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as the medical officers and the dental surgeon to the one Authority
carry out similar duties for the other Authority also, but it is
passing strange that, 10 years after the creation of the Ministry
of Health, there is still, both centrally and locally, a diversity of
services operating in the field of Public Health.
The circumstance that your medical officer is also District
Tuberculosis Officer for the Essex County links up the whole of
your work with the Tuberculosis Service for the area administered
by the Local Authority.
(b) Nursery Schools.—There are no nursery schools in Barking.
I do not advocate the provision of such schools, and, although I
am conversant with the evidence which has been adduced in favour
of establishing these schools, and the high authority of those who
have written in support of them, I still believe no reasonable case
has been made out, unless we are prepared to say that our
educational system has entirely failed, which I am not prepared
to say.
May I put it this way The family is still the unit in our
national life, and we have only reasons for interfering with it
in order to supply children with facilities they cannot obtain in
their own homes. There are, it is agreed, many homes where the
environment is prejudicial to the development of young children.
In so far as this is due to material circumstances, such as bad
housing, it is obvious that the right course to pursue is to improve
housing rather than to provide nursery schools, and in so far as
this is due to bad mothering, the obvious remedy is to educate our
children in those principles which are the principles of wise motherhood.
I do not mean that our educators should undertake lessons
on sex hygiene etc., but that these girls should be so thoroughly
grounded in the elements of hygiene, and their intellect and wit so
sharpened, that when, in the fullness of time, they develop into the
mothers of the nation, the health visitors will find them anxious and
competent to profit by the instruction which is in their power to
give. Either our educational system is more and more providing
this type of mother, or it is not. So far as girls are concerned, this
is the crucial test of its efficiency. I am persuaded it is efficient,
and is becoming more efficient, that the day of maternal ignorance