In undertaking to enforce the compulsory education law, to put all truants and child laborers in school, the state should be very sure for its own sake that it is not depriving the child of the health on which depends his future usefulness to the state as well as to himself.
###################################################### 1903-1904
###################################################### 1903-1904
[8] _The Sanitation of Public Buildings_, by William Paul Gerhard, contains a valuable discussion of how the school may avoid manufacturing physical defects.
[9] By Professor Lila V. North, Baltimore College for Women, for the New York Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children, 105 East 22d Street, New York City.
"Teachers, gentlemen, no less than pupils, have a heaven-ordained right to work so adjusted that the highest possible physical condition shall be maintained automatically." This declaration thundered out by an indignant physician startled a well-meaning board of school directors. The teacher's right to health was, of course, obvious when once mentioned, and the directors concluded:
1. School conditions that injure child health also injure teacher health.
2. Poor health of teacher causes poor health of pupil.
3. Poor health of pupil often causes poor health of teacher.
4. Adequate protection of children requires adequate protection of their teachers.
5. Teachers have a right to health protection for their own sake as well as for their children's sake.
Too little concern has hitherto been shown for the vitality of teachers in private or public schools and colleges. Without protest, and without notice until too late, teachers often neglect their own health at home and at school,--recklessly overwork, undersleep, and undernourish; ruin their eyes, their digestion, and their nerves. School-teachers are frequently "sweated" as mercilessly as factory operatives. The time has come to admit that a school environment which destroys the health of the teacher is as unnecessary and reprehensible as an army camp that spreads typhoid among a nation's defenders. A school curriculum or a college tradition that breaks down teachers is as inexcusable as a gun that kills the gunner when discharged. Experience everywhere else proves that periodic physical examinations and health precautions, not essays about "happy teachers--happy pupils," are indispensable if teachers' health rights are to be protected.