Margaret McMillan

“ For seven years New York had been putting her huge house in order as regards school children's health and conditions with such fiery haste and zeal that everything one writes on the subject seems to be old before the ink is dry. She is hurrying past all the time. "In a few years," her senior school doctor cries to us gaily, "we shall, so far at least as physical conditions are concerned, have no lower classes."
That is a very cheering thing to hear. And the best of it is that it appears to be true. America is the country where huge fortunes are quickly make, and quickly lost. ”

“ One cannot reckon on the absolute increase of either weight or of stature—but only on the increase of either in relation to the other in the course of the school life. The measuring and weighing must be accurate, and finally they must be done regularly, at equal intervals, so that a child who is weighed and measured in March and September one year, is not weighed and measured in April and October the next! ”

“ We have already seen how from 10 to 20 per cent of all children go to these for a shorter or longer time; and how, at Mannheim, many are more than ready after a time to go back to the ordinary school. This kind of "result" is being welcomed all the time by doctor, teacher, and parent, and it is altogether the result of training that is largely treatment. For in such schools the doctor is in a sense the head master, inasmuch as he is responsible for the order of the teaching, and all the details of the work, in a very special way. ”

“ The facts that come to light seem to be most depressing just in those lands where the battle is keenest and most determined. Thus in Germany, though some causes of disease have been removed of late, yet the consciousness of the real scope of the evil is growing. It seems greater now than it did ten or even five years ago. The workers stand like people going through a home that has been ravaged by fire. ”

“ Writing is a tempting occupation outside, as one can see by looking at rocks and out-door seats. The little ones draw out-of-doors with a will, as the Bushmen drew, and as the great Eastern artists still sometimes draw. ”

“ Such measures as these do not re-create a race, or make everyone healthy. But they certainly are designed to give a rude set-back to infectious diseases and to lift the incubus that results from neglect, off the lives of myriads. They lift it as suddenly as one raises a stone and sets the creatures below into a panic: and this, apparently, is what happened in New York. ”

“ The compulsion to attempt to make all children, sick or well, ill or well endowed, normal or abnormal, toe the line and reach one standard is given up. Moreover, if a child fails to-day, it is no longer at once surmised that the teacher is at fault. All this constitutes such a relief from the thrall of blind Power that the mere weighing, measuring and observing of children is a small burden in comparison. ”

“ It is such, not merely because a large number of all the children who enter this kind of school recover health and strength. This is one "result"—but there are others, which are in the nature of a revelation! It seems that all the subjects have a new meaning for the children when they are taken out-of-doors. Arithmetic and geometry are no longer a kind of torture when they are studied as they were studied by the first mathematicians and reckoners, and when the foot, the hand, the arm, are again used as means of measurement. The first problems are solved on the grass or in the sand. ”

“ Out in the open, doubtless, every little hand would eagerly project itself. There everything invites, impels even, to self-projection. There tools are made eagerly. There the whole value of play declares itself, and exercise does not consist in formal walking or mere aimless running! ”

“ The whole movement seems to have united a great boldness with great confidence on the part of the people and of the school authorities. As evidence of the confidence, there is the fact that, though examination by the school doctor is not compulsory, barely 4 per cent of all the parents have preferred to have their children examined at home, and even this percentage was reached only because 9·5 per cent of the middle-class (Burgherschule) withdrew their children. Only 1·1 per cent of the working people have withdrawn their children. ”

“ However, it appears certain that even the examination of a diseased child does not take long. It is the examination that follows on treatment, not the first general examination, that requires time and patience.
After the first examination each child gets a health card, which the teacher keeps. There are three orders of card— "Good," "Fair," and "Bad." The first card is that of the healthy children—the "good "group. In the second are the children in "fair" health. In the third or "bad" group are the children who suffer from some disease, or who are very weakly. ”

“ The recent sudden awakening as to the needs of child life in every country is a case in point. The first school doctors were formally engaged in England and in Germany in the same year, 1891. The first American school doctor was formally appointed at Boston in 1894. In 1896 the first steps were taken at Wiesbaden to put medical inspection of schools in Germany on a firm basis. In 1897 the first Cleansing Committee was formed in England. In 1896 the first Board of advice for School Hygiene was instituted by an Imperial Ordnance in Japan. ”

“ To begin with, there is no standard of comparison between children to-day who have gone through the eight years of school life and children of the same age in 1896, when school doctor's work was fairly started. And then it is well known that through the eight years of elementary school life—say from six to fourteen—children do grow out of certain weaknesses, and the life risks are getting less. ”

“ So they make haste to grow rich, and being rich do not as a rule hug their gold tightly. Rich men are found in numbers who will endow costly institutions and schools, and pay for new public experiments. So money was no bar, once the idea had occurred to the city fathers to make the young citizens clean and healthy. In 1897 New York actually engaged a hundred and fifty doctors, each of whom would have the care of only three to five schools. A corps of nurses was also engaged, and a health squad formed in the police force to go round and visit homes where there were infectious cases. ”

“ For the better protection of the health of children attending the public schools, school doctors have been engaged to undertake the medical inspection of children on entering school, to be responsible for their health as long as they attend the school, and responsible too for the building itself from the point of view of the scholars' health. ”

“ Nearly every German writer on the subject turns aside to emphasise the importance of it—to show that here is one of the greatest opportunities that can ever be enjoyed by any citizen. "The education authorities of many cities have the desire to reach the parents," says Schubart. "They find a great and new opportunity in meeting them. A school doctor who sees the real scope of his work appreciates this fact." It seems that nearly all are eager to speak to the parents at the examination. ”

“ Responsive and flexible, they sway now towards a new order of physical development, and that they are capable of this is shown by the great differences of stature found among even the children. And the impulse that has come is strong—as witness the rapid increase in the number of physicians, the demand for more trained doctors, the teaching of hygiene to girls, etc.
Thus East and West are rising at last to fight disease, and to deal with defects of every kind. It is impossible that the opening years of this new campaign should be cheerful. ”

“ But certain it is that all over the Fatherland parents have responded and placed themselves on the side of the school doctor. The response comes, not only from the big towns; it is most hearty and practical in some of the little out-of-the-way villages. [3]
In fact, the desire for this new Eye in the school seems to have asserted itself and freed itself from the spirit of mere officialism, so that the movement develops here and there in most unexpected ways, and even shows in some places great freedom and originality. ”

“ The little dainty houses, too, that look like toys, are clean, and only the rich attempt to bar out the light and air a little. Everything is renewed continually, and Nature's changes and upheavals are always in evidence. Terrible spring cleanings are Nature's in Japan. There is a regular course arranged in every town for the study of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and the scholars learn how to build a little house that will rock safely without falling. [4] Hygiene is already so far advanced in some ways that one might feel the people had little to learn. ”

“ In the Hungarian Minute of twenty years ago it is set forth that "in the examination of new scholars, held at the beginning of every year, the doctor shall satisfy himself as to the health and condition of all children, more especially giving attention to the heart and lungs, and make known to the teachers whether children can take the usual physical exercises or drill, singing, etc. ”

“ All this seems to bear out the claim of the senior school doctor.
However, we need not dwell here on the American system—bold as it is. Let us turn from the West, with its courage and its gold, to the Far East, with its modest standard of life, and its soaring ideal! Japan has been in the whirlwind of reform. She begins however by an open confession. "We want school doctors," says the Education Report from Japan of 1903-4, "but we have not got enough trained men. We cannot make provision yet for all." Still, she has made a beginning. In 1899 the number of school doctors in Japan was 2906. ”

“ She has a population of only 86,000. Yet Wiesbaden has seven school doctors for her nine or ten thousand children, whereas London has twenty or twenty-one doctors, but nearly all of them are not even half-timers, but give only a quarter of their time to the half a million of children in her schools. The countries who have hesitated long will want, then, to ask the question: What is the result of all your courage and labour? ”

“ What part school doctoring has played in helping this upward movement we cannot yet learn—absolutely. There are other means of marking it, however, than the gathering of statistics, important as these are. Happily there is no need to wait long, no need to be an expert, in order to make every-day observations. ”

“ The health sheet and the weighing and measuring machines bring home to teachers the fact that the healthy children are passing rapidly through certain stages of growth, and that in the course of time the contrast presented by them to the under-nourished and undergrown gets more and more marked. ”

“ To begin with, they have not to face dreadful conditions of body, and uncleanness. It seems that in Japan even the poorest are clean, and the care of the skin and of the hair is not only brought to perfection, but it is quite general. It is an instinct of the entire race. ”

“ Thus the class rooms have almost suddenly become safe and healthy places in comparison to what they once were, and in every city where the baths are installed there is a crowd of witnesses to tell how the children have grown brighter and fitter for work since this new subject was added to the curriculum. ”

“ They seem to show that improvement in physique may be rapid; that the people may respond quickly to the new impulse to evolve new muscular power, since muscular power is wanted. Every one who visits Japan notes this great flexibility, a quickness and delicacy of response to the call of the hour. ”

“ He looks into various parts of the building, and notes the lighting, warming and ventilation, and sanitation. It may be well to quote part of the Minute in the Wiesbaden scheme in which his duties are indicated.
"Every fourteen days the school doctor will hold a School Consultation at an hour fixed by doctor and head teacher. A certain room is to be placed at his service. ... The first half of the hour will serve for a visit of from 10 to 15 minutes to be paid to from two to five Classes, during the time when the scholars are being taught. ”

“ If irregularly done the thing has no value, but well done, it gives indications so true and delicate that the weighing and measuring machines are looked on by some teachers as a kind of mental and moral barometer, rarely if ever at fault! ”

“ For, as many writers have shown, the face of the land and the shapes of the mountains change as the result of earthquakes and eruptions. Now and then there is a tremendous upheaval. One of these destroyed 14,000 little houses. ”