Civics and HealthAllen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Science
Civics and Health
Allen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Hygiene; Public health
Cooeperation is at present easier in New York than in any other city.
Charitable societies, hospitals, dispensaries, are probably more keenly
alive to their responsibilities and are at least more apt to have
acquired the habit of cooeperation when asked. Yet even here I have been
told repeatedly by teachers: "If we have to wait for that hospital or
that charitable society, our children will go barefoot." In small
communities where hospital and relief agencies are for emergencies only
and generally inactive, it seems that the first thing to do is to ask
some friends to establish a small relief fund, just as it is easier to
give a child a five-cent meal than to teach its mother how to prepare
its food. But the school-teacher will find that it takes very much less
energy to arouse the relief society than to maintain her own relief
work. In fact, in many cities nothing could do more to strengthen
hospitals and charitable societies than to put them in touch with the
needs of school children. For a principal to make known the fact that
school children are neglected will help the charitable society and
hospital to get the funds necessary to do their part better than they
are now doing it and better than the school could ever do it. Finally,
one reason for a breakdown of charitable societies is not their own
inadequacy, but rather the failure of the school and church to make
use of an agency better equipped than themselves to give material
relief. The teacher sees the child every day, while the relief society
will never see it and has no reason to see it until some one calls
attention to it. The very first step, and an indispensable one in
relief policy, is for teachers to be on the lookout for children not
adequately provided for, and then have the physical evidence discovered
at school followed to the home for the cause of the child's distress.
[Illustration: HOME-TO-HOME INSTRUCTION IN COOKING
Anaemic condition of child due to bad cooking, not to lack of
income]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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