The Hygiene of the School Child
REVIEWS AND CRITICISM.
- Author:
Lewis M. Terman, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Education in Leland Stanford Junior University. New York:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913. Pp. xvii+417.
It is Professor Terman’s opinion that the school is now aware of its responsibility for the conservation of the child. According to him, “The most characteristic tendency of present-day education is its progressive socialization, the increasing extent to which society is utilizing the school as an instrument for the accomplishment of its ends.” His aim in this book is not to present a program for the schools or to attempt to foist upon them a system of hygiene and preventive treatment which he himself has applied. Rather it is the much more reasonable aim of presenting to the reader a summary and interpretation of literature relating to various phases of the question. The success of his attempt will be appreciated by any one familiar with the material. Commencing with the fundamental concept of growth, the author, by reviewing the work and presenting the conclusions of experts in the field, shows how growth proceeds,?how at certain stages it is accelerated and at others retarded and how, because of these facts, methods of training should be modified. With a physical organism poorly developed one would expect an unsatisfactory mental condition, and one finds that “The conclusion, justified by the data, that physical superiority usually accompanies mental superiority, is of the greatest practical importance for education.”
The chapter on physiological age is certainly not the least important section. There is no doubt in the author’s mind about the difficulty of the problem presented by the discrepancy between physiological and chronological age. Our treatment of the child has usually been accorded on the basis of the latter but now, “Closer investigations of the relations existing between the anatomical, physiological, and mental ages is one of the urgent problems of educational hygiene.” In the light of the difference even now discovered we are compelled to review the entire problem of the identical coeducation of the sexes and “In deciding the boy’s fitness for a given athletic sport, or for a certificate permitting him to leave school to work in a mill, or even for instruction in a given grade, the crucial question is not how long he has lived, but how far he has proceeded toward maturity.” In reference to this last statement the remark might be made that if we consider physiological rather than chronological age we will have eliminated the difficulty of determining the reliability of a parent’s word when he says his child has reached working age.
The disorders of growth, in the more or less artificial environment of our schools, must receive more attention, not only from the parent and family physician but also from the teacher; and every teacher should be trained to observe the signs of the common dangers and to advise remedial treatment for them. Gross deformities are easily recognized, but the effects of malnutrition, aenemia, adenoids, enlarged tonsils or bad teeth as well as the handicap of defective vision or hearing can less easily be noted. In their more serious forms, however, they may be recognized by the teacher who has not been specially trained. For the detection of the less serious forms we will have to make other provision, and the day is not far distant when “a knowledge of the elements of child hygiene will be regarded as of fundamental importance in the training of every teacher.”
To some who have pet theories the book may bring a shock, since the author is not inclined to be excessively lenient when there is such an important problem to handle. Several current opinions are dealt their death blow. Ventilation, that panacea for all the ills of the school, according to some of its most enthusiastic advocates, is shown to be a vastly different problem from* what it has usually been considered. It is no longer a question of the elimination of carbon-dioxide or organic poisons, but one of “perflation” or the “movement of air over the body.” Curvature of the spine, the war-cry of those insisting on the installation of new and various types of school furniture, is now found due to abnormal or diseased conditions of the bones and only in a very secondary degree, if at all, to the position assumed by the child during school work. Of the theories overthrown the last to need mention is that of parental responsibility,?”The first duty of the school is to feed its hungry pupils. The oftheard argument that the school has no concern with the child, except to educate him, is now an anachronism. In its vocational instruction, play supervision, moral education, health examinations, and medical clinics the school has once for all cut loose from its moorings to the ‘Three R’s.’ “
Despite the fact that the author presents his conclusions forcefully he is decidedly sane and moderate, being fully aware of the difficulties. Hygiene is not the only consideration; other conditioning factors of the mental make-up are important. The organism in its inception must be healthy, or hygiene is greatly handicapped. According to Professor Terman, eugenics as well as hygiene is essential. Not only are the factors above mentioned to be considered, but also “Many of the questions relating to this problem can never be settled until they have been attacked on a broad scale by systematic and scientific methods of research.” With such an array of fact as is presented here and yet such moderation in forming conclusions, the careful perusal of this book can be strongly recommended to every teacher and administrative officer in public school work David Mitchell.
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