MUSEUM COOPERATION IN THE TEACH- 

 ING OF SCHOOL HYGIENE AND 

 SANITATION 



By C.-E. A. Winslow 



Address before the Fourth International Congress of School Hygiene at Buffalo, August, 1913 



ALL of us in attendance at this Congress are probably convinced that the sci- 

 ence of life and health is the one thing which should be taught in the public 

 schools whatever else may be neglected. I know however that there are 

 many who are quite as insistent on the importance of grammar or arithmetic 

 or history, drawing or French, carpentry or cooking or basket work; and the result is 

 that many school boards shut their ears to us all alike. Nevertheless, I am ready to 

 brave the obvious reproach of being merely another faddist by urging that the princi- 

 ples of biology and public health should occupy a truly central place in the curri- 

 culum of elementary and secondary schools, and I believe that the things for which 

 such a Congress as this stands are not the idiosyncrasy of a few enthusiasts but, 

 if properly presented, have behind them an overwhelming force of public opinion. 



It is an obvious truism that education is meant to prepare for living; and it seems 

 clear that the most general and fundamental phases of the art of life should receive 

 proportionate representation in the preparatory process. The average man uses his 

 history once a day perhaps, his arithmetic somewhat oftener. Even his English 

 grammar is on trial during a part of his working hours only, and his whole mental 

 equipment is put by for a third of the twenty-four. He is living all the time however, 

 and is either well or ill, happy or miserable, efficient or useless, largely as a result of 

 the conduct and management of the delicate physical machine which is in his charge. 

 He may be innocent of historic fact, of the multiplication table and of syntax, and 

 yet be a useful and contented citizen. He cannot be either long without observing 

 the laws of hygiene and sanitation. I fancy that any one with a child of his own will 

 have no doubt that knowledge of what to eat and what not to eat and why, of the 

 meaning and importance of fresh air, of the claims of exercise and rest, of the essential 

 routine of body cleanliness, of how germ diseases spread and how they may be con- 

 trolled, of the methods of rendering water and milk safe and the reasons therefor, of 

 the dangers of insect-borne disease and of the essentials of public sanitation — are of 

 even greater moment than those things which prepare for the intellectual and social 

 life. 



There might be two reasons for the comparative neglect of this transcendently 

 important subject, a neglect which still persists in spite of the encouraging develop- 

 ment of recent years. It might be claimed that although it is desirable to keep 

 healthy we have no body of knowledge which will enable us to do so. This was 

 undoubtedly true in the past and is historically the reason why biology and public 

 health have occupied so obscure a place in the curriculum. It is not true any longer. 

 We have to-day a large number of principles and applications which enable us to keep 

 the bodily machine in the best working order and to guard it against the insidious 

 attacks of communicable disease. Or on the other hand, it might be held that, 

 although essential and available, knowledge of how to live a healthy life could better 

 be obtained in the home than in the school. It is obvious that this claim is wholly 

 untenable, not only for the teeming populations of the tenements who come often 

 from other countries with sanitary conditions of a lower grade than ours, but even for 

 many of the most enlightened households, since in a subject growing so rapidly as 



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