Civics and HealthAllen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Science
Civics and Health
Allen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Hygiene; Public health
During one year of investigation and of _getting things done_ the
committee has prepared three studies for publication: (1) a report on
the home conditions of fourteen hundred school children of different
nationalities, found by school physicians to have defects of vision,
breathing, hearing, teeth, and nourishment; (2) an examination of fifty
schools--curriculum, buildings, home-study requirements, play space and
playtime, physical culture--in an attempt to answer the question, How
far does school environment directly cause or aggravate physical
defects of school children; (3) a comparative study of methods now
employed in a hundred cities to record, classify, and make public
significant school facts.
The results of the first year's work prove conclusively that physical
defects are not caused solely by the inability of parents to pay for
proper food. Among the twenty significant facts reported by the
committee are the following:
1. Physical defects found in public schools are, for the most
part, such as frequently occur in wealthy families and do not of
themselves presume as the cause insufficient income. Of 145
reported for malnutrition, 44 were from families having over $20
weekly.
2. Few of the defects can be corrected by nourishment alone;
plenty of fresh air, outside nourishment at school, or extra
nourishment at home will not entirely counteract the influences of
bad ventilation and bad light in school buildings. Country
children have adenoids, bad teeth, and malnutrition. Plenty of
food will not prevent bad teeth and bad ventilation from causing
adenoids, enlarged tonsils, and malnutrition.
3. Children whose parents have long lived in the United States
need attention quite as much as the recent immigrant.
4. A large part of the defects reported could be produced by
conditions due directly to neglect of teeth.
From twenty such statements of fact and from its experience in _getting
things done_ for one year, the committee drew fifteen practical
conclusions, among which the following deserve emphasis here:
1. The only new thing about the physical defects of school
children is not their existence, but our recent awakening to their
existence, their prevalence, their seriousness if neglected, and
their cost to individual children, to school progress, to
industry, and to social welfare.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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