778 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 



At the end of June, 1908, we " took stock" of the results of some 

 fifteen months' work of the three medical inspectors in Tasmanian 

 State schools. Tasmania, it will be rememibered, possesses certain 

 natural advantages which would a j^riori lead us to expect that her 

 children would be physically superior to tliose in most other States. 

 Definite cumparison is as yet impossible, as in no other State are 

 comparable data yet available, but the results are amply sufficient 

 to set every conscientious Australian teacher thinking. Tasmanian 

 children are as healthy looking as any other young Australians, they 

 show as good a proportion of chubby red cheeks, and sturdy limbs 

 and bodies as would be found anywhere else. Probably they are as 

 healthy and sound as their brothers and sisters in any other State. 



Yet, out of 11,287 children examined, 4,158, or 36"83 per cent., 

 were found to be physically defective to an extent which was either 

 actively interfering with their educational progress, or would, in all 

 human probability, so interfere with it in the near future. This 

 estimate was arrived at on no arbitrary basis, but from the 

 independent and closely checked observations of three specially skilled 

 medical officers working on a definite system with definite and lenient 

 standards. 



A special examination was made of 10,136 of these children to 

 avoid "selection" influences; 2,116 (20'88 per cent.) were visually 

 defective. in some degree, 973, or 9'59 per cent, being defective to an 

 extent actually interfering with educational progress. These latter 

 could not read ordinary blackboard writing from back seats, or could 

 do so only with much strain, lioys so affected could not leam service 

 rifle shooting until fltted with proper glasses. Nine hundred and fifty- 

 two children were deaf to an extent interfering with their educational 

 pi^ogress; 1,956, or 19'29 per cent., were suffering from post-nasal 

 growths to an extent interfering with their educational progress. 

 Every one of all these could be readily detected by teachers by simple 

 and effective means, if they knew how, or cared to know how. 



Of the whole 11,287, 142 suffered from dangerous suppuration in 

 the ears; 100 had pronounced curvature of the spine; 71 were 

 mentalty defective; 149 had pronounced ana?mia, 66 had other 

 serious defects easily recognisable by teachers, and of great moment 

 to their health and success in life. The teeth were so uniformly 

 bad that a clean sound mouth was a rare exception. 



Is this the kind of young Australia which our gigantic system 

 of free secular and compulsory education is striving to develop? Much 

 of it is directly traceable to school conditions, to the Australian school 

 system which in the past has striven so hard to exclude everything 

 which has to do with the body and its needs. It is for the perpetua- 

 tion of this condition of affairs that those strive who cry out against 

 the introduction of medical inspection of schools on the score of 

 expense and lack of timei, whilst Australia's education bill for 

 ornamental subjects piles up at the rate of many thousands each 

 year. It is for this that those alleged educationists strive who 

 grumble about the introduction of a "new subject," that cult of 

 laziness, of ignorance, of indift'erence to their stewardship. 



