Euthenics, the science of controllable environment / A plea for better living conditions as a first step toward higher human efficiency

by Ellen H. Richards

An awakening has come and the school is the leading factor in the upward movement. Education is coming to have a new meaning, or better, perhaps, is going back to the older meaning with new materials. No knowledge or power the youth may acquire will avail in real struggle for existence of the race without a definite aim to hold steady the eye fixed on a certain goal. This is a law of man’s existence.

The change in point of view has been growing like a root underground. It seems to have suddenly sent up shoots in every direction. In no line of thought has this change come more generally than in relation to the things youth should be taught. Himself and his relation to his environment are now to the front. Instead of extolling man as the lord of all created things, the youth is made to see that man unaided by scientific knowledge is at the mercy of Nature’s forces; that man in crowds is sure to succumb unless he makes a strong effort to keep himself erect.

Hence the boys are given manual training—power over wood and stone, steam and electricity; and are taught the principles of production of food and metals. The girls are being taught to distinguish values in textiles and food stuffs; to manage finances and to keep houses in a sanitary manner.

It is the business of the higher education at once to apply the knowledge of preventive measures to its own students and through them to reach the people, but it has been very slow to take up the cause of better environment.

In colleges there is still more emphasis laid on external works, such as water supply, drainage, etc., than on the more intimate hourly needs of fresh air and clean rooms. The halls, study rooms, and dining rooms of colleges are notoriously ill ventilated and not over clean.

The senses are blunted at an age when they should be keenly sensitive. It is only within ten years or so that very many of the higher schools have made a point of indoor sanitation beyond plumbing provisions. Outdoor sports have been relied upon to give sufficient impetus to the health side of education.

A new element has come into the State universities through the Home Economics courses, which have been steadily growing in favor during the last two decades. Within that time several buildings have been erected and equipped to teach the principles of sanitary and economic living both in institution, school, and family life.

Probably no one movement has been so powerful as this in convincing educators of the efficiency of trained women as factors in sanitary progress. In no other direction is the outlook for social service greater. The woman must, however, be more than a willing worker; she must be educated in science as a foundation for sanitary work.

Within the next few years the demand for trained women is sure far to exceed the supply, for the fundamental sciences are not to be acquired in one or two years.

Young college women are even now realizing their mistake in neglecting the sciences. They assumed that science was not of practical use. They assumed that educational curricula were stable and would go on in the same lines forever.