350 REPORT—1904. 
No subject will offer a better field for this, the process of tested 
knowledge, than the subject of school hygiene, for while it offers excellent 
opportunities for practical work and testing methods, it co-ordinates with 
nearly all other branches of the teacher’s work, and affords an amount 
of diversity and adaptability which would make its adoption practicable 
in nearly all colleges ; and, if adopted, would give a living groundwork to 
educational methods which, to be successful, must be based on the con- 
ditions of health essential to carrying on the work of instruction in 
schools. 
It is obvious that the teaching of the laws of health in schools will 
have little effect in training the scholar in the observance of these laws 
unless they are observed and practised in the conduct of the school, and 
such training can only be accomplished where the teachers have themselves 
been trained by practical and experimental work to understand (1) How 
the laws of health enter into every department of school life, the mental 
and moral as well as the physical ; (2) That the subject is one that must 
be inculcated in the child by observation and experiment. 
It appeared, therefore, that one of the most useful subjects to which 
the Committee could devote this year’s report would be the setting out of 
the essential points to be included in a curriculum for the practical 
training of teachers in school hygiene, and the following report has been 
prepared by the Sub-Committee for this purpose. 
APPENDIX. 
The members of the Sub-Committee appointed to consider ‘The 
Teachers : What they should know of Physical, Mental, Structural, and 
Administrative Hygiene,’ were imbued with the conviction that no 
class of the community has more widespread influence on the rising 
generation, and that it is, therefore, essential that all teachers alike, 
primary and secondary, be required to show proof of a practical acquaint- 
ance with the elements of hygiene. (1) In order, directly or indirectly, 
to train children of both sexes and all social grades to look at health 
questions with intelligent eyes, and to instil into them that sound know- 
ledge of the rules which govern healthy life which is set forth as a funda- 
mental principle of education by the Board of Education ; (2) That the 
teaching profession may contribute its quota to the maintenance of good 
conditions of cleanliness, light, ventilation, and so forth in schools, to the 
provision of suitable equipment, and, above all, to the formation of good 
physical, mental, and moral habits among the pupils. 
The subject being one of great scope and of some complexity, the 
Committee confined themselves to the definition of the minimum of infor- 
mation essential, in their opinion, for every teacher, male and female, 
leaving to a future occasion all consideration of the wider knowledge 
indispensable for specialist inspectors or instructors. 
The appended scheme sets forth briefly this minimum standard of 
knowledge, which, however, to be employed to advantage, demands as a 
basis a previous study of general elementary science, including biology, 
to the extent set out, for example, in the Regulations and Syllabus for the 
Acting Teachers’ Certificate Examination, 1904. 
The Committee lay special stress upon this foundation, the possession 
