A SCHOOL OF COMPASSION

Otago Witness, Issue 3016, 3 January 1912, Page 88

A SCHOOL OF COMPASSION

By Evelyn Isitt.

FROM AMBULANCE TO CLASSROOM.

It seemed to me one of the saddest places i had ever been in, this school in a Glasgow suburb, which was set apart entirely for invalid, crippled, and delicate children. The teachers were must happy in their work, and the average chad looked every bit as bright and interested as the children one sees in ordinary schools, and yet m every little class room one saw high-backed or reclining invalid chairs and cushions that told ot the special care necessary for some weak spine; noticed here and there a bandage, watched cramped hands travelling pa Ulna ly across the pages of an exercise book, or saw a hand put out by some child to steady itself as it stood up in class. These children had bright, happy faces, and they loved their school, bat the ..jonty of them could never run or jump or play the boisterous games so dear to the heart of healthy childnood. They were here as little fragile, previous things, to be taken great care of, and nursed, and sent back carefully packed, to their homes, not too tired at the end of a shortened school day. It was interesting to go into thevarmus classrooms and watch the small invalids at their work, but how glad one felt to think that hardly in any New Z aland town could such a sorry little crew be collected.

” 1 am not so sure about that,” “aid the head mistress. “ Until you open a school of this kind, you can have no dea how many children there are living at home, perhaps learning nothing, menially alert and capable, but physically quite unit to go to an ordinary school, and take their chances in the classroom and playground with sturdier children. We began with 14 children who had been discovered in different parts of a wide district, and now we have 120. They come from a district that contains seven ordinary schools, and there are two more schools like this in other parts of the town. Many of the children would have no education at all if it were not for them. We give them the usual school course, and there are special regulations; there must, for instance, be one certificated teacher to every 20 children.”

Every morning the ambulance van sets out with the school nurse to bring the children to school, a journey that has to be made several times be foie the whole of the littl° flock is collected. Each child begins the day at school with a glass of milk, and a spoonful of codliver oil, and for a time the nurse is kept busy with dressings and bandagings; there are certain regular treatments that it is often difficult to Have carried out satisfactorily at home, and special attention has to be said to any cut or scratch that may fester.

Often the trouble with the children is apt to be tubercular; infantile paralysis accounts for a- number of cases —2o in this school alone, I think —and though these paralysed children look healthy and plump, one sees them walking with a dragging step, as grown folks walk in their dreams when pursued by danger, or sees that one hand is practically useless. It was curious how many of ‘.hese children could not use their right hands, and had to write laboriously with Oieir left. Heart trouble brought several of the children here, and malnutrition and neglect. Saddest of all were these last cases, and one found that many of ihem could be traced, r.s can so much of the misery of childhood, to the drunkenness of parents. Some of the children, the rickety ones, and others who though very weak are suffering from no organic trouble, require only two or three years’ care at this •school, and then, grown much more robust, they will be passed on to another school, taking their chances with the strong, and leaving room for some other shakily constituted child. Many are the applications from parents who think their children too delicate for the rough and tumble of school life, and long to know that they are safe under the care of sharp-eyed teachers and nurse. The line has to be drawn strictly between those children who would umloubtedly benefit by the school, though not requiring it, and those pitiful little ones who have no chance of being educated anywhere but here.

“ Visitors are apt to think the work must be very depressing,” said the head-mis-tress with a smile, ‘‘ but I assure you we do not find it so. There is so much hopefulness in a great deal of the work, especially with the younger children, even when they come at a later age we often manage to do much for them and when the cases are beyond hope of physical improvement the children benefit in other ways, and it is good for them to be together instead of moping at home as they used to do”

It is wonderful how much solid improvement is wrought even in cases that have been long considered beyond treatment. One of the elder pupils, a member of a large family of younger and healthier brothers and sisters, was 14 or 15 before she came to school, and she could then neither read nor write. Now she is getting on well with her school work, and at the end of three years has gained several inches in height, though still, she is tiny for her age. One can hardly estimate the value of what the school has done for her.

Another bright little thing, the child of parents who send her to this school knowing she will be happier than if taught at home alone by a governess, enters with such zest into all the routine of the school that whenever illness keeps her at home she follows in her mind the school programme, with a constant wistful “ Mother, I know what they are doing at school this very minute.” The children are not in the least sensi-

tive about their complaints. Why should they be ? In this school it would be more conspicuous to have no complaint; it is the fashion to suffer from a hip, or an abscess, or fiom a hand that will not work, and so they cheerfully set off on a walk across the room to show how badly the bad leg behaves, or the little lad standing up in class, takes his left hand out of his pocket and totters slightly to px'ove the truth of the curious statement that only by keeping his hand in his pocket can he stand upright. You say, “ Yes, that is just another pvooi of the superiority of man. What little girl has a pocket to keep her hand in?” and you pass on to admire the beautiful writing of a tall boy whose left hand must needs be skillful to make up for the deficiencies of the right. As wo pass the open door of a classroom already visited two small urchins at a little front desk peer out with most ingratiating grins, and you ask what can have brought such exceptionally lively children to such a school. Nothing can be wrong with them, you say, and the answer is, that these I dong to the saddest class, the neglected children. Mprry as they look they are not strong ejfough for an ordinary school. Unfortunately, it was not dinner time when we went to see the dilring-room, where at the very low' fables those 120 children have a two-course dinner, all food prepared in such a way that it can be eaten with a spoon, but the meal w r as nearly ready and the sight of the fish and potatoes and the ginger pudding was enough to make any child with a most delicate appetite determine to go through the two courses. The Ladies’ Committee in connection with this school has charge of the commissariat, and so clever is their management that each child can be supplied with a week’s dinners and a daily milk and oil for 9gd. Most of the parents pay this sum, but if they do not the child does not suffer. The committee also raises £2O each year to pay two separate institutions at the seaside for a cot, which all the year round is at the service of children from this school, many of whom have come back from an illness invigorated and ready to start school w r ork again.

It is from this committee, too, that voluntary teachers come to give the children lessons in sewing, knitting, and wood-carving, for, feeble though the hands may be, the children are taught to make the best possible use of them. Some of these ladies have been teaching for many years, and further good work has been done in the way of finding suitable situations for the elder scholars. Quite lately a situation as typist had been found for a lame girl, and another obtained employment with a florist, situations that they could hardly have obtained had it not been for this school.

A nice garden lies behind the school, where the ■ children spend many sunny hours, and where in summer hammocks are slung for the more weakly. In the dinner hour the children can rest, though most of them want to play, and after a short afternoon the ambulance comes round once more and the little ones are taken away to their homes. The ambulance! It has a sickly sound, and one has visions of limp little people tired, headachy, and subdued being lifted into its mysteiious depths. Judging from what I saw in the dinner hour that idea is far from being correct. I happened to be in the garden when the bell rang, and with a whooping, shouting, and scuffling that could hardly be excelled in any “ quite well ” school, the boys came teaming out of the class-rooms and into the playground. True it is that one was on crutches and another was in a wheeled chair, and the boy who propelled him so rapidly had to hop along the ground because one leg swung uselessly, but they did not seem to be troubled by these considerations. They were companions in misfortune, and it was playtime, and the sun was shining, and it was a fine old world anyhow, and there you were.

Tho teacher laughed as she watched them. “ No,” she said, “ this work is not depressing.”