Euthenics, the science of controllable environment Part 8

It seems to have suddenly sent up shoots in every direction. In no line of thought has this change come more generally than in relation to the things youth should be taught. Himself and his relation to his environment are now to the front. Instead of extolling man as the lord of all created things, the youth is made to see that man unaided by scientific knowledge is at the mercy of Nature's forces; that man in crowds is sure to succ.u.mb unless he makes a strong effort to keep himself erect.

Hence the boys are given manual training--power over wood and stone, steam and electricity; and are taught the principles of production of food and metals. The girls are being taught to distinguish values in textiles and food stuffs; to manage finances and to keep houses in a sanitary manner.

It is the business of the higher education at once to apply the knowledge of preventive measures to its own students and through them to reach the people, but it has been very slow to take up the cause of better environment.

In colleges there is still more emphasis laid on external works, such as water supply, drainage, etc., than on the more intimate hourly needs of fresh air and clean rooms. The halls, study rooms, and dining rooms of colleges are notoriously ill ventilated and not over clean.

The senses are blunted at an age when they should be keenly sensitive. It is only within ten years or so that very many of the higher schools have made a point of indoor sanitation beyond plumbing provisions. Outdoor sports have been relied upon to give sufficient impetus to the health side of education.

A new element has come into the State universities through the Home Economics courses, which have been steadily growing in favor during the last two decades. Within that time several buildings have been erected and equipped to teach the principles of sanitary and economic living both in inst.i.tution, school, and family life.

Probably no one movement has been so powerful as this in convincing educators of the efficiency of trained women as factors in sanitary progress. In no other direction is the outlook for social service greater. The woman must, however, be more than a willing worker; she must be educated in science as a foundation for sanitary work.

Within the next few years the demand for trained women is sure far to exceed the supply, for the fundamental sciences are not to be acquired in one or two years.

Young college women are even now realizing their mistake in neglecting the sciences. They a.s.sumed that science was not of practical use. They a.s.sumed that educational curricula were stable and would go on in the same lines forever.

The high school is now fully awake to these vital factors. Some of the best buildings in the United States are the high school buildings, those of the West excelling those of the East. By 1911 nearly every school will have a course in Sanitary Science. It may be under the name of Home Economics, or of Camp Cookery, or of House Building, but the idea of better physical environment has already taken root. In the extension of school work by the employment of the school visitor to supplement the work of the teacher in the grade schools, in Parents'

a.s.sociations, in Mothers' Clubs, in social endeavors on every side, there is coming the study of more special branches of sanitary science, clean air, clean floors, clean clothes--where once cooking lessons were the extent to which the workers could lead.

Evolution has at last been accepted as applying to man as well as to animals. In his inaugural address, November, 1909, President H. J.

Waters, of Kansas Agricultural College, said: "... for every dollar that goes into the fitting of a show herd of cattle or hogs, or into experiments in feeding domestic animals, there should be a like sum available for fundamental research in feeding men for the greatest efficiency.... We have millions for research in the realm of domestic animals and nothing for the application of science to the rearing of children."

Evidence is not wanting that all this is to be speedily changed. Man has awakened to the fact that he is "the sickest beast alive" and that he has himself to blame, and, moreover, that it is within his power to change his condition and that speedily.

After all, human life and effort are governed largely by the conscious or unconscious value put upon the varied elements that go to make up the daily round.

It seems to be a universal law that effort must precede satisfaction, from the infant feeding to the man building up a successful business.

The satisfaction grows in a measure as the effort was a prolonged or sustained one.

Well-being is a product of effort and resulting satisfaction. The child without interest in work or play does not develop; the man with no stimulus walks through life as in a dream.

The first steps in "civilizing" (?) a nation or tribe are to suggest _wants_--things to strive for. Struggle, with all its attendant evils, seems the lever that moves the world. It is therefore in line that health, and whatever favors it, is to be gained at the expense of struggle. The one necessary element is that men should value it enough to struggle for it.

Sanitary science above all others, when applied, benefits the whole people, raises the level of productive life.

In the rapid development of our civilization, the laboratory, the shop, the school can be the quickest mediums of suggesting wants.

In an earlier chapter, the indifference to clean conditions, the ignorance of the means of obtaining pure food and clean air, were dwelt upon, and still later the need of _will_ to choose the right thing.

Now we should consider the means of stimulating that choice. So far it has been chiefly exploitation for the personal gain of the manufacturer, who has persuaded the people to buy his product regardless of its economic or hygienic effect. Thrift has been undermined most subtly.

"That's the secret of the whole situation we're talking about; it's easier to buy a new shirt than to take care of the one you've got."[15]

[15] Meredith Nicholson, Lords of High Decision, p. 133.

All sense of values has been lost, so that with no sound basis choice is apt to be unwise, unsatisfactory, and is gradually dropped, while the individual drifts.

No more effective agent for the dissemination of knowledge was ever devised than the American Public School. If only it would live up to its opportunities, its teachers could bring to its millions of receptive minds the best practice in daily living (never mind the theory for the children), and through the children reach the home, where the infants may be saved from the risks that the elders have run.

To be effective, however, school conditions should be satisfactory, and teachers should be familiar with the best ways of living, or at least in active sympathy with the medical inspector and the school nurse.

No more revolting revelations have ever been made than those usually locked in the hearts of these faithful servants of the people. How they can have courage to go on in face of parental and community indifference is a marvel. We shall consider in the next chapter how the average parent is to be aroused.

But the leaders in educational and scientific thought--what of them?

The school is the pride of the community and measures the progress of the community toward ideals. Alas, how is pride laid low in most public school buildings in the inability of most of the teachers to see the relations between mental stupidity and bad air.

The awakening has begun, however, and thousands of teachers have responded and are urging authorities to burn more coal, to employ more help, to keep the house clean, to make it more beautiful, to make the curriculum more helpful, to make provision for good food to be purchased, and the hundred ways in which the school may be the most powerful civilizing factor the nation has. _But civilization must not spell disease and ruin._

The economic factor must not be lost sight of. To tell the boy and girl that they are as good as any does not give them the right to the most expensive food and clothing they see. How shall they choose wisely in the mult.i.tude of new things? They wish the best, naturally, and all America is honeycombed with the wrong idea that the best costs the most. An Alaska Indian came into the store in Juneau one day to buy some canned peas. The storekeeper said, "I am out of the brand you want." "No peas?" asked the Indian. "No, only some small cans of French peas at forty cents a can. You don't want those." "Why not? Me want the best."

The schools of domestic economy, the cla.s.ses in all grade schools, will have to attack and conquer these prejudices as to values, or, rather, will need to subst.i.tute right estimates of value before our people will choose wisely in distributing their income, for that is what right living means. The division of the income according to the necessities of health and efficiency, not according to whim or selfish desire, is sometimes estimated as

20 to 25 per cent for rent 25 to 30 per cent for food 10 to 15 per cent for clothing

This leaves only forty-five or thirty per cent for other things, and the pennies must be carefully counted to cover fuel, light, amus.e.m.e.nts, education, books, insurance, or investments. Something that the family would like must be left out--no matter what, providing only it does not injure their efficiency as wage-earners, as comfortable human beings.

The sensation of comfort or satisfaction is so completely a psychic factor that the school training has a great chance to affect after life. The child can acquire the habit of being more comfortable in plain, washable, clean clothes, with clean hands, than in dirty, ragged furbelows. This habit once thoroughly acquired is not likely to be quickly lost. Provision for clean hands is a necessity in school, and ways of making a small amount of soap and water serve may also be taught. All the while, care is to be taken not to introduce unnecessarily expensive materials or to inculcate over-refined notions.

Sound instruction as to dangers of transference of saliva, of nose discharge, etc., can be given without also giving the despair of impossible achievement.

The teaching in the cla.s.ses must have this practical bearing on daily life. It is insisted on here because unclean hands are the chief source of infectious disease.

Instead of blaming water supplies, dusty streets, or even contagion by the breath, sanitarians are everywhere putting emphasis upon the actual contact of moist mucus with milk and other food, in preparation or in serving. It is not a supercilious notion to examine tumblers for finger marks, or to object to the habit of wetting the finger with saliva in turning leaves of books. These little unclean acts are the unconscious habits that cling to a person in spite of education from reading. The greatest service to be done today in improving the health of the community is in the application of the principles which may be summed up in the phrases--fresh air all the twenty-four hours, clean hands the livelong day, the free use of the handkerchief to protect from contamination of mouth and nose.

All these small personal habits should be taught in the earliest months of life, _i. e._, in the home; but if the child reaches school untaught, then in defense of the whole community the school must insist upon teaching them.

CHAPTER VII

_Stimulative education for adults. Books, newspapers, lectures, working models, museums, exhibits, moving pictures._

The efficient sanitarian is not so great when he conquers a raging epidemic as when he prevents an epidemic that might have raged but for his preventive care, and for this result his most continuous and effectual work is to educate--educate--educate.

_Wm. H. Brewer, New Haven Health a.s.sociation, 1905._

The essential fact in man's history to my sense is the slow unfolding of a sense of community with his kind, of the possibilities of cooperation leading to scarce-dreamt-of collective powers, of a synthesis of the species, of the development of a common general idea, a common general purpose out of a present confusion.

_H. G. Wells, First and Last Things._

The great ma.s.s of the population is, indeed, at the present time like clay which has. .h.i.therto been a mere deadening influence underneath, but which this educational process, like some drying and heating influence upon that clay, is rendering resonant.

_H. G. Wells, New Worlds for Old._