The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-11-01
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
Information Bureau
FREDERIC J. HASKIN. Director,
Washington, d. @.
HEALTH DOPE FOR CHILDREN.

/ Hour.
when you're hungry between
meals eat a glass of water.
Are you superstitious? A light
thrown over the left shoulder while
writing brings good luck"
These humorous remarks were
written for children, but there is
something in them for any one who
will read them carefully. They are a
| few of the daily health notes on a
new calendar published by the Child
! Health Organization
The bureau of education is trying
to interest every school in the country
| in health. Attempts to teach health
rules to adults, and to make them
health enthusiasts. have been prac-
tically admitted failures.
Grown persons are set in their ways.
| They will take some kind of exercise
| if it happens to appeal to them, and
does not interfere with their accus-
toned routine. But tea, coffee, and
the life of the average adult that he
rarely has the will power to break
away from them. So long as he can
go" he regards himself as reason
ably healthy.
So the educators are turning to the
children, and new methods are being
adopted. At one time school that
taught the number of bones in the
body and how the blood circuIates
thought it was teaching the principles
of health. Now, the teacher is more
apt to run around the school yard
with troop of children following her
to make the blood circulate.
The important fact that the bureau
of education is striving to emphasize
is that health habits are not instinc-
tive. No child instinctively goes to
bed at o'clock in order to get ten
hours of sleep.
Nor is washing before meals in
stinctive. The health calendars adj
vice that the first course of every meal
should be served in a wash bowl would
not have been understood by medi-
evaI folk who thought nothing of dirt
and died like rats when disease germs
spread Instinct did not lead them to
keep themselves and their houses,
food. and water clean.
Today we know astounding facts
about the power of germs and how to
keep well. but there is nothing to
show that instinct has been urging
everybody to eat plenty of vitamines
all along.
Keeping Well Science
Most of our health rules are based
on facts that scientists and doctors
have spent years in determining. In
order to make these rules habits it is
necessary to make them popular
In the schools, the spirit of compe-
tition achieves what rules could not.
The bureau of education has found
that children become intensely inter-
ested in records for neatness. keeping
health rules, and bringing themselves
up to high standard of health. This
is regarded as encouraging.
The difficulty is that not all the
children are being reached. Even
with interest in health keener than it
hnc ra4- hanr a.
districts where the children do not
have any physical training at ALL And
not all city schools are working to
raise the health standards of indi-
vidual pupils. There is no one to tell
children that they are underweight
from eating too little fruit and milk,
or that they are slow in learning be-
cause they do not get enough sleep.
Commissioner of Education Tigert
believes that all of these schools
should be giving time to health teach
ing. Something is wrong with a
school system that turns out stoop-
shouldered and underfed graduates.
1T is admitted by every one that
nothing in life is worth while without
health" says Mr.. Tigert.
we have long taught the theory
Of health in the schools thru
courses in physiology. We are COM
batting disease and defects thru school
uOCLOIS anu SCnOOI nurses. But we
have only lately come to see that 1t is
the daily practice of health habits
which is important, and that it is the
duty of the public school to give to
every child this foundation for per-
sonal success and value as citizen.
Our Low Standard of Health.
That the health standard of the ma
ton does need raising, and must be
raised in some way was shown by the
of four men unfit for service.
In the school four out of five chill
dren need dental treatment. And ac-
cording TO Dr. L. Emmett Holt, sur
.veys made among school children,
both in city and country, showed an
SO much undernourished as to be con-
sidered in serious condition.
The bureau of education Isl espe-
cially interested in improving under
weight defects. Weight is an index
of health. In children, and in grown
persons as well, excessive fat or thin
ness is almost invariably a sign of
some health rule disregarded. Oc-
casionally, the condition is the result
of some disease.
A normal child gains weight with
more or less regularity, and should
weigh somewhere near the standard
for his age and height.
Children who weigh as much as 10
per cent below the figure set as
standard for their age and height are
sub-normal physically. A child who
is not more than 5 per cent heavier
than the standard is probably healthy.
and has a reserve of strength that is
desirable. Weigh more than Is per
cent above the Standard is apt to be
overweight, and generally implies
some fault in food, sleep, exercise or
breathing.
The standards approved by the gov
eminent and printed for school room
use were fixed by DR.. Thomas D.
Wood, director of physical training in
Columbia university. The table is re-
garded as the best available.
In preparing his table. Doctor Wood
consulted statistics gathered from TO-
900 records of Horace Mann school
children; life insurance statistics for
the Is to 2O-year period: statistics
gathered by well known doctors; and
statistics of New York school children,