The Cairo bulletin. (Cairo, Ill.) 1???-1928, 1912-04-05
HUGHES TALKS
CHILD Hygiene
Children Have no Idea Of Health
aud Should be Taught
its Laws

South Bethlehem, Pa, April 81
Percy Hughes, Professor of Philos
ONLY and Education at Lehigh Uni
versity, delivered an address here
tonight before the Conference or
Conservation of School Children
held under the auspices of the
American Academy of Medicine
Professor Hughes subject was the
instructors point of view in the
teaching of hygiene, and he spoke
in part as follows:
What should be taught in the field
of hygiene, is an ideal of complete
living, realized as far as may be I'M
der the conditions of the school
room. During the first six years of
the school life, hygiene should be
taught as incidental to the art of
doing and living efficiently, of at
tanning those scholastic and social
aims which a true school life makes
prominent. Most treatises on hy-
,giene for elementary grades still
speak of health as though 1t were a
dominant motive in the child life:
whereas boys and girls of that age
seek the joys of achievement, rather
than the mere comfort of being well
They do not miss health, and There
fore do not seek it. They think oh.
jectlvely. and should do so. If the
school building. the school equip
ment, the school program, the per-
sonality and life of the teacher are
eloquent of health, and If the teacher
is informed and alert to make use o.
the games of the child. and every
part of instruction as a means of
forming habits of health, if ii is
recognized that education is at every
stage preparation for life, only in
so far as it is itself complete liy-
ing according to the stage of de-
velopment of the child, then the
child will learn in such a school an
deal Of efficient and joyous living
which will remain with him. With
out such an ideal and such a men,
DRY, hygienic habits are unlearned
under the occasional stresses of life
and are not renewed.
But in the seventh or eighth
grade, at the dawn of adolescence,
the rules of health, and some of the
most evident data of physiology
may be summarized, with special
reference not so much to the child
himself, as to the social and civic
life of tho community, into which
he must now feel he is entering,
OF four difficult subjects In hy-
giene, civic hygiene, sex hygiene,
the abuse of alcohol and the abuse OF
the most difficult to treat
in this way is that of sex hygiene,
which has received special attention
in this conference But even here
the teacher will urge, | think, the
same position. In like manner alco-
hol, tobacco. etc, may be discussed
in relation to those civic and social
problems which arise as the school
leads the child to feel the responst-
bility which already begins to rest
upon him. Whether in the high
school or In the grades, the obstacle
that stands in the way Of instruct.
ing the child to live according to a
hygienic ideal Is the poor prepare
ton of the teacher. Any one can
teach the average book In physiol-
ogy and hygiene. To bring the
whole school life to bear in the
formation of hygienic habits and
deals of living requires a teacher Of
1t least good high school training
supplemented by a normal school
course in which much of the work
has been brought directly TO beal
pom Just this purpose.