In addition to the work of the regular teachers in this subject, a certain amount of instruction is given by the school physicians and nurses. In his report to the Board, 1913, Dr. Peterson writes:
"Health instruction is given by doctors and nurses in personal talks to pupils, talks to whole schools, tooth-brush drills conducted in many schools, and in visits into the homes by the nurses. Conscious effort is continually made by all doctors and nurses to inspire to right living all of the children with whom they come in contact."
Looking somewhat to the future, it can be affirmed that the school physicians and nurses are the ones who ought to give the teaching in this subject. After giving the preliminary ideas in the classrooms, they alone are in position to follow up the various matters and see that the ideas are assimilated through being put into practice both at school and at home. At present, however, 16 physicians and 27 nurses have 75,000 children to inspect, of whom more than half have defects that require following up. It is a physical impossibility for them to do much teaching until the force of school nurses is greatly increased.
For the present certain things may well be done:
1. A course in hygiene and sanitation, based upon an abundance of reading, should be drawn up and taught by the regular teachers in the grammar school grades. This course should be looked upon as merely preliminary to the more substantial portions of education in this field. The physicians and nurses should select the readings and supervise the course to see that the materials are covered conscientiously and not slighted.
2. The schools should arrange for practical applications of the preparatory knowledge in as many ways as possible. Children in relays can look after the ventilation, temperature, humidity, dust, light, and other sanitary conditions of school-rooms and grounds. They can make sanitary surveys of their home district; engage in anti-fly, anti-mosquito, anti-dirt, and other campaigns; and report—for credit possibly—practical sanitary and hygienic activities carried on outside of school. Only as knowledge is put to work is it assimilated and the prime purpose of education accomplished.
3. The corps of school nurses should be gradually enlarged, and after a time they can be given any needed training for teaching that will enable them, as the work is departmentalized in the grammar grades, to become departmental teachers in this subject for a portion of their time. Their "follow-up" work will always give them their chief educational opportunity; but to prepare for this the classwork must give some systematized preparatory ideas.
In the high schools, training of boys in hygiene and sanitation is little developed. The only thing offered them is an elective half-year course in physiology in the senior year of the scientific and English courses in the academic high schools. In the classical course, and in the technical and commercial schools, they have not even this. Physiology is required of girls in the technical schools, and is elective in all but the classical course in the others. While in one or two of the high schools there is training in actual hygiene and sanitation, in most cases it is physiology and anatomy of a superficial preliminary type which is not put to use and which therefore mostly fails of normal assimilation.
The things recommended for the elementary schools need to be carried out in the high schools also.