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143
Special Factors Bearing on the Well-being of the School Child.
The immediate purpose, so far as the school medical service
is concerned, of work for the physical welfare of the children is
clearly to render them as fit as possible to benefit by the education
preferred to them by the Education Authority. It is therefore not
out of place to refer to certain aspects of the question over which
the Committee may not have direct control, but in which nevertheless
they have a vital interest: —
1.—Many of the physical defects found during school medical
inspection are already present when the child begins to attend
school. They have developed in the years before the Education
Authority can exercise any direct influence—during the years in
which to a steadily increasing extent the Public Health Authority
is exerting its influence through its Maternity and Child Welfare
schemes. It is clear that the Education Committee is very directly
concerned in the sound development of infant and child welfare
work, which has as its ideal the development of a physically healthy
child, by advice tending towards the prevention of ill-health and
by removal of factors injurious to health, such assistance necessarily
commencing even before the birth of the child if it is to be
fully effective.
2.—Education in school is hampered, not merely by the child's
physical defects, but also to a far greater degree by the child's
mental disabilities, arising out of its faulty upbringing in infancy
and in early childhood. I refer, not to gross defects in mental
capacity, but to faults in character, lack of concentration, a faulty
view of discipline or of freedom, habits of thought which tinge the
child's whole attitude towards and capacity for education. These
defects, again, are usually present in the child when he first reaches
school. They have arisen through faults in training during the
early years of life. Such faults in training have largely arisen
through the ignorance of parents of the part which they
should play in the child's development. The Education
Authority, which is so directly concerned in the results, is powerless
directly to interfere, though it can do much through its
training of the older boys and girls; and here again the
the only public body directly capable of taking part in
the problem is the Public Health Authority, which has
the chance, again through its Maternity and Child Welfare
work, of coming into touch with parents at the very time when
they are experiencing difficulties and recognising their own lack
of knowledge in regard to the all-round development of their
children. Child psychology, the study of the development of the