Third: And that this Association hereby directs and authorizes its president to appoint a committee of three to take such steps as may be necessary to put the above resolutions into active and effective operation, and to coöperate in every practical and substantial way with the National Committee on Physical Education, the division of physical education of the Playground and Recreation Association of America, and any other useful agency that may be in the field for the purpose of securing the proper and sufficient physical education of the boys and girls of to-day, so that they may to-morrow constitute a nation of men and women of normal physical growth, normal physical development and normal functional resource, practicing wise habits of health conservation and possessed of greater consequent vitality, larger endurance, longer lives and more complete happiness—the most precious assets of a nation.
By the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board
In January, 1919, the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board suggested the following organization of a department of hygiene for the purpose of establishing such a department in at least one normal school, college, or university training school for teachers in each state of the Union.
SUGGESTED ORGANIZATION OF A DEPARTMENT OF HYGIENE
I. Division of Informational Hygiene. (Stressing in each of its
several divisions with due proportion and with appropriate
emphasis, the venereal diseases, their causes, carriers, injuries,
and prevention):
(a) The principles of hygiene. Required of all students at least
twice a week for at least four terms.
(1) General hygiene. (The agents that injure health, the carriers
of disease, the contributory causes of poor health, the
defenses of health, and the sources of health.)
(2) Individual hygiene. (Informational hygiene, the care of the
body and its organs, correction, and repair, preventive
hygiene, constructive hygiene.)
(3) Group hygiene. (Hygiene of the home and the family, school
hygiene, occupational hygiene, community hygiene.)
(4) Intergroup hygiene. (Interfamily, intercommunity, interstate,
and international hygiene.)
(b) Principles of physical training. (Gymnastics, exercise, athletics,
recreation, and play.) Required of all students. To be given at
least twice a week for two terms in the Junior or Senior
Years.
(c) Health examinations—
(1) Medical examination required each half year of every
student. (Making reasonable provisions for a private,
personal, confidential relationship between the examiner
and the student.)
(2) Sanitary surveys and hygienic inspections applied regularly
to all divisions of the institution, their curriculums, buildings,
dormitories, equipment, personal service, and surroundings.
II. Division of Applied Hygiene.
(a) Health conference and consultations.
(1) Every student advised under "c" above (health
examinations) must report to his health examiner within a
reasonable time, as directed, with evidence that he has
followed the advice given, or with a satisfactory explanation
for not having done so.
(2) Must provide student with opportunities for safe,
confidential consultations with competent medical advisors
concerning the intimate problems of sex life as well as those
of hygiene in general.
(b) Physical training.
(1) Gymnastic exercises, recreation, games, athletics, and
competitive sports. Required of all students six hours a
week every term.
(2) Reconstructional and special training and exercise for
students not qualified organically for the regular activities
covered in "1" above. It is assumed that every teacher-
in-training physically able to go to school is entitled to and
should take some form of physical exercise.
III. Division of Research.
(a) Investigations, tests, evaluating measurements, records, and
reports required each term covering progress made under
each division and subdivision of the department, for the
purpose of discovering and developing more effective
educational methods in hygiene.
(b) Provide facilities for the sifting, selection, and investigation of
problems in hygiene that may be submitted to or proposed by
the department of hygiene.
(c) Arrange for frequent lectures on public hygiene and public
health from competent members of municipal, state, and
national departments of health, and from other appropriate
sources.
IV. Personnel requisite for such a department.—Men and
women should be chosen for service in the several divisions of
the Department, who have a sane, well-balanced, and
experienced appreciation of the importance of the whole field of
hygiene as well as of the place and relations of the venereal
diseases.
(1) One director or head of department. Must have satisfactory
scientific training and special experience, fitting him for
supervision, leadership, teaching, research, and
administrative responsibility.
(2) One medical examiner for men and one medical examiner
for women. There should be one examiner for each 500
students. Must be selected with special care because of the
presence of extraordinary opportunities to exercise a
powerful intimate influence upon the mental, moral, and
physical health of the students with whom such examiners
come in contact.
(3) One special teacher of physical training (a "Physical
Director") for each group of 500 students. There must be a
man for the men and a woman for the women students. The
physical training instructors employed in this department
should be in charge of and should cover satisfactorily all
the directing, training, and coaching carried on in the
department and in the institution in its relation to
athletics and competitive sports. The men and women who
are placed in charge of individual students and groups of
students engaged in the various activities of physical training
(gymnastics, athletics, recreation and play) should be
selected with special reference to their wholesome influence
on young men and young women.
(4) One coördinator (this function may be covered by one of the
personnel covered by "1," "2" or "3" above). Will serve to
influence every teacher in every department on the entire
staff of the institution to meet his obligations, in relation to
the individual hygiene of the students in his classes and to the
sanitation of the class rooms in which he meets his students.
The coördinator should bring information to all teachers and
assist them to meet more satisfactorily their opportunities to
help students in their individual problems in social hygiene.
(5) Special lectures on the principles and progress of public
hygiene and public health. A close coördination should be
secured between this department and community agencies
like the Department of Health that are concerned with public
hygiene.
(6) Sufficient clerical, stenographic and filing service to meet the
needs of the department.
In February, 1919, the field service of the National Committee on Physical Education issued a tentative outline for a state law for physical education, suggested for use in planning future legislation. The purposes of physical education as stated in the preamble of this law read as follows:
1. In order that the children of the State of .... shall receive a quality and an amount of physical education that will bring to them the health, growth and a normal organic development that is essential to their fullest present and future education, happiness and usefulness; and in order that the future citizenship of the State of .... may receive regularly from the growing and developing youth of the Commonwealth a rapidly increasing number of more vigorous, better educated, healthier, happier, more prosperous and longer lived men and women, we, the people of the State of .... represented in the Senate and Assembly do enact as follows:
By Legislative Committee of National Committee on Physical Education
In February, 1919, the legislative committee of the National Committee on Physical Education prepared a bill for federal legislation for the purpose of assisting the states in establishing physical education in their schools. This proposed federal law stated the purpose and aim of physical education as follows:
The purpose and aim of physical education in the meaning of this act shall be: more fully and thoroughly to prepare the boys and girls of the nation for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship through the development of bodily vigor and endurance, muscular strength and skill, bodily and mental poise, and such desirable moral and social qualities as courage, self-control, self-subordination and obedience to authority, coöperation under leadership, and disciplined initiative. The processes and agencies for securing these ends shall be understood to include: comprehensive courses of physical training activities, periodical physical examination; correction of postural and other remediable defects; health supervision of schools and school children; practical instruction in the care of the body and in the principles of health; hygienic school life, sanitary school buildings, playgrounds, and athletic fields and the equipment thereof; and such other means as may be conducive to these purposes.