Any one who has known a child with a bad case of adenoids or enlarged tonsils, and who has followed the progress of the same child after the removal of the defect, will not think it too much trouble to insist that suspected cases receive the attention of a physician. In these cases, and where the child is suffering because of the ills superinduced by bad teeth, the teacher must work with the parents. Often through mothers’ clubs or parents’ associations, addressed by a physician and by teacher, the necessity for action, from a purely economic point of view, if from no other, can be impressed upon parents. It is possible that we shall have to resort to an appeal to private charity to save the child, or perhaps we shall in time have free compulsory dental, surgical, and medical clinics.
The children are society’s greatest asset, from whatever point of view we consider them, and teachers should be most active in all movements which make for child welfare. There is no other group of people better acquainted with the needs of children, none other which stands in so strategic a position with relation to parents and the community at large. Parents should be taught the necessity of plenty of sleep, wholesome food, and clean skins for children. Better devote time and energy to this education of parents than attempt to teach children handicapped by the lack of proper living conditions. The anti-tuberculosis campaign, the pure milk crusade, the demand for medical inspection, should be earnestly supported, if not instituted, by the teachers of children. Health is not an individual matter. The welfare of the whole group is bound up in conditions which spell disaster for the individual.
Finally the teacher has a right to good health. Living under bad hygienic conditions, with children who are unclean and diseased, should not be demanded of any teacher. The efficiency of the work which the teacher does, no less than that of the children, is conditioned by her health. If it is true that the teacher may suffer because of diseased children, it is none the less true that a teacher in poor physical condition injures all of the children she is pledged to help. Happy, healthful lives for children and teachers is a condition which will be brought to pass when all teachers work for this end.
For Collateral Reading
S. H. Rowe, The Physical Nature of the Child.
Exercises.
1. How may the school superinduce physical defects in children?
2. Why are schoolroom floors oiled and swept rather than scrubbed and swept?
3. What suggestions for the improvement of all schoolrooms do you gather from the establishment of open-air schools for the anemic and tubercular?