Danger to Health in Schools.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVII, Issue XXIII, 7 December 1901, Page 1102

Danger to Health in Schools.

Many people who are scrupulously careful of the health of their children in the home are strangely indifferent to the conditions prevailing in the school. Hygiene in the public schools is a subject that is yearly receiving more and more attention, with the result that new school buildings in the larger towns and the cities conform generally to sanitary standards, but this is not true of many of the old buildings and of many schoolhouses in small places. It is the duty of all parents to know how far they fall short, and why, and what is needed to make them healthy.

The rules as to contagious diseases should be more strict, or rather more strictly enforced, and parents should remember that danger may lurk in complaints often considered of slight importance. Whooping cough, for instance, is thought by many people to be an unimportant and necessary trouble of childhood which it is better to get over and have out of the way. They do not know, or they forget, that while whooping cough is not a dangerous disease for older children. it is dangerous and often fatal to very young children, and is easilycarried by- the children attending school to the babies in the nursery. Too much attention cannot be paid to the question of light in the schoolroom. Many children are made premature wrecks from unrecognised eye-strain, and school visi> tors may often see small, helpless children sitting blinking in the sunlight which streams through a large window in front of them, making frowning efforts through the glare to read from a blackboard, and using up in a few hours the nerve force of a week. Light should be abundant and should come from the left side, so that no shadow is thrown on slate or book, as is the case when the light comes from behind or fronj the right. Another most important matter is the properly constructed desk, which will prevent undue stooping, contortions. or impediment to correct

breathing. In considering the subject of ventilation. there should, of course, be some system in every- schoolroom by which air can be introduced from outside and then allowed to escape without using the windows, which cannot always be depended upon on account of drafts and storms. These arttl many other points should be insisted upon by parents.