Official proceedings of the annual meeting: 1923

374

THE SCHOOL

principals of schools for logical participation in health program, failure to provide adequate space, time, and supervision for play, games, and all types of rational big-muscle
activities, lack of hospital, clinic, and other facilities for correction of health defects and
for complete remedial program, lack of hygienic and remedial care of teeth of school
children, failure to use available services of medical inspectors to give attention to
defective pupils, and failure on part of school authorities to appropriate enough money
for health and physical education in schools.
Prominent, valuable, and promising features of the present, progressive program
of health service and health education in the schools include the following: first, rapid
improvement in sanitary standards in buildings, equipment, and maintenance in both
city and rural schools; second, gradually improving daily inspection of pupils, the most
important elements in which are the co-operation of room teachers and school nurses
in daily-health supervision; third, extension and improvement of the program of periodic health examination and follow-up health work illustrated by monthly weighing of
pupils, more helpful and constructive methods in health examinations, and more effective co-operation of schools, homes, health authorities, and voluntary welfare organizations for the correction of defects and positive health improvement of pupils; fourth,
better standards of health, and health supervision of teachers, with corresponding
recognition of their health needs and provisions for these, fifth, gradual recognition of
what is involved in the hygiene of educational management and administration, with
slowly improved understanding of various factors involved in mental hygiene and
morale, as well as the physical well-being of pupils; sixth, vastly improved methods of
health education, such as emphasis on health habits, fascinating and dramatic development of incentives and motives for health conduct, standards and ideas, and socializing
the health viewpoint even of children, and enlisting their interest in phases of home,
school, and community health; seventh, great value in the comprehensive and
enriched program of health education is the provision for play, outdoor activity, and
the entire range of splendid large movements necessary to human health and efficiency.
MEDICAL INSPECTION IN THE SCHOOLS-ITS TECHNIQUE
AND ITS RESULTS
Caroline Hedger, M.D., Medical Adviser, Elizabeth McCormick
Memorial Fund, Chicago
The object of medical inspection in schools is to produce well children, and it is
of interest to the social worker to do the best for the child both in the present and in
the future, for your social work at the moment may be absolutely negatived by sickness
in the family, and your hope for the future is to put yourself out of business. Of course
in the millenium neither you nor I will have a job, and really it is this future phase that
I am most interested in. It is the well child who is going to bring about that condition
in the future that will leave us without work.
To be very fundamental, what is a well child? My idea of the well child is one
built for the long haul. It is not the child of today or tomorrow. It is the child of the
future, who is going to last through the long haul, and that means work, harder work
every year; at least it gets harder for me to earn my living, and I can see no special