CHAPTER XIII
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]

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.