Civics and Health | Page 3

class, to every pastor, every civic leader, every health
officer, every taxpayer.

Interviews with teachers and principals regarding the present apathy to
formal hygiene instruction have brought out the following points that
merit the serious consideration of those who are struggling for higher
health standards.
1. There is many a slip 'twixt the making of a law and its enforcement.
If laws regarding hygiene instruction are not enforced, we should not
be surprised. It has been nobody's business to see whether and how
hygiene is being taught. The moral crusade spent itself in forcing
compulsory laws upon the statute books of every state and territory.
Making a fetish of Legislation, the advocates of anti-alcohol and
anti-tobacco instruction failed to see the truth that experienced political
reformers are but slowly coming to see--Legislation which does not
provide machinery for its own enforcement is apt to do little good and
frequently will do much harm. Machinery, however admirably adapted
to the work to be done, will get out of order and become useless, or
even harmful, unless constantly watched and efficiently directed. Of
what possible use is it to say that state money may be withheld from
any school board which fails to enforce the law regarding instruction in
hygiene, if state officials never enforce the penalty? So long as the
penalty is not enforced for flagrant violation, what difference does it
make whether the reason is indifference, ignorance, or desire to thwart
the law? Fortunately, it is easy for each one of us to learn how often
and in what way the children in our community are being taught
hygiene, and how the schools of our state teach and practice the laws of
health. If either the spirit or the letter of the law regarding instruction in
hygiene is being violated, we can measure the penalty paid in health
and morals by our children and our community. We can learn whether
law, text-book, curriculum, or teacher should be changed. We can insist
upon discussion of the facts and upon remedies suggested by the facts.
2. Teachers give as one reason for neglecting hygiene, that they are
often compelled to struggle with a curriculum which requires more
than they are able to teach and more than pupils are able to learn in
the time allowed. While an overcharged curriculum may explain, it
surely does not justify, the violation of law and the dropping of hygiene
from our school curriculum. If there is any class of citizen who should

teach and practice respect for law as law, it is the teacher. Parents,
school directors, county and state superintendents, university presidents,
social workers, owe it not only to themselves, but to the American
school-teacher, either to repeal the laws that enjoin instruction in
hygiene or else so to adjust the curriculum that teachers can comply
with those laws. The present situation that discredits both law and
hygiene is most demoralizing to teacher, pupil, and community. Many
of us might admire the man teacher who frankly says he never explains
the evils of cigarettes because he himself is an inveterate smoker of
cigarettes. But what must we think of the school system that shifts to
such a man the right and the responsibility of deciding whether or not
to explain to underfed and overstimulated children of the slums the
truth regarding cigarettes? If practice and precept must be consistent,
shall the man be removed, shall he change his habits, shall the law
regarding instruction in hygiene be changed, or shall other provision be
made for bringing child and essential facts together in a way that will
not dull the child's receptivity?
3. Teachers are made to feel that while arithmetic and reading are
essential, hygiene is not essential. Whatever may be the facts regarding
the relative value of arithmetic and hygiene, whether or not our state
legislators have made a mistake in declaring hygiene to be essential, are
questions altogether too important for child and state to be left to the
discretion of the individual teacher or superintendent. It is fair to the
teachers who say they cannot afford to turn aside from the three R's to
teach hygiene, to admit that they have not hitherto identified the
teaching of hygiene with the promotion of the physical welfare of
children. Teachers awake to the opportunity will sacrifice not only
hygiene but any other subject for the sake of promoting children's
health. They do not really believe that arithmetic is more important
than health. What they mean to say is that hygiene, as taught by them,
has not heretofore had an appreciable effect upon their pupils' health;
that other agencies exist, outside of the school, to teach the child how
to avoid certain diseases and how to observe the fundamental laws of
health, whereas no other agencies exist