schools, training of boys in hygiene and sanitation is
little developed. The only thing offered them is an elective half-year
course in physiology in the senior year of the scientific and English
courses in the academic high schools. In the classical course, and
in the technical and commercial schools, they have not even this.
Physiology is required of girls in the technical schools, and is
elective in all but the classical course in the others. While in one
or two of the high schools there is training in actual hygiene
and sanitation, in most cases it is physiology and anatomy of a
superficial preliminary type which is not put to use and which
therefore mostly fails of normal assimilation.
The things recommended for the elementary schools need to be carried
out in the high schools also.