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dental auxiliaries and the introduction of the new type of
air rotor high speed drill which increases the comfort of
dental treatment and makes the best use of our dental
surgeons and ancillary workers.
The School Health Service has, further, played its full
part in the supervision and assessment of educationally
subnormal and maladjusted children and has worked in close
conjunction with the Child Guidance Clinic and the School
Psychological Service, and, through the Borough Education
Officer, with the special, nursery and tutorial classes in
ordinary schools. These wise provisions have given to the
care of children suffering from educational and emotional
problems a flexibility which is extremely valuable.
We still do not do enough in the field of formal Health
Education among schoolchildren and the need for this is
be.coming more apparent each year. The earlier maturation
of children and the greater social freedom which they nowadays
enjoy has brought to the fore once again the need for
sex education—a thorny problem indeed. We are still concerned
with the smoking habits of schoolchildren and the
need to perservere with health education in this difficult
and, on the whole, neglected field. At the time of writing a
Mobile Unit of the Central Council for Health Education is
operating in the Borough and bringing to the notice of the
secondary schoolchildren (and it is hoped of many adults as
well) the general undesirability and the long-term hazards of
cigarette smoking. A letter has been sent to the parents of
all such children asking them not to smoke when with their
children or, even better, to give up the habit altogether.
Above all, they are being exhorted not to do anything to
encourage their children to smoke or to make it easy for
them to obtain supplies of cigarettes.
The report of the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry
of Education for the years 1960 and 1961 quotes an extreme
example from the annual report of a principal school medical
officer of a southern county in which a boy of 14½ years is
reported as having said, " My mum gives me a packet of
ten e.very morning when I catch the school bus ". From the
same source come two further examples. Another boy of
14½ years, after bringing tea into the staff room thick with
tobacco smoke, is reported to have said to the Headmaster,
" Sir, are you going to give them (the staff) a talk like you
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