CHAPTER XXV

SCHOOL HYGIENE

Conservation of health should be the first responsibility of the school. The relation of a sound and healthy body to success and happiness is so vital that the matter of hygiene constitutes one of the most important problems of education. The child goes to school during the period of life most formative physically as well as mentally. The effects of overstrained eyes, cramped or unnatural postures, impure air, or other harmful influences are therefore far more serious for the growing child than for the adult. On the other hand, right care and use of the body, and correct habits in youth will yield large returns throughout life.

The last few years have seen an unprecedented interest in hygiene and public health. Every magazine and New interest in newspaper presents articles on the public health question; clubs and societies are discussing the laws of health in their meetings; medical societies are issuing and distributing tracts; legislatures are seeking to incorporate hygienic measures into the management of our schools. Nor is this all a fad, the whim of a passing moment, to be forgotten when a more interesting topic arises. As a people we are awakening to the fact that it is possible to live longer, more happily and more successfully by obeying certain simple and easily understood laws governing

the functioning of our bodies. We are discovering that we can save much economic loss, sickness, sorrow and premature death by a little care and foresight with reference to our health. And nothing can be more important than this.

of schools

Recognition of the importance of physical health in any scheme of education ied the city of Boston in the year Medical inspection 1894 to provide for the medical inspection of all school children. This seems to have been the beginning of the movement in this country. Medical inspection has now spread until it obtains in most of the important cities of the United States. A number of different states have also passed medical inspection laws applying to all schools, both urban and rural. Still other states have laws providing for the testing of the eyes and ears of all school children. In many places the teachers are required to have a knowledge of the eye and the ear, and of contagious diseases. There can be no doubt that our future educational policy will include responsibility for the health and physical wellbeing of the child while he is in school, and such training in hygiene that he will be able to maintain a higher standard of physical efficiency outside the school than is now the rule.

health standard

It is especially necessary that the rural school shall set high its standard of hygiene. For the rural community Rural school to set is lacking in boards of health, and the proximity to doctors, dentists and oculists that characterize the city. Violations of the rules of public health in rural neighborhoods may result in an outbreak of disease before the offenders are discovered and checked. Slight ailments are not likely to receive medical attention until they have become serious.

Decayed teeth and diseased throats are not subjected to early treatment. Defective hearing and vision do not receive attention from the specialist, for none is at hand. The new movement for better hygiene has not yet reached the country as fully as it has the city.

One of the greatest opportunities of the rural school is to hasten this movement. The rural record for disease and rate of mortality is out of all pro

Low hygienic standards

portion to sickness and death in the city, when we take into account the more favorable natural conditions of country life. The dreadful toll taken by the contagious diseases has already been referred to in an earlier chapter. Doctor Hoag found in a recent study of the health conditions in the Minnesota rural schools that fully eighty per cent. of the children yet in the elementary school regularly drink coffee. Two out of every five suffer almost constantly from toothache, accepting it as inevitable and hence to be endured instead of cured. More than one-fifth of the pupils have frequent headaches, naively taking them for granted on the supposition that "everybody has headaches." From twelve to fourteen per cent. suffer from earache, and four per cent. have discharging ears, adenoids being responsible for most of this trouble, which usually ends in some form of deafness. From four to five per cent. of the children are sufficiently hard of hearing that they do not fully understand what is going on, and hence are put down as stupid when they are not.

The rural school therefore owes it to its pupils and patrons to do two things: (1) to make the hygienic

Duty of school

toward health

conditions in the school itself such that no harm can come to the health

or physical well-being of the pupils, seeking rather to

remedy such physical defects as are present; and (2) so to instruct in the laws of hygiene that the physical habits and standards outside the school may result in the highest efficiency at home.

The air of the schoolroom

Fundamental to all other questions of hygiene is an abundant supply of pure fresh air in the schoolroom. Rebreathed air is harmful in two distinct ways: (1) the supply of oxygen is depleted, and all the vital processes of the body run low from its lack; (2) the rebreathed air contains many more germs than pure air, and many of these are harmful, even when they do not produce specific diseases. Careful tests show that the air of a class-room that has been occupied by a class for an hour has more than double the number of germs contained by the air in the same room before it had been occupied.

One of the best illustrations of the effects of plenty of oxygen on brain power and general physical efficiency Effects of openis seen in the results of "open-air" air schools schools developed in recent years in several of our larger cities, and still more common in England and Germany.' These schools were started first for tubercular children, and those who were laggards in their classes, and unable to keep up with their work. The open-air schoolrooms have one or more sides exposed to the air, and in some instances, especially in England, the school is held wholly out-of-doors. It has been found in practically every instance in such schools in England, Germany and the United States that the physical health and vitality of the children steadily improved. In a large proportion of the cases, the disease was fully cured, and in nearly all, the weight rapidly increased. In everv 1 See Ayres, Open Air Schools.

instance, marked improvement has also been shown in mental ability, and in not a few cases the laggards have caught up with their regular grades and gone on doing full work. If plenty of fresh air will work such wonders for diseased or dull children, why is it not equally good for all children!

The recognition of the importance of pure air in the schoolroom has resulted in regulations in various states that the schoolroom must contain a Air space required certain minimum of air space for each pupil in the room. For example, the health authorities of Indiana close all schools that do not have at least two hundred and fifty cubic feet of air space for each pupil. The board is then obliged to enlarge the room or make some provision for a part of the pupils in another school. Some such provision should obtain in every

state.

But even with two hundred and fifty cubic feet of air to each person, the air must be frequently changed in order to be at its best. Not alone pure air, but a moving current is necessary in order that the entire body may be bathed in changing air. For recent experiments have conclusively shown that the effects of stagnant air on the body are almost if not quite as injurious as if taken into the lungs. Every schoolroom should therefore be equipped with some effective ventilating device to connect with the heating apparatus. But even with the best of the devices available for the small school, the doors and windows should be thrown open for at least five minutes at each intermission, and the room thoroughly aired. Where there is no ventilating device, a number of win. dows should constantly be open.

The lack of pure air to breathe is probably the worst