The Punta Gorda herald. [volume] (Punta Gorda, Fla.) 1893-1958, 1915-03-25
Train the Children

ne great HOpe VI Il lOIIud 10 III
the next generation!
Not only its industrial and agri-
cultural greatness but its develop
ment along the highest planes of
individual and public sanitation is
to come when the boys now in
knickerbockers and the girls with
their hair in braids, shall have the
direction of affairs.
Those who are doing the real
work of to-day, who are laying
the foundations, are the few, and
the full appreciation of their &C
complishments is being delayed by
the barrier of pre-conceived no.
tions inherited from unprogress-
i've ancestry, by an Indifference to
the importance of scientific devel-
opment and the deadening idea
that "what was good enough for
our fathers is good enough for
us"
Not yet has the present gener-
alton come to realize the pace at
which the world is advancing un-
der the lead of scientific investi-
CATION, particularly in the line of
health and hygiene. If any one
questions the statement, it is suf-
ficient to point out the wide pre-
valence of diseases that are pre-
ventable, to note the III
sanitary surroundings in which
men and women, otherwise
of ordinary intelligence, are con-
tent to live, when the medical pro-
fession shows and proves the dan
gers and the results of such liv-
ing, to recall that one-quarter OF
the children born die before they
are five years old, and one-third
never reach the twentieth year.
These things are preventable, but
it seems likely that we in Florida
must wait for the next generation
to work out a radical change.
Therefore, those who are to
have charge of affairs in the years
to come, should be trained for
their responsibilities. The least
thing the fathers and mothers OF
to-day can do is to stand out of
the way and not hamper this edu-
cation. The greatest thing they
can do is to urge it, to insist upon
it, to provide every facility that
will make the fathers and moth
ers of by and by, better and wiser
and more efficient than they, them
selves, are now.
Education in health matters
should be made a part of the cur
riculum of the common school
all the way from the kindergarten
to the college. Among the first
ideas to be instilled into the
child s mind should be that of
cleanliness. Its relation to health
should follow as soon as it can be
comprehended. The laws of sani-
tation should be studied, first by
showing that certain dire results
are likely to follow certain wrong
conditions and later the reasons
for such sequence of cause and eff
feet should be explained. From
early years every child should be
taught the Importance of personal
cleanliness, of clean hands and
faces and teeth and fingernails, of
clean clothes and Of neat appear
ance.
1t may be argued that such
training has no place in the school,
that time should be devoted to
mental development through the
text book. Schools reach their
highest usefulness when they best
fit the pupil mentally and physic-
ally for the responsibilities of life,
whether it be through books, the
gymnasium or object teaching.
Practical instruction in santa
ton and health in the lower school
grades has been demonstrated as
wonderfully successful. No bet
ter illustration could be desired
than is furnished in Ocala, where
woman, a teacher, has organized
her young pupils into boards OF
health, which, under the active
management of the children
themselves, through committees
and individual workers, have