Tuesday, March 6, 2007

HEALTH WORK IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

HEALTH WORK IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS


Cleveland employs 16 physicians, one oculist, and 27 nurses to take
charge of the health of her school children. The city spends $36,000 a
year on salaries and supplies for these people. There are 86 school
dispensaries and clinics. Cleveland is making this heavy investment
because she finds it pays.




THE ARGUMENT FOR MEDICAL INSPECTION


Medical inspection is an extension of the activities of the school in
which the educator and the physician join hands to insure for each
child such conditions of health and vitality as will best enable him
to take full advantage of the free education offered by the state. Its
object is to better health conditions among school children, safeguard
them from disease, and render them healthier, happier, and more
vigorous. It is founded upon a recognition of the intimate
relationship between the physical and mental conditions of the
children, and the consequent dependence of education on health
conditions.

In Cleveland, the value of medical inspection was recognized while the
movement was still in its infancy in America. Here, as elsewhere, this
sudden recognition of the imperative necessity for safeguarding the
physical welfare of school children grew out of the discovery that
compulsory education under modern city conditions meant compulsory
disease.

The state, to provide for its own protection, has decreed that all
children must attend school, and has put in motion the all-powerful
but indiscriminating agency of compulsory education, which gathers in
the rich and the poor, the bright and the dull, the healthy and the
sick. The object was to insure that these children should have sound
minds. One of the unforeseen results was to insure that they should
have unsound bodies. Medical inspection is the device created to
remedy this condition. Its object is prevention and cure.

Ever since its establishment the good results of medical inspection
have been evident. Epidemics have been checked or avoided.
Improvements have been noted in the cleanliness and neatness of the
children. Teachers and parents have come to know that under the new
system it is safe for children to continue in school in times of
threatened or actual epidemic.




HEALTH AND SCHOOL PROGRESS


But medical inspection does not confine itself to dealing with
contagious disease. Its aid has been invoked to help the child who is
backward in his school studies. With the recent extensions in the
length of the school term and the increase in the number of years of
schooling demanded of the child, has come a great advance in the
standards of the work required. When the standards were low, the work
was not beyond the capacity of even the weaker children; but with
close grading, fuller courses, higher standards, and constantly more
insistent demands for intellectual attainment, conditions have
changed. Pupils have been unable to keep up with their classes. The
terms "backward," "retarded," and "exceptional," as applied to school
children, have been added to the vocabularies of educators.

School men discovered that the drag-net of compulsory education was
bringing into school hundreds of children who were unable to keep step
with their companions, and because this interfered with the orderly
administration of the school system, they began to ask why the
children were backward.

The school physicians helped to find the answer when they showed that
hundreds of these children were backward simply because of removable
physical defects. And then came the next great forward step, the
realization that children are not dullards through the will of an
inscrutable Providence, but rather through the law of cause and
effect.




EXAMINATIONS FOR PHYSICAL DEFECTS


This led to an extension of the scope of medical inspection to include
the physical examination of school children with the aim of
discovering whether or not they were suffering from such defects as
would handicap their educational progress and prevent them from
receiving the full benefit of the free education furnished by the
state. This work was in its infancy five years ago, but today
Cleveland has a thorough and comprehensive system of physical
examination of its school children.

Surprising numbers of children have been found who, through defective
eyesight, have been seriously handicapped in their school work. Many
are found to have defective hearing. Other conditions are found which
have a great and formerly unrecognized influence on the welfare,
happiness, and mental vigor of the child. Attention has been directed
to the real significance of adenoids and enlarged tonsils, of swollen
glands and carious teeth.

Teachers and parents have come to realize that the problem of the
pupil with defective eyesight may be quite as important to the
community as that of the pupil who has some contagious disease. If a
child who is unable to see distinctly is placed in a school where
physical defects are unrecognized and disregarded, headaches,
eyestrain, and failure follow all his efforts at study. He cannot see
the blackboards and charts; printed books are indistinct or are seen
only with much effort, everything is blurred. Neither he nor his
teacher knows what is the matter, but he soon finds it impossible to
keep pace with his companions, and, becoming discouraged, he falls
behind in the unequal race.

In no better plight is the child suffering from enlarged tonsils and
adenoids, which prevent proper nasal breathing and compel him to keep
his mouth open in order to breathe. Perhaps one of his troubles is
deafness. He is soon considered stupid. This impression is
strengthened by his poor progress in school. Through no fault of his
own he is doomed to failure. He neglects his studies, hates his
school, leaves long before he has completed the course, and is well
started on the road to an inefficient and despondent life.

Public schools are a public trust. When the parent delivers his child
to their care he has a right to insist that the child under the
supervision of the school authorities shall be safe from harm and
shall be handed back to him in at least as good condition as when it
entered school. Even if the parent does not insist upon it, the child
himself has a right to claim protection. The child has a claim upon
the state and the state a claim upon the child which demands
recognition. Education without health is useless. It would be better
to sacrifice the education if, in order to attain it, the child must
lay down his good health as a price. Education must comprehend the
whole man and the whole man is built fundamentally on what he is
physically...
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1 Comments:

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May 28, 2007 at 8:19 PM  

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