THE SANITATION OF THE COUNTRY SCHOOL BY DR. J. L. POMEROY Difficulties of various kinds exist in the management of the preventable diseases in our public schools even under the most advantageous circumstances. When one is confronted with a rural school problem we have not only the same difficulties that exist in the city school but likewise those that are peculiar to rural conditions. in general. The time was when the conditions which favored a long life and freedom from disease existed more extensively in rural districts than elsewhere. With the growth, however, of modern sanitary methods, life is not only in some respects safer in the cities, but the development of those functions of society which lend aid to the needy, the sick, and the suffering has reached such a degree of perfection that now the city dweller is more than ever fortified against accident or misfortune. One of the greatest problems of the day is to apply in rural districts the sanitary knowledge and sanitary science that now obtains in most urban communities. Ideas percolate slowly in scattered hamlets. One often meets a high degree of mental inertia, and the very distances themselves from centres of great activity are an obstacle. The situation in regard to Los Angeles County is as follows: We have about 123 country schools, ranging in daily average attendance from five to 269 pupils. The total number of pupils is about 7,000. The farthest school from Los Angeles city is at Manzanar, consisting of eleven pupils, and is 123 miles distant. The total area of Los Angeles County is something like 4,000 square miles, over 3,000 of which is under cultivation or occupied by people. It can readily be seen that here we have a very difficult problem to apply the modern principles of the control of contagious disease. · A further confusing element is the fact that in some territories the schools and pupils are under the administration of Los Angeles city, but for health administration come under the County Health Office. Pupils who live in the city of Los Angeles attend schools which are located in the county, and likewise there are pupils who live in the county and attend schools located in Los Angeles city. Furthermore, there are some small schools run in connection with homes and institutions of various kinds for boys and girls. On account of the varied conditions of service, it is impossible at the present time to adopt uniform regulations concerning preventable diseases which would conform with those of Los Angeles city. In some instances it is not to be denied that where adequate medical inspection of school children does not exist, measles and whooping-cough rapidly spread through entire school clientele. As Health Officer of the city of Monrovia, where school inspection is not maintained by the school board, I have seen in a few weeks' time a kindergarten class of some twenty-seven pupils rapidly disintegrate, owing to the spread of whooping-cough through its individual members. Under such conditions the school becomes an actual disseminator of contagious diseases. This remark is not an indictment of any particular school board. At the same time it cannot be too strongly emphasized that serious results often follow such infections as measles, whooping-cough, and similar diseases of childhood. As it so happened, my own youngster attended this kindergarten class above-mentioned. He became infected with whooping-cough, lost six weeks of schooling, and in two years past has never been as well as before the attack. A member of my household got the disease from him, contracted pneumonia, and the total expense of this illness has since run into several hundred dollars. I have lived in institutions where we handled hundreds of cases of contagious disease; where everyone was under the same discipline, and where we could protect ourselves from infection to a very great extent. But how, I ask, can a parent protect his child from a contagious disease in the common school where a school board is unwilling to maintain the expense of medical inspection? If the State law compels us to send our children to school, then that same law should safeguard the health of that child when he is in school. The situation becomes even more difficult where we have mixed schools, such as Mexicans, negroes and white children, and the surveillance of the home conditions of the Mexicans and the negroes is very imperfect. Practical illustrations of the results of such conditions are entirely unnecessary to any health officer, or any person familiar with sanitary work. What are we to do in a county consisting of 3,000 square miles of territory, with country schools scattered as far as 123 miles away, and how are we to devise some method of sanitary supervision over these 7,000 school children? That something of a very definite character should be done can be seen from a brief abstract of report 1913-1914 of the preventable diseases, handled in the County Health Office, as follows: such meagre reports it is impossible to calculate the true loss to the community which takes place from these preventable diseases. Neither can we plan conservation work unless we get a better system of reporting. Therefore, the first step which I propose to take in regard to this school problem is a plan of co-operation through the county school superintendent's office and the personnel of the individual schools. Through the courtesy of the county school superintendent, I propose to issue to the 267 teachers in our county school system! a pamphlet of instructions regarding contagious diseases. Second: I propose to give a series of lectures and talks to the teachers, which may result in the establishment of a summer school for teachers on sanitation and related problems. Third: I propose to allow the principal to issue re-admission cards to the pupils in minor infections, provided that in each instance a copy of said card is filed in the Health Office. That will enable us to get reports of infections where no physician is employed in the family, and no report whatever is obtained at the present time. Fourth: I propose to allow the family physician to issue a re-admission card to the school, provided also that a copy of the same is sent to the Health Office. Finally, it is proposed that a sanitary survey be made of the sewage disposal and water supply particularly, of each school at least once a year. If in addition to these plans we can obtain an arbitrary division of the county of Los Angeles into sanitary districts, and appoint therein a Deputy County Health Officer, or Sanitary Supervisor, we might make some headway in this important problem. The greatest crop that Southern California has is not its oranges, nor its lemons, nor its nuts, nor its alfalfa, but the greatest crop is its children, and the most important business is to safeguard in every way possible the lives of our future citizens.-Address. ARITHMETIC AS TAUGHT IN THE COLONIES BY ALICE MORSE EARLE Next to penmanship, the colonial school and schoolmaster took firm stand on "cyphering." "The Bible and figgers is what I want my boys to know," said one old farmer. I have examined with care a Wingate's Arithmetic which was used for over a century in the Winslow family in Massachusetts. The first edition was printed in 1620. It is certainly bewildering to a modern reader. "Pythagoras his Table," is, of course, our multiplication table. Then comes "The Rule of Three," "The Double Golden Rule," "The Rule of Fellowship," "The Rule of False," etc., etc., ending with "a collection of pleasant and polite Questions to exercise all the parts of Vulgar Arithmetick." Wingate's Arithmetic and Hodder's Arithmetic were succeeded by Pike's Arithmetic. This had three hundred and sixty-three rules to be committed to memory-and not an explanation was given of one of them! It is the most barren school book I have ever read. These printed arithmetics were not in common use. Nearly all teachers had manuscript "sum-books," from which the scholars copied page after page of "sums," too often without any explanation of the process, though there were also many and long rules, which heiped the penmanship if they did not the mathematics. The Chautauquan. NIGHT NURSERIES Day nurseries have been established in most. cities for several years. Superintendent Ira B. Bush of Erie, Pennsylvania, has established, with the aid of the Women's Club of the city, a night nursery for the care of babies in the evening while the mothers are in the night schools, study as for life-long specialists in Jerseys to sit in judgment over the relative merits of dairy cattle. For each of these men and for Commissioner Claxton the school people have highest regard, Boston, New York, and Chicago, November 30, 1916 but the selection of these men for this work is as inexplicable as it is inexcusable. THE CONTENTS. Junior High School in Massachusetts. .... Cold-Blooded College Intellectuality. Something About the National League of Teacher-Mothers Social Service Through Schools Overage Children.. Let's Start Forgetting The Rural Community.. An Unconventional Hen... The Sanitation of the Country School.. Employment Survey of a Spokane High School.. Arithmetic as Taught in the Colonies. Night Nurseries... Editorials: Major and Service Activities The Mississippi Awakening.. The Week in Review Moral Education. "The One Hundred Worst Words" Monroe Sky Line Trail Selections.. Book Table.. Educational News MAJOR AND SERVICE ACTIVITIES PAGE 535 537 538 540 541 541 542 542 543 544 545 545 546 547 547 548 548 548 549 550 550 £50 551 552 554 There is at last something new under the sun. Is the "major and service" scheme a vista or a mirage? A vision, a dream, or a nightmare? A scientific discovery or a scholastic ghost with a fresh laundered shroud? The survey of the higher institutions of learning in Iowa made at the request of the State Board of Education by the following persons selected by United States Commissioner of Education P. P. Claxton has evolved the expression "major and service" activities: Samuel Paul Capen, specialist in higher education, Bureau of Education (chairman); Mrs. Henrietta W. Calvin, specialist in home economics, Bureau of Education; James R. Angell, Dean of the Faculties of Arts, Literature, and Science, University of Chicago; Kendric C. Babcock, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, University of Illinois; Liberty H. Bailey, formerly director of the New York State College of Agriculture; Hollis Godfrey, President of Drexel Institute, Philadelphia; and Raymond M. Hughes, President of Miami University. It is so unfortunate as to be little short of rank stupidity that there is no normal school man in this group, no representative of university teacher training, and but one man who has ever been associated with Agricultural College work. No matter how honest they may have been, how hard they may have tried to be unprejudiced in their judgments, it was as impossible for five men like Capen, Angell, Babcock, Godfrey and Hughes to be fair minded in such a Their conclusion of the whole matter is this, as they say: "By the principle of 'major and service lines,' each State educational institution has assigned to it certain 'major' fields which it may develop to the fullest extent. 'Service' lines are such subordinate subjects as are essential to the proper cultivation of a 'major' line. For example, agriculture at the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts is a 'major' line, and English a 'service' line. On the other hand, English is described as a 'major' line at the State University and a 'service' line at the State College. On this principle no State would attempt to maintain two or more extensive and elaborate educational plants doing the same type of special work in the same field, and no institution would duplicate the work of another except to the extent that such work is necessary to the main task of the college." This is merely a skilful restatement of the contention of every Survey of higher institutions of learning by university men under the Foundations. The only new thing is the artistic expression: "Major and service" activities. It is liable to be as futile as every other attempt to debase Agricultural Colleges and State Normal Schools. Nowhere else, by no one else, has there been such a bold attempt to label Agricultural Colleges and Normal Schools and Colleges as uncultural, even in English. Pedagogy is the major at the Teachers' College and English is only to be taught so far as it is necessary for the promotion of pedagogy. Tell us, pray, who need English as a major wheat fields of Minnesota! Flax more than teachers! Farmers-to-be and farmers' wives-to-be are to have no more English than is necessary to be farmers and farmers' wives. Any English for culture, for enjoyment, for the uplift of their children in the home is to be rigidly excluded because it is not serviceable in the study of agriculture. Will anyone find in all American education an equally vicious attempt to educate for class. stratification, for class degradation? English the major nowhere in higher education except in the university for culture is a gigantic effort to train university students alone to write effective English. Ultimately all pedagogy will have to be written by university students and all good agricultural writing will of necessity have to be written by university men, who alone can have had English as their major. If America has any mission that is its "major" it is to give agriculture a flavor of culture. The "culture" in agri-"culture" in the United States will never mean merely the culture of land, but also culture in the home. children The farmer rides in his own automobile and uses his telephone, enjoys the luxury of rural free delivery and parcel post, and the universities have started in too late in American history to tell him that he must not let his major in English if he wants them to run his farm scientifically. This mischievous "major and service" scheme will take education out of all State Universities, for education has always been the "major" of State Normal Schools, and universities can only have education so far as it is necessary for the service of university professors. This might have had a hearing in Iowa once, but not since the Dean of Education was made President. All this is really very funny coming at a time when the United States Department of Agriculture is doing perfectly wonderful work in education. But how about the duplication nightmare? Who started it? Farmers? No. Teachers? No. Agricultural Colleges? No. Normal Schools? No. If you do not know give a guess. AN AUTUMN EXPERIENCE. Market gardens of Massachusetts and New Jersey! Beautiful dairy cattle of New York state! Grapes by train loads in Ohio! Peaches by the million in Indiana! Ripe rich tint of the corn fields of Illinois and Iowa! Limitless beyond the reach of vision in North Dakota! Sugar beets by thousands of train loads in Montana! Blushing apples bending boughs in Washington! Prunes, prunes, prunes in Oregon! Sheep by the thousand in Idaho! Potatoes by train loads in Utah and Colorado! Beeves by the thousand in Kansas! Cotton at twenty cents pound in Oklahoma and Texas! All this I saw and marveled at in preparation for my Thanksgiving at Fort Worth in 1916. MUSSELMAN'S NOTABLE SUCCESS a Dr. H. T. Musselman, Dallas, Texas, has made a great state educational magazine, great mechanically, great editorially, great in state service. Personally Mr. Musselman is ardently devoted to every significant feature of public education in Texas, institutional, urban and rural. We have known no man who gives of his life and thought, experience and talent to a state more completely than does he, and, we fear, with all too little specific financial return. School The September issue of the Texas Journal was devoted to the State University and its prospective greatness under the new president, Robert E. Vinson. It was in every way a great number of a magazine. The November issue was more important than the University number even. It was intensely and extensively ambitious in characterizing Fort Worth with the 1916 meeting of the State Association as "THE NEW CENTRE OF THE EDUCATIONAL UNIVERSE." They can say such things in Texas and be in good form, and really before the week at Fort Worth was through we caught enough of the spirit to congratulate our friend Musselman upon his prophetic vision. It may not be permanently "The New Centre of the Educational Universe," but it surely was that from November 29 to December 2, 1916. President Nat Benton of Corpus Christi had a grand booster and brave exploiter in the Texas School Journal. Musselman's frankness is as highly commendable as his constructive leadership. After three years of matchless devotion, backed by literary skill, business sagacity, and the gift for leadership, he has a frank talk with the school men and women of Texas, in which he says among other things the following: "A word of gratitude for co-operation. When we undertook to run this paper on a professional basis we took the whole school public-teacher, superintendent and school business maninto our confidence and told them it was our hope to build up in Texas the best state school paper in the land. We asked for co-operation and we are thankful to say that we have received it from the teachers and superintend- "Now, for a thorn-in-the-flesh word Neither Texas nor any other state paper has any monopoly of experience along any of those lines. SCHOOL CONDITIONS under We have seen nothing to compare even faintly with “A Suggestive Study of School Conditions," by Janet R. Rankin of Madison, the direction of State Superintendent C. P. Cary of Wisconsin. It is a Survey that surveys, an inquiry with answers, an investigation that is illuminating. Miss Rankin has no hobby to ride, no theory to demonstrate, no contention to magnify. She has no prejudice to exploit, no spite to enjoy, no friends to praise, no enemies to humiliate. She has the scientist's loyalty to truth and the crusader's devotion to her mission. She has a consuming passion for service to the schools, a compelling conviction that one can tell the truth so as to inspire and not irritate. The printer has made a large contribution to Miss Rankin's success in "making the good contagious." The conception of the study was not unusual, but the scientific thoroughness and reliability, the pedagogical flavor, the literary definiteness and the printer's art have conspired to do the cause of education an unprecedented service. THE MISSISSIPPI AWAKENING No state in the South is escaping the great awakening. It is positively thrilling to see what is being done. Of course, there was a long ways to rise when the trumpet call was sounded and even now when one sees what has not been achieved it is possible to be depressed, but nowhere under the stars and bars is there greater cause for rejoicing than along the Gulf and South Atlantic States. Mississippi is one of the noblest demonstrations. At the State Fair in late October the schools made fine exhibits, but the great event was the demonstration of faith in the school boys by the Illinois Central Railroad officers, who presented forty-seven thoroughbred, registered Hereford, Short Horn, Angus and Holstein bulls to as many Mississippi boys by J. C. Claire, the industrial agent of the Illinois Central Railroad. They were distributed over eleven counties. They cost the Illinois Central Railroad more than $5,000. The boys agree that they are not to sell them for two years, and even then, not outside their own counties. Mr. Claire did not claim that the railroad company was actuated solely through patriotic motives and predicted that great business would result from its generosity of today. He advised these young farmers to go home and buy cows, and get into the cattle raising business. Their beef and dairy business would increase by leaps and bounds in that favored agricultural state. DOWNES-HARRISBURG TRIUMPH Superintendent F. E. Downes of Harrisburg and the city deserve the highest possible praise. Mr. Downes and leaders in the city have been trying for several years to improve high school equipment, but whenever they have gone before the people they have been defeated on some fluke slogan. In other years they would have been satisfied with half what they got this time. By a major. ity of 2,500 the citizens voted $1,250,000 for high school construction purposes. At any other time it would merely have meant another and better building, but now it means an entire re-organization of the school system on a six-three-three plan with as fine a junior high school as there is in the country. |