Methods

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 12, 1908

The Schools and Tuberculosis

The recent congress on tuberculosis, held in Washington, D. C., emphasized particularly the necessity of education of the people, through the schools, concerning the dangers of tuberculosis. We quote extracts from a number of speeches on this subject.

Said A. E. Winship, editor of the Journal of Education, Boston:—

“If the teacher and the pupils in the grades are so overworked that there is no time to save human lives by specific instruction as to the prevention of tuberculosis, a most important need of the present time is to see if any part of the work can be eliminated to advantage.

“I have never seen an elementary school program from which much could not be eliminated without perceptible loss to any child. There is always much of rubbish in processes and in methods. There is no pretense on the part of any teacher that all of the teaching is of direct value to the children, and the excuse offered for taking so much time with it is that it is good discipline. The disciplinary value may be conceded, and then it can be shown that neither arithmetic nor grammar, spelling nor geography, discipline the mind more than the earnest study of so much physiology and biology, chemistry and physics, geography and civics, domestic science and architecture, as are needed for the elimination of tuberculosis.

“A teacher or a superintendent who will deliberately say that the disciplinary value of any subject now taught is greater than that which could be gained from teaching about tuberculosis, is wanting in a knowledge of educational values.”

Said Dr. Henry B. Ward, dean of Omaha Medical College, University of Nebraska, Lincoln:—

“The organized school system of the land is the natural educational agency, and is far more extensive and effective than any other special agency which might be created. Every school course provides for the study of hygiene. In this the prevention of disease, especially of tuberculosis, should have much greater emphasis. Tuberculosis is in many ways a special menace to our schools. A strong national commission should be appointed by the United States Bureau of Education and the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis to prepare for use in the schools proper synopses so as to insure general respect and exert the maximum influence.”

Prof. William Harmon Norton, Cornell College, Iowa, said:—

“With the help of the colleges we shall gain over the secondary schools, whose teachers they supply. We shall enlist in the campaign hundreds of thousands of young men and women who go out from college to become citizens of exceptional influence in their communities. The harvest sown in the colleges may be some years in ripening, but it is no less sure.”

Dr. Howard S. Anders, of Philadelphia, said:—

“Anti-tuberculosis instruction of a well-balanced type should receive as much time and care as anti-alcoholic instruction in public schools and academies and colleges.”

Dr. Henry Barton Jacobs, of Baltimore, Md., said:—

“Until the schools make provision for this kind of teaching, it can not be hoped to cope successfully with tuberculosis and the other infectious diseases. The teaching for the younger classes should be directed largely to the formation of automatic habits of hygiene, a love for cleanliness and neatness and the things of out-of-doors, and should proceed in daily lessons until every pupil at graduation should have as complete mastery of the fundamental rules of health as he has of spelling, reading, and arithmetic. New text-books must be written, and teachers and school authorities with these new ideas found.”

As a result of his investigations in the South, Dr. Charles Wardell Stiles, Ph.D., proposes the introduction of a “Public Health Week” into the public schools, in order to teach the following three great hygienic principles to the children:—

“1. Do not spit on the floor; for this habit spreads tuberculosis and diphtheria. “2. Do not pollute the soil; for this habit spreads typhoid fever, and ground itch, with its resulting hookworm disease. “3. Protect against mosquitoes; for mosquitoes spread malaria, yellow fever, dengue, and elephant foot.”

Dr. Helen C. Putnam, A. B., of Providence, R. I., chairman of the committee to investigate the teaching of hygiene in the public schools, appointed by the American Academy of Medicine, said:—

“This congress should demand practical training in hygiene and sanitation in schools and colleges by competent instructors, and equally insist upon efficient industrial training: (a) to eventually raise architecture, building trades, and housewifery to sanitary standards, and physicians and health officers to higher efficiency; (b) to create an intelligent public opinion requiring and enforcing legislation controlling building, rentals, and political measures in the interest of health.”

Dr. G. A. Heron, F. R. C. P., delegate of the Royal Society of Medicine of London to the Congress, said:—

“In England and Wales a great step has been gained in the cause of school education in hygiene. On Aug. 1, 1908, ended the evil system which, till that date, allowed the study of hygiene to be optional with those who meant to become school-teachers. On that date it was included among the subjects which an ‘intending teacher’ is obliged to study during his years of special instruction in the training college. In the course of a year or two there should, by this means, be available a considerable and increasing number of young men and women with some knowledge of the subject, and of how it should be taught to school-children.

“An admirable new departure has also been made by the board of education in issuing, for the first time, syllabuses for the teachers of children who are blind, deaf, or mentally defective.”

Said Dr. Luther H. Gulick, of New York:—

“The importance of attacking this problem through the agency of the public schools, is indicated by the fact that ten out of eleven of all the children

of the United States come under the jurisdiction of the public-school system for approximately seven years; namely, from seven to fourteen.

“Health and education must go hand in hand. This can not be done by making the subject of health a subdivision of some relatively smaller topic which is not considered as a primary matter, with reference to promotions, diplomas, or the granting of licenses. It is a fundamental matter with reference to the protection of the state, and must so appear in the education of those individuals who have to do with the education of our future citizens.”