55 
Dr. Clegg added that just as medical inspection was bound 
to follow compulsory education, so treatment was bound to 
follow medical inspection. Contrary to the fears expressed, 
in actual practice it had not turned out very expensive, or 
clashed with the interests of the interested parties. The 
children dealt with at the places of treatment unfortunately 
were from the class which would be allowed to grow up and 
become useless members of the community, ultimately 
becoming a charge on the town in many directions. There- 
fore, in his opinion, it was far cheaper to spend pennies in 
preventive work rather than pounds in redemptive work. 
He was one of those who believed — and his opinions were 
hardening in this direction — that most of our social problems 
would have to be solved during school life, and that it was 
incumbent upon us to see that not only would they have the 
best teachers they could get, but also the best health 
conditions. Then they would not be confronted, as they 
were to-day, with the great amount of indifference and 
ignorance on the part of the parents. They would have to 
make the children, who would be the future parents, under- 
stand and realise in many respects the importance of what 
was being done for them. When they approached education 
in that spirit, and carried it out to its fullest extent, they 
might, he thought, reasonably look forward to a lessening 
of many of their present social problems. Upon the teachers 
fell a work which was not always sufficiently appreciated ; 
it was not merely imparting education, for this was the least 
part of their work. The children were the future men and 
women, and their characters were moulded in the most 
plastic period of their lives, when certain truths could be 
driven home. There would never be the same opportunity 
again for doing it. All children were not alike, and conse- 
quently they had special schools for backward children. 
Authorities who looked ahead now said that they ought not 
to compel children to do something they were physically 
unfit to do, and thus increase the cost to the community 
in later years. Children, he said, drifted into tubercu- 
losis and other defects through this, who, had they been 
taken from the ordinary school at the beginning and placed 
under proper conditions in open-air schools, would have 
improved, and so saved the town a lot of money, besides being 
preserved for the nation. The idea of open-air education 
was not to set up elaborate establishments in which to freeze 
a child to death, but simply meant they were to take a small 
percentage of children who could not follow the school curric- 
ulum and give them a judicious mixture of rest and work 
in inexpensive open-air premises. Such schools, it was 
