324 MASS. EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETIN 247 



DEPARTMENT OF HOME ECONOMICS RESEARCH 

 Esther S. Davies in Charge 



The Food Consumption of Rural School Children in Relation to Their 

 Health. (E. S. Davies). Work on this ])roJect has been completed and the 

 results published as Bulletin 24L (See list of publications). 



Present Practices of Massachusetts Elementary Schools with Regard to 

 School Feeding and Transportation and Their Effects upon Health of 

 Pupils. (E. S. Davies and C. B. Church.) In the course of tiie .survey 

 for the preceding project, it became evident that an important factor in 

 the food x^ractices of the children of elementary school age is the type 

 of noon meal; and that the organization of the public schools tends more 

 and more to make it necessary for this noon meal to be eaten at the 

 school house. The consolidation of rural schools, moreover, always in- 

 volves the transportation of a large proportion of the pupils, which in turn 

 affects the length of time the children must be away from home and 

 raises questions as to the possibility of increased fatigue and exposure; 

 as well as increasing the number of those who must eat the noon meal 

 away from home. It was, therefore, deemed wise to undertake an investiga- 

 tion of the present practices of the schools of the 237 Massachusetts towns 

 of less than 5,000 population, with regard to transportation of elementary 

 school pupils and the facilities provided for food service, in the belief that 

 these have a close relation to the physical welfare of the children. 



This study is being pursued by conferences with the superintendents 

 of schools, visits to the teachers at the school houses, and, finally, by per- 

 sonal inspection of food services and actual experience in using the trans- 

 portation facilities. To supplement the information thus obtained, ab- 

 stracts are made of the medical examination records in certain towns, to 

 study the comparative physical status of the pupils from year to year. 

 As another angle of approach to the solution of the problem, in a num- 

 ber of representative school rooms, scattered throughout the state, the 

 teachers are keeping detailed records of the duration and real cause of 

 all absences during the current school year. 



The field work on this project cannot be completed before the close of 

 the school year next June, but certain tendencies seem clearly defined in 

 the part of the work which has already been finished. The number of 

 schools in which provision is made for year-round serving of a hot food 

 or drink at noon is almost negligible; and the number providing such 

 service during the cold weather is less than half the total number of 

 schools. Mid-morning milk service is practically non-existent. 



Transportation is generally provided only along the main highways, the 

 children walking to assembling points. It is the unusual town that pro- 

 vides shelter from the weather at these places where the pupils wait for the 

 bus; and, since schedules are frequently uncertain, many young children 

 must wait from ten minutes to half an hour out in the open, regardless 

 of weather. Transportation also tends to lengthen the time away from 

 home, although the experience of two towns proves that much of this 

 difficulty could be obviated by careful planning of the routes and adapta- 

 tion of the length of school sessions to the age of the children as well as to 

 the restrictions on transportation inherent in the geography of the town. 



Massachusetts was the first state in the union to have a consolidated 

 rural school; and it is hoped that the facts brought to light by the pro- 

 ject now imder way will provide information needed to enable the rural 

 towns of the state to be the first to have ideal consolidated schools. 



