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It is submitted that the teaching of health, both personal and
communal, is a matter of importance, justifying a special series
of lessons given by qualified medical men and women. In putting
forward this view there is no desire to minimise the great and
beneficial influence the teachers exert, but it is felt that with a
specialised subject any lessons given would carry more weight if
delivered by persons who have had the prolonged training necessary
to become qualified medical practitioners. It is recognised
this training does not necessarily make a doctor a good teacher,
but it does give an authoritative bias to any statements he makes
on the subject of the care of the human mechanism either particular
or conglomerate.
The chief objects aimed at in such specialised instruction
would be the following: —
(a) The inculcation of a high standard of domestic and civic
cleanliness.
(b) The counteraction of ignorance and carelessness in matters
of health, more especially regarding the spread of communicable
diseases.
(c) To give instruction in the broad principles of healthy living
and to instruct in the cardinal signs of a departure from
that condition.
(d) To instruct in the chief social causes of illness and to
indicate the ways in which these causes may be counteracted.
(e) To extend the knowledge of the work of Public Health
departments so as to endeavour to gain the co-operation to
a greater extent of the coming generation.
It is felt that if the older children are told about the social
services and their aims explained, a greater appreciation of them
will become manifest and a greater readiness to take a part in
voluntary activities whose concern is with the health of the populace.
If the school leaving age is raised a new syllabus will
have to be drawn up for this period, and it would be possible to
incorporate hygiene teaching therein without any dislocation of
existing arrangements. The object aimed at is for some systematic
teaching in this specialised subject to be given to children during