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72
sight is responsible for serious mental and physical incapacity,
and the state loses incalculably in the efficiency of its members
through these remediable defects.
WEIGHTS AND HEIGHTS OF SCHOLARS.
It will be within the recollection of the Council that in my
Report in 1903 on "The Hygienic Control of Schools," I recommended
the systematic weighing and measuring of scholars
attending the public elementary schools in the district.
My recommendation was adopted in respect of two schools,
namely, Kensal Rise and Lower Place Council Schools, for one
year as an experiment. These schools were selected, the one,
Kensal Rise, because it probably represented the better class of
scholars, physically-speaking, in t he district; the other, Lower
Place, because it was representative of a class of scholars whose
conditions of life were, in the main, distinctly adverse to good
physical development.
In accordance with the instructions of the Education Committee,
the teachers at the above-mentioned schools took the
height and weight of scholars in each of the classes and entered
the results on cards, which I collected at the end of the year.
These results I have classified and tabulated, and now submit for
your consideration.
The teachers have shown great care and accuracy in the
manner in which they have carried out this work, though in one
or two of the classes the returns are not nearly so complete as
they might have been. On the whole, however, great credit is
due to the teachers for the manner in which they have discharged