80 HYGIENE AND SCHOOL LIFE. 



learners, but it is co-ordinated with nearly every branch of 

 the teachers' work, and affords a living ground-work to all 

 educational methods which inust be based upon conditions of 

 health that are favourable to school work. The laws of 

 health, if taught in schools, would have little effect upon the 

 scholar unless they were observed and vigorously practised 

 in the every-day routine of school. Such work, it was 

 admitted, could only be accomplished by teachers who had 

 been themselves trained, by practical and experimental work, 

 to understand how and why the laws of health enter into 

 every branch of school life, mental, moral, and physical, and 

 that the facts must be inculcated into the child by observation, 

 sympathetic correction, and experiment. 



The Committee, in suggesting a curriculum for the training 

 of teachers in school Hygiene, set forth a minimum standard 

 of knowledge which covered the elements of general science, 

 including biology and physiology as they affect school life. 

 They felt that the theoretical study of hygiene rarely stimu- 

 lated practical application or brought home real conviction 

 of its truths, and, therefore, the teachers' course should cover 

 a personal acquaintance with experiments, appliances and 

 methods of proofs and instruction. Much stress was laid upon 

 the two chief obstacles to the success of a large proportion 

 of scholars, viz., exhaustion or starvatiion in one form or 

 another. The first hardly applies to this country, where com- 

 pulsory education is enforced and child labour prohibited by 

 law: I wish the second could be as easily dismissed, especially 

 in the white schools. I was particularly struck, both at this 

 Congress and at that of the Royal Sanitary Institute at Glas- 

 gow, with the magnificent work done by lady doctors and 

 lady inspectors of schools — work that could not have been 

 done by male inspectors. 



The matters dealt with by these ladies are so immense, how- 

 ever, that I must give a small account of their discoveries and 

 recommendations, which should appeal to the sympathy of 

 any intelligent and benevolent person. 



One lady delegate insisted that the training of head 

 teachers, at all events, should include some clinical experience, 

 because an untrained eye would not detect ailments, and thus 

 children would be classed as mentally deficient who were 

 really only suffering from defective hearing or eyesight. It 

 was further advanced that lady managers could, when required, 

 bring teachers and parents into touch better than men could. 

 Another pointed out how unsuitable the school time-tables 

 were. Mental arithmetic immediately after the midday meal 

 was a mistake; lessons were too long, and, therefore, the 

 power of attention and assimilation was soon exhausted. It 

 was insisted that brain-taxing work should be intierspersed 

 with moderate physical exercise, and that it was unreasonable 

 and cruel to expect a half-starved or inept scholar to do the 

 same amount of work as a stronger or more capable child. 

 Again, it was advanced that more attention and work could 

 be secured from children in cool than in hot weather, and 



