The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1905-11-29
PRACTICAL
SANITATION
The Honolulu Teachers
Association Hears
DR.. Day.

There was a very well-attended
meeting of the City Teachers Asso-
citation at the High School last even
ing. A number of the Board of Edu-
cation, including Territorial Superin-
tendent Rabbit, We're present. The
evening was given up to a paper pre-
pared by DR.. F. R. Day on School
Sanitation, which was as follows:
The idea of making education practi-
cal appeals to me very strongly-pf
giving the pupil something that he can
take home with him and apply to his
benefit or profit.
This, L take it, is the trend of modern
pedagogy. 1t is the principle under
lying the manual training school, the
kindergarten and the technical school.
But even the academic schools may be
excused if now and then they branch
out into practical lines, particularly
here where SO many races and nation
alitieS converge, where problems arise
by reason of this diversity of popula-
ton that are not apt to be met in other
Anglo-SaXon communities
When Professor Scott suggested that
[ address you on the subject of ''Prac-
teal Sanitation the thought occurred
to me how much better it would be for
individuals and the community if all
the students in our higher schools We're
taught this rather than a smattering
of anatomy and physiology such as
recall in my student days. How much
better it would be it, instead of learn
ing that there are 200 bones in the
human body, they were TO absorb the
fact that disease often turks in i'm
pure water. How much more valuable
it would be for them to know that
promiscuous expectoration is not only
disgusting but dangerous to health,
than that the heart is a four section
pump
How little of the didactic teaching
of physiology one remembers or applies
in after life, How little of it is capable
of application!
1t is knowledge that has a value.
to be sure, and I am not deriding it as
altogether useless, but rather wish to
emphasize the point that a practical
knowledge of hygiene and sanitation is
still more valuable. /;
1 approach the subject with diff
dence, but my heart is in it, and though
at first inclined to refuse Professor
SCOTS invitation, 1 finally decided to
accept it and to do what little 1 can do
popularize the subject.
If the teachers of the higher grades
of our public schools could devote an
hour a week to teaching the principles
of sanitation and hygiene, or, better
still. if special instructor could handle
the subject in the different schools
much good would be done the Individual
pupils and eventually the community.
The teaching should be of such an
extremely practical character that the
to their parents and put it into actual
practice.
Sanitation is another name for clean
illness. The Individual who is clean is
sanitary the habitation that is clean
is sanitary and the city that is clean
is sanitary.
The aim of sanitation is the preser-
disease, especially the so-caIIed zymotic
diseases. This great group can not
thrive where cleanliness prevails. It
needs filth for a indus.
Ignorance. poverty and filth is the
three-legged stool upon which death
from germ disease sits. We shall never
be able to abolish poverty. but we can
enlighten the ignorant and thereby be
rid of the filth-for poverty and filth
are not Siamese twins. They can be
The poor can keep clean
if they know how and choose to exer-
else their knowledge. Is it not our duty