MEDICAL INSPECTION OF SCHOOLS 



securing uniform figures in regard to enrollment for the years dur- 

 ing which the examinations were made, it was found necessary to 

 fall back on the report of the United States commissioner of 

 education for 1909-10. The figures in the first column of the table, 

 which were taken from this report, are unsatisfactory not only 

 because they are of too early a date but because they include 

 (presumably) the membership of high schools, which, so far as 

 known, no one of the nine cities attempts to cover. 



The situation in the cities showing respectively the highest 

 and the lowest percentages Oakland and St. Louis requires a 

 word of special comment. The enrollment figures for Oakland are 

 by exception for the year 1908-09, while those for children examined 

 are for 1910-1 1, a fact which may in part explain the very high 

 percentage of examinations in this city. A greater effort was 

 made in Oakland than elsewhere, however, to examine every 

 child in the primary and grammar grades, if we may judge from 

 the following statement made by the director of health develop- 

 ment and sanitation: 



"All pupils present were examined during the first term, and after 

 the Christmas vacation the schools were gone over again to get the new 

 scholars and those missed at the first examination. A few who were 

 absent at both examinations, or who have entered since the last, are not 

 recorded." 



In St. Louis the efforts of the department of school hygiene 

 are chiefly concentrated on 19 schools in the more densely popu- 

 lated quarters of the city, practically every pupil attending which 

 is examined, while only a small number of children from other 

 schools are inspected when specially referred by their teachers to 

 the school physicians. 



In general, the figures indicate that five out of the nine cities 

 examined more than half of their school children. Of Boston it 

 should be said that the investigation was still in progress at the 

 date when the figures given were reported, and that it was the 

 intention to continue it till the entire school population was 

 covered. The follow-up system in this city seems, however, to 

 be less highly developed than that in New York and other cities 

 which show a far lower percentage of children examined. 



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