Handbook of suggestions on health education for the consideration of teachers and others concerned in the work of public elementary schools / Board of Education.

Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Handbook of suggestions on health education for the consideration of teachers and others concerned in the work of public elementary schools / Board of Education. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    11. However and whenever taken the health lesson should not be haphazard or diffuse, but clear cut and par- ticular. It should be simple, direct, personal and individual, designed to the formation of healthy habit. For instance, the teacher should require the children to have clean faces and hands, clean hair, clean teeth ; and cleanliness should be repeatedly “ drilled ’’ into the children until it has become a habit. The teacher can accustom the children to fresh air in the school room—its necessity for the lungs and the blood, the ways to obtain it, the advantages of the open air life, the value of exercise in the open air, the health-giving virtue of sunlight. The teacher can provide every day a suitable class breathing exercise ; much of the prevalent mouth-breathing, so predisposing to disease, is merely due to bad habit and ignorance. Or again, the children can find by practice the relation of activity and rest, of exercise and sleep, the peacefulness of quiet conduct and silence. There is often too much clatter and restlessness for young children ‘to grow and ripen, and nervous conditions may be the result of ceaseless and meaningless activities. Let them learn that composure and rest are conducive to health and mental stability. The children can be trained in their properseating, their right posture in their seats, the personal use of their own pens and pencils, suitable habits of hygiene in the cloakroom, and the ventilation and cleanliness of the classroom. It should be remembered that the health of a nation is in large degree dependent upon the habits of the people. What they need in order to live well is not abstruse knowledge but to practise the knowledge they possess already. Most people know a great deal about the value of cleanliness, fresh air and simple food, but they do not always practise what they know. They have not in youth contracted the habit of doing so. 12. The second section of the Suggestions, entitled “ Outlines of Health Lessons for Older Children,’ indicates the kind of actual instruction which should be given to IO