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82
Thus, I agree with the Medical Officer of the Education Department of the
London County Council in his opinion that, in practical working, when it is
definitely known by notification that measles has entered the infants' department
of a school it is too late to take any effectual precautionary measures,
and that temporary total exclusion (or closure) of the department, or of a class,
will probably only temporarily delay further extension of the disease. But I
am also of opinion that the half measures at present adopted of temporary
partial exclusion are equally futile, and they lend a sense of false security to
parents and managers, of which they justly complain.
T am further of opinion that nothing short of the permanent exclusion
from school of children under 5 years of age at least will help to reduce the
mortality from measles, and if extended to 6 or even 7 years of ago—that is,
the commencement of the second teething-—it would be still more effectual. I
advocated this course many years ago, and find no reason for any alteration of
my opinion. On the contrary, I have become more confirmed in this view.
It will naturallv be asked, " What alternative do vou suggest ? " To this
^ .
I would answer that the physique of the young child must be the first consideration,
that the education of the mother is more important even than the
education of the infant, and that the mother should be enlisted in the education
of infancy instead of being divorced from it. Scholastic education is undesirable
for infants under 5 years of age; it is training that is required, and this has
been least cultivated.
Education at, or attached to, an Elementary School will always be run on
scholastic lines. This is not the kind or the method of education required.
The desideratum for infants and very young children is not education, but
training upon maternal and domestic lines—training of the functions, the
habits, the senses, and the physical actions and mental ideas in due sequence
through the first early years of life.
All will agree with the opinion of the Consultative Committee of the Board
of Education that "there is in the natural relationship between mother and
child, and in the other influences of good home life, a moral and educational
power which it is of high national importance to preserve and strengthen,"
and it is desirable not to drop but to pursue this ideal.
Under modern conditions the father goes to his workplace and club, the
children over school age leave home, the elder children go to school, the children
under school age are left at the day nursery, and the mother goes out to
work. To such, and they are not a few, there only remains a sleepingplace;
there is no family life, there is no true HOME. This leads to the
destruction of the idea of home and family life, and to the avoidance of procreation.
But the generation to be born is the future nation, and we are
hard up against a bed-rock physical fact, which is infinitely more important
than questions of scholastic details.
Efforts directed towards the prevention of physical deterioration and sickness
and to the amelioration of the health, habits, and character of the individual
must commence at the very earliest age, even at birth, and the most potent
medium is the mother. The mothers must be enlisted in the army of recruits
necessary for the early care and training of our future citizens, male and