Health Work in the Public Schools | Page 2

the sick. The
object was to insure that these children should have sound minds. One
of the unforeseen results was to insure that they should have unsound
bodies. Medical inspection is the device created to remedy this
condition. Its object is prevention and cure.

Ever since its establishment the good results of medical inspection have
been evident. Epidemics have been checked or avoided. Improvements
have been noted in the cleanliness and neatness of the children.
Teachers and parents have come to know that under the new system it
is safe for children to continue in school in times of threatened or actual
epidemic.

HEALTH AND SCHOOL PROGRESS
But medical inspection does not confine itself to dealing with
contagious disease. Its aid has been invoked to help the child who is
backward in his school studies. With the recent extensions in the length
of the school term and the increase in the number of years of schooling
demanded of the child, has come a great advance in the standards of the
work required. When the standards were low, the work was not beyond
the capacity of even the weaker children; but with close grading, fuller
courses, higher standards, and constantly more insistent demands for
intellectual attainment, conditions have changed. Pupils have been
unable to keep up with their classes. The terms "backward," "retarded,"
and "exceptional," as applied to school children, have been added to the
vocabularies of educators.
School men discovered that the drag-net of compulsory education was
bringing into school hundreds of children who were unable to keep step
with their companions, and because this interfered with the orderly
administration of the school system, they began to ask why the children
were backward.
The school physicians helped to find the answer when they showed that
hundreds of these children were backward simply because of
removable physical defects. And then came the next great forward step,
the realization that children are not dullards through the will of an
inscrutable Providence, but rather through the law of cause and effect.

EXAMINATIONS FOR PHYSICAL DEFECTS

This led to an extension of the scope of medical inspection to include
the physical examination of school children with the aim of discovering
whether or not they were suffering from such defects as would
handicap their educational progress and prevent them from receiving
the full benefit of the free education furnished by the state. This work
was in its infancy five years ago, but today Cleveland has a thorough
and comprehensive system of physical examination of its school
children.
Surprising numbers of children have been found who, through
defective eyesight, have been seriously handicapped in their school
work. Many are found to have defective hearing. Other conditions are
found which have a great and formerly unrecognized influence on the
welfare, happiness, and mental vigor of the child. Attention has been
directed to the real significance of adenoids and enlarged tonsils, of
swollen glands and carious teeth.
Teachers and parents have come to realize that the problem of the pupil
with defective eyesight may be quite as important to the community as
that of the pupil who has some contagious disease. If a child who is
unable to see distinctly is placed in a school where physical defects are
unrecognized and disregarded, headaches, eyestrain, and failure follow
all his efforts at study. He cannot see the blackboards and charts;
printed books are indistinct or are seen only with much effort,
everything is blurred. Neither he nor his teacher knows what is the
matter, but he soon finds it impossible to keep pace with his
companions, and, becoming discouraged, he falls behind in the unequal
race.
In no better plight is the child suffering from enlarged tonsils and
adenoids, which prevent proper nasal breathing and compel him to keep
his mouth open in order to breathe. Perhaps one of his troubles is
deafness. He is soon considered stupid. This impression is strengthened
by his poor progress in school. Through no fault of his own he is
doomed to failure. He neglects his studies, hates his school, leaves long
before he has completed the course, and is well started on the road to an
inefficient and despondent life.

Public schools are a public trust. When the parent delivers his child to
their care he has a right to insist that the child under the supervision of
the school authorities shall be safe from harm and shall be handed back
to him in at least as good condition as when it entered school. Even if
the parent does not insist upon it, the child himself has a right to claim
protection. The child has a claim upon the state and the state a claim
upon the child which demands recognition. Education without health is
useless. It would be better to sacrifice the