Revitalizing the Rural School Curriculum H (Concluded from Education for April.) MYGIENE. We have already suggested the need for more efficient instruction in hygiene in the rural school. Indeed the ignorance of country people generally in matters of farm and village sanitation is appalling. As Dr. Andress sums up the matter: In spite of the many signs of a revolution in matters of public sentiment in connection with hygiene, this subject is one of the poorest taught in the school curriculum. The ideals of our foremost educators are far in advance of actual practice. This is particularly true in the country which has as yet remained rather unaffected by recent advances in hygiene. Our country schoolhouses and grounds are centres of disease, the teaching of hygiene is either neglected or very crude, and the life of a large proportion of country people is quite remote from the best hygienic standards. . . . . . The rural teacher naturally has many handicaps in the campaign of health education; inferior textbooks, unsanitary schoolhouses and an unsympathetic community. . . . . The following paragraphs are inserted here with the earnest hope that they may contain practical suggestion for a more efficient teaching of hygiene in the country school. The author has himself seen many good results from careful teaching of this sort. The work in hygiene belongs only partly in the schoolroom; a great deal of it really becomes field work in rural sanitation, and is to be conducted out of doors. Let us concern ourselves, first, however, with some important topics for the schoolroom proper. In the first place, it might be said, the teacher ought always to have as her chief aim getting good habits of health formed in the children. There are many means which will aid in the accomplishment of this end. Among these are daily inspection of the hands, nails and general cleanliness of the younger pupils; insistence upon correct posture in sitting and standing; proper care of the teeth; practical talks and experiments upon ventilation of rooms, with particular emphasis upon the sleeping room; health talks, morning talks, etc., etc. All these means of approach are for the purpose of getting mechanical response, if you will, in good habit formation on the part of the pupil. Then too, very excellent object lessons in clean surroundings may be furnished the children by the teacher assigning each child some little daily task about the schoolroom, which, regularly and conscientiously performed, will contribute to the comfort and enjoyment of all. It may be nothing more than keeping the chalk-trough clean, or a waste-basket emptied; or a flower pot filled with fresh water, or material upon the bulletin board well arranged, or the reference books placed in order, or a blackboard erased, or a window ledge dusted, or any other equally small but important duty. The purpose of such exercises will be to create in each pupil a taste for orderliness and neatness which will not end with the schoolroom, but should seek some simple, natural expression in the home. The school yard, or grounds, might well offer similar slight and regular tasks for some of the older pupils to perform, such for example as keeping bits of paper and other rubbish cleared up, watering the flowers, picking the pansies and violets for the vases inside, etc., etc., work which may again easily and naturally extend to the home in some slight measure at least. It should be remembered in all this that boys and girls are great imitators of personality, and that therefore the teacher should strive always to make her personality and traits of character worthy of imitation and emulation on the part of the easily impressionable pupils. In this connection, a cheerful mood, a neat personal appearance, simple, well-chosen words, habits of punctuality and orderliness may become in effect as legitimate principles of hygiene instruction as the study of a textbook or a government bulletin. In the in-door division of hygiene and sanitation belong also such topics as the nature and prevention of disease, emergencies and first aid to the injured and other allied topics. In the first of these, the emphasis is not to be placed so much upon specific diseases, as a rule, but upon the preventive side. Certain of the more common sources of infectious disease in the country, such as a polluted water supply, infected milk, the typhoid fly and the malarial mosquito should be thoroughly discussed, and the various remedial and preventive agencies set forth. This particular chapter in sanitation will form the subject matter for an endless amount of field work, as we shall see in a moment. In the case of emergencies and first aid, some of the scores of first aid books or pamphlets, such for example as the booklet issued by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, should be in the hands of every pupil. The importance of this branch of health work can scarcely be overestimated in rural sections, where the physician cannot always be summoned at a moment's notice. Besides this fact, ignorance of some of the simple expedients to which to resort in the case of accident often results in loss of life, or at least in far more serious complications than might otherwise have been the case. The writer recalls once hearing of a boy who accidently severed a vein in his upper arm, when only another boy was within hailing distance. Hurrying to the injured boy's aid, the freightened chum bound his handerchief tightly around the bleeding arm, but at a point above the wound! The result was that the flow of blood continued unchecked until the vessels in the lower arm were nearly emptied of their blood. It is, obviously, the rural school that is to instruct country children how to administer first aid in the case of accident. In this connection, it might be suggested that any school room may be supplied with a sufficient amount of disinfectant, bandages and adhesive tape at a very slight expenditure to prepare it for any accident that is likely to need treatment about the school or school premises. Often, too, children come from home to school with undressed wounds which easily become infected; if the teacher is supplied with the materials it is a very simple matterrequiring little skill-to disinfect and dress such wounds. In the in-door work in hygiene, also, the question of food values deserves considerable attention. This does not mean that the children are to be warned as the author has often heard of teachers doing-to eat thus many ounces of carbohydrates and thus many of proteids per diem. There is no point nor significance to such instruction. A rather interesting way to set about getting results in this subject is for the teacher to discover by questioning just what the various members of the class had for breakfast on a given morning. The foods named may be arranged in columns on the blackboard. Occasionally a child, aware of the meagreness of his morning meal, is sensitive about giving the information. But if the teacher writes in the first column a list of the foods which she herself ate at breakfast-possibly not more than three items, bread, eggs and cocoa, she will find little difficulty in eliciting the lists for the other columns. In this way, she may discover any glaring instances of improper or insufficient diet, and may shape the ends of her instruction acordingly. A very effective means of suggesting the better foods to all the children lies in the school lunch at noon time. New England rural schools have done little thus far in establishing these lunches, but in the schools of the West and South they have become a recognized part of the daily program, serving not only as a means of training in food values but also as a part of the domestic science work for the girls in preparing the lunches. Through school lunches, too, the teacher is offered excellent opportunity to train the children in good table manners! A former pupil, now teaching in a Massachusetts rural school, assures me that her girls can prepare a very tempting dinner, consisting of such staples as potatoes, sandwiches, cocoa and fruits, etc., for the modest sum of two and three cents a guest! As our idea of school gardens and elementary agriculture grows, it will be quite possible for the average school to arrange a far more tempting and elastic menu than even this from the products of the gardens, and for a sum no greater. Surely, herein lie undreamed of possibilities in bringing home to the pupils the question of practical food values. An occasional invitation to the mothers and the fathers too-to "lunch" with their children at school will not only carry over the good results into the home, but will be another means of bringing home and school onto common ground. But the liberal share of the time devoted to hygiene in the country school is to be spent out-of-doors. Armed with the information received in the class room relative to farm water supply, care of milk, sewage dispoal, the dangers from flies and mosquitoes, the boys should be ready for their field work. Surveys of water sheds, water supplying streams and wells, of the location with respect to water supply of barns, pastures and outbuildings; of sanitary conditions in barns, creameries and milk supply stations; of untreated manure piles and accumulations of other fly-breeding media; of undrained marshes, bogs, ditches and other stagnant water where mosquitoes are breeding-these are some of the opportunities for field work in sanitation which rural districts present on every hand. Records of the findings may be kept and, through the teacher or the superintendent, published in farm magazines, local papers and in other ways brought to the attention of the people. As a fitting climax to the year's field work, the school might well inaugurate a 'health-day,' or a 'clean-up-week'. With a little effort the whole town, or even the county, may be encouraged to join in the crusade. Some of the States-notably Michigan—have actually set aside a day or a week for the special consideration of community health problems. In this way the public is aroused to the importance of the situation, and begins casting about for ways and means. A feature of 'clean-up-week' might very profitably be a school exhibition, at which might be displayed the sanitary survey of the community, as worked out by the pupils in hygiene; various sanitary divices which the pupils might make in connection with their work in manual training, and which might also be obtained for the purpose from the state university, or from progressive leaders in other communities; a display of the scores upon scores of publications and bulletins which are available for the asking and touching every phase of rural civic, social, economic |