"The public health is the foundation on which reposes the happiness of the people and the power of a country. The care of the public health is the first duty of a statesman."Lord Beaconsfield.
"The public health is the foundation on which reposes the happiness of the people and the power of a country. The care of the public health is the first duty of a statesman."
Lord Beaconsfield.
The Value of Human Life—The Eugenic Principle—"The Fit Only Shall Live"—Eugenics and Marriage—The Venereal Diseases—The Utility of Marriage Certificates—The Marriage Certificates and Vice—Eugenics and Parenthood—The Principle of Heredity—Eugenics and Motherhood—Eugenics and the Husband.
The Value of Human Life—The Eugenic Principle—"The Fit Only Shall Live"—Eugenics and Marriage—The Venereal Diseases—The Utility of Marriage Certificates—The Marriage Certificates and Vice—Eugenics and Parenthood—The Principle of Heredity—Eugenics and Motherhood—Eugenics and the Husband.
The eugenist believes the cardinal error of the past has been a failure to recognize the worth or value of human life. In the past human lives have counted for absolutely nothing. As we have seen, each generation has practically deprived posterity of the best of its breed, and we shall see, when we consider the facts which affect the present vitality of the race, that the same preposterous conditions still exist.
It is not necessary to waste the reader's time in an effort to prove, simply from an argumentative standpoint, the logic of the eugenic idea. There is no existing economic problem that has established itself so firmly in the hearts of the people who understand it, as has the study of race culture. It is not the subject, but its scope of application, that is new. Biologically, we see the manifestations of eugenics on every side. In the flower garden we breed for beauty, in the orchard for quality. In the poultry yard and on the stock farm the same process weeds out the unfit and cultivates the desirable. The value of the eugenic idea is most strikingly illustrated in the cultivation, or breeding, of the horse from a primitive creature into the splendid animals which represent the various types of equine present-dayperfection. It has taken generations of the most painstaking intelligence to understand the traits which had to be evolved in scientific mating to reach the present standard. If the same rules, or lack of rules, applied to the mating of horses as applied to ourselves, there would be few, if any, "thoroughbreds" among them. The principle which we must recognize is that "Life is the only wealth."
Progress and efficiency will be ensured and of an enduring character, when all human effort is consecrated to this fundamental principle as a basic law, and not till then.
To cultivate the human race on prescribed scientific principles will be the supreme science of all the future, the object and the final goal of all honest governmental jurisprudence, and the ultimate judge of all true constructive legislation.
The eugenic principle is, that "the fit only shall live." This does not mean that the unfit must die, but that only the fit shall be born. Occasionally, as a product of bad environment, or faulty training, or eccentricity, a horse gives evidence of vicious traits, but the scientific breeder never mates him. He is allowed to die out. If he were permitted to father a race, his progeny would develop murderous characteristics that would retard the type for generations.
The Fit Only Shall Be Born.—This implies the exclusion of those, as parents, who are incapable of creating fit children. Fit children are children who are physically and mentally healthy. Parents who are unfit to create physically and mentally healthy children are those diseased in body or mind, especially if the disease is of the type which science has proved to be transmissible, or which directly affects the vitality of the child. In such a category we place those who are deaf, dumb, blind, epileptic, feeble-minded, insane, criminal, consumptive, cancerous, haemophilic, syphilitic, or drunkards, andthose known to be victims of disease of any other special type.
It must not be inferred that the above classification is made arbitrarily. There are many arguments which may be advanced limiting the eugenic applicability of certain of these diseased conditions. These, however, do not directly come within the province of the mother. They may be safely left to special state regulation. We simply make the assertion that no mother would willingly, or designedly, ally her offspring with any member of society afflicted with any of the diseases enumerated.
Eugenics and Marriage.—The eugenic idea, practically applied to the institution of marriage, means that no unfit person will be allowed to marry. It will be necessary for each applicant to pass a medical examination as to his, or her, physical and mental fitness. This is eminently a just decree. It will not only be a competent safeguard against marriage with those obviously diseased and incompetent, but it will render impossible marriage with those afflicted with undetected or secret disease. Inasmuch as the latter type of disease is the foundation for most of the failures in marriage, and for most of the ills and tragedies in the lives of women, it is essential to devote special consideration to it in the interest of the mothers of the race.
It is estimated that there are more than ten million victims of venereal disease in the United States to-day. In New York City alone there are two million men and women—not including boys and girls from six to twelve years of age—actively suffering from gonorrhea and syphilis. Eight out of every ten young men, between seventeen and thirty years of age, are suffering directly or indirectly from the effects of these diseases, and a very large percentage of these cases will be conveyed to wife and children and will wreck their lives. No one but a physician can have the faintest conception of the far-reaching consequences of infection of this character. The great White Plague is merely an incident compared to it. These diseases are largely responsible for our blind children, for the feeble-minded, for the degenerate and criminal, the incompetent and the insane. No otherdisease can approximate syphilis in its hideous influence upon parenthood and the future. The women of the race, and particularly the mothers, should fully appreciate the real significance of the situation as it applies to them individually. That they do not appreciate it is well known to every physician and surgeon.
It is first necessary to state certain medical facts regarding these diseases. They exist for years after all symptoms have disappeared; no evidences exist even to suggest to the patient that he, or she, is not entirely cured. After the germs have been in the patient for some time they lose a certain degree of their virility, and a condition of immunity is established. In other words the tissue ceases to be a favorable medium for the development, or activity, of the germs. If these germs, however, are conveyed to another person, who has never had the disease, or whose tissue is not immune, they will immediately resume their full activity and virulence, and will establish the disease, frequently in its most violent form, in the person so infected. The startling deduction which we must draw from these facts is, that a man may infect his wife, and may thereby be the direct cause of wrecking her entire life, and may, in addition, as a consequence of the infection, cause a child to be born blind, without even remotely suspecting that he is in any way responsible for it. In the light of this knowledge, what is the percentage risk a young girl takes when she selects a husband, remembering that eight out of every ten husbands bring these germs to the marriage bed? Reread the true story of the young woman on pagefive, accept my assurance that there are thousands and thousands of such cases, and ask yourself, who is to blame? We may certainly assure ourselves that no man living would wilfully desecrate his bride. He did not know,—did not even suspect that the disease he had years ago was still in his system. Society is to blame—you and I—the laxity of the law is the culprit. Had he been compelled to pass a physical examination before marriage he would have been told the truth.
It is a notorious fact, that in every civilized city in the world, the number of operations that are daily performedon women, is increasing appallingly. Every surgeon knows that nine-tenths of these operations are caused, directly or indirectly, by these diseases, and in almost every case in married women, they are obtained innocently from their own husbands. It is rare to find a married woman who is not suffering from some ovarian or uterine trouble, or some obscure nervous condition, which is not amenable to the ordinary remedies, and a very large percentage of these cases are primarily caused by infection obtained in the same way.
When a girl marries she does not know what fate has in store for her, nor is there any possible way of knowing under the present marriage system. If she begets a sickly, puny child,—assuming she herself has providentially escaped immediate disease,—she devotes all her mother love and devotion to it, but she is fighting a hopeless fight, as I previously explained when I stated that one-half of the total effort of one-third of the race is expended in combating conditions against which no successful effort is possible. Even her prayers are futile, because the wrong is implanted in the constitution of the child, and the remedy is elsewhere. These are the tragedies of life, which no words can adequately describe, and compared to which the incidental troubles of the world are as nothing.
So long as these conditions exist need we not tremble for the future of the race? Is not this future welfare a personal issue, or can we trust the future of our daughters to the same indiscriminate fate that has written the pages of history in the past?
This problem has been debated from every possible angle without our reaching any seemingly practical solution. The promise of emancipation, however, came with the dawn of eugenics. It is the only solution that gives promise of immediate and reasonable success. For that reason alone it should receive the active support of every good mother in all lands.
The Utility of Marriage Certificates.—There would seem to be no question as to the utility of marriage certificates. We must remember, however, that there is a distinction between marriage and parenthood, and thateugenics is concerned only with parenthood. It is interested in the institution of marriage to the extent only that it may, by some system of regulation, be a positive and fixed factor in the production of exclusively healthy children. The eugenist demands fit children. If society can ensure fit children, as a consequence of any marriage system which may or may not include medical certification, the eugenic aim is fully met. At the present time the giving of a marriage certificate, which is really a permit to marry, would seem to be the most practical way promptly to accomplish the eugenic purpose. We should promptly question the honor of any prospective husband disposed to evade the examination simply because he was not compelled to obey by a legislative enactment.
We believe that when the public is educated to the truth and intent of eugenics, there need be no compulsory examination. Men and women will, of their own accord, desire to know if their marriage will jeopardize the race. There will be questions of heredity to elucidate, questions of inherited insanity, poison taints, of blindness and deafness, or it may be of drunkenness.
Further, marriage certificates, or permits, must be considered in regard to the future conduct of those to whom we refuse permits to marry. A refusal of the permission to marry will not change the desire to marry. Many, of course, to whom a permit is refused, will accept the situation, will be thankful to be possessed of the knowledge of their incompetency in order that they may seek medical aid. These individuals will remain under medical supervision until their ailments are cured and their competency established. In this way the eugenic aim is materially furthered. Others may not abide by the decree which forbids marriage. It would wholly defeat the eugenic idea if the unfit children were to continue to be born illegitimately. These individuals will comprise the few—probably the present unfit members of society—and the final solution of the matter must remain a question of education and evolution. When public opinion is educated to the degree necessary to establish a system of eugenic self-protection, we shall beprovided with a race of children whose culture will achieve the ideal of parenthood by a process of education rather than legislation.
The Marriage Certificate and Vice.—If a prenuptial examination were made compulsory there is no doubt of the very prompt and salutory effect it would have on present-day vice. It has often been said that "You cannot legislate virtue or sobriety into a people." We are familiar too with the maxim that "You can lead a horse to the well, but you cannot make him drink." You can lead a horse to the well, however, and lo! he drinks. If you lead him at the right time he will always drink. If we legislate at the psychological moment we can legislate virtue and sobriety into a people.
A very large percentage of existing vice is the immediate product of ignorance, and the larger percentage of the remainder is the result of propinquity and the idea that it will never be found out. Very little of it is the outcome of innate degeneracy. It is an acquired degeneracy we must guard against, and that is the special educational motive of eugenics. Young men will be taught the truth about vice, and if they have been victims in the past, they will willingly submit themselves to acompetentinvestigation of their fitness for marriage. If they are still pure, the desire to remain so, in order to be eligible for parenthood, will guard them against the risk of contamination. This will not only result in a distinct improvement of the moral tone, but the potential possibilities to posterity will be incalculable. Legislation might therefore be the vehicle through which eugenic education could enlighten and evolve a fit race.
If the supreme end is a better race we must recognize that the great need for society to-day is to educate for parenthood. History teaches that a civilization that dissipates its virility in profligacy or spends its energy in political and commercial trickery, and gives no thought to the character of the men and women it produces, is destined to total failure. Parenthood and birth—in thesewe have the eugenic instruments of the future. The only permanent way to cure the ills of the world is to prevent the multiplication of people below a certain standard. The elevation and the actual preservation of the race depends upon rendering it impossible for the unfit coming into existence at all. In other words the unfit or unworthy must be rejected, not necessarily as individuals, but as parents.
Eugenics is allied to the principle of heredity,—the principle that enables us to modify conditions so as to ensure the right children being born. The propaganda against infant mortality is directed only toward the provision of a good environment,—so that children, when born, may survive and attain the maximum of their hereditary promise. The two campaigns are essentially complementary. The one applies only before birth, the other after birth. The statistics of infant mortality unfortunately show that it is not a process that extinguishes the unfit only. The healthy succumb to unfavorable environment and it was to amend this condition that the campaign against infant mortality was undertaken. The two campaigns appeal to the same creed: that parenthood is the supreme function of the race, that it must not be indifferently undertaken; that it demands the most careful preparation; that it is a duty which can only be carried out eugenically by the highest attainable health of body and mind and emotions.
Eugenics and Motherhood.—Any plan or scheme which has for its object race regeneration must concern itself with the health, the education, and the psychology of woman; the environment which shall surround her period of motherhood, and her selection of the fathers of the future. Society must safeguard her in all her relations. The race to-morrow are the babies of to-day. The wealth of a nation therefore is the type of baby that will constitute its civilization from generation to generation, and absolutely nothing else counts. We hear much about race suicide, but is it not monstrous to cry for more babies when we do not know how to keep alive those we have? It is a fact that everywhere the birth rate of the Caucasian people is on the decline. Our birthrate as a whole, however, is ample; it is the death rate that is significant and appalling. When we remember that one-third of all the babies born die before they reach the age of five years; and that the deaths of babies under one year of age comprise about one-fourth of the total death-roll; and that fully one-half of all these deaths are needless and unnecessary, wherein is the wisdom of working for a higher birth rate if it is merely that more may die?
The majority of babies are born physically healthy, but because of our destructive process, we proceed to annihilate hundreds of thousands of them yearly, and because of defective environment and education we render thousands of others, including the fit and unfit, inefficient and incompetent as propagating factors. It is to remove this disastrous stigma on our intelligence that we have been forced to study the conditions which the eugenic idea represents. When these principles are understood and believed, and when they are acted upon, infant mortality will cease to exist.
It was the design of the Creator that human motherhood should be an exalted occupation. He placed in her care to nurture and to love, the most helpless living thing. Few have regarded a baby from this viewpoint and fewer still understand its supreme significance. That it is the most utterly helpless thing possessing life is a self-evident fact, and that it should be destined to be King of all mammalian tribes as well as Lord of all the earth is a superlative paradox. Because of its utter inability to care for itself it is more in need of care than any other representative of the animal world. It is not only in need of immediate care, but it demands care longer than the young of any other species.
It stands to reason, therefore, that the function of motherhood must be reckoned with in any scheme of race regeneration; that it must be provided with the most favorable environment; and that it must be relieved of any condition which would materially retard the meeting of the obligation to its fullest possible extent. In an ideal eugenic sense the state must ensure sustenance to those deprived of ample food and raiment, and sciencemust continue to solve the problem of a fitter sanitary and hygienic environment for the congested and densely populated zones of habitation. Philanthropy must not continue to be wholly misdirected, it must extend its aid to the deserving healthy and fit, as well as to be exclusively the protecting agency of the diseased and unfit. If life is the only wealth, and the preservation of childhood the highest duty of society and the state,—which it would seem to be, since the continuance and preservation of the race is obviously essential to the continuance of the state itself,—the life of every child must be considered an economic as well as a moral trust. If, therefore, every child is sacred, every mother is equally sacred. If every child is to be cared for, every mother must be cared for. If the state cannot afford to provide for what is imperatively essential to its own continuance, it might as well go out of existence, as it inevitably will in the end on any other basis, and as all preceding states have done.
Mothers must not be dependent upon their children's labor for their maintenance, because if children are compelled to work, they will not be able to work in the future,—and adult efficiency is necessary to the well-being of the individual, the race, and the state.
No mother should work, because in the care of her children she is already doing the supreme work. The proper care of children is so continuous and exacting a task, and of such importance to posterity, that it must be regarded as the highest and foremost work—and adequate in itself—and its efficiency must not be hampered by mothers having to do anything else.
Motherhood must not be financially insecure, because this would defeat its eugenic purpose. Society, therefore, as a matter of self-preservation, must ensure to woman her mental and economic security. Civilization's margin is large enough to provide this. We spend large amounts on luxuries and evils which are contrary to the genesis of self-preservation, while motherhood is its basic necessity. When public opinion is educated in the essentials of eugenics much of this can be, and will be diverted to a nobler purpose. The total costnecessary to ensure the adequate care of dependent motherhood would be a mere fraction of the national expenditure, and not a tithe of what we spend in pension allowances yearly. The latter is regarded as an honorable debt and is at best the direct product of a decadent ideal, while motherhood constitutes the very germ of the only altruistic idealism for all the future.
We concede, therefore, that the children and the mothers must be provided for, not only as a product of the true construction of the ethics of sociology, but in obedience to the fundamental law of a moral system of eugenics. We must go further and assert that children must be cared for through the mother. It has been the practice to divorce the improvident mother from her dependent children. This has been demonstrated to be not only an altruistic fallacy. It has proved to be an economic blunder.
There is another type of evil which largely menaces the eugenic ideal of motherhood. It is those cases where married women who have children are compelled to be the bread winners of the family as well as its mothers. No woman can earn support for herself and children outside of her home and competently assume the responsibilities of motherhood at the same time. Whatever aid a mother renders to the state, as a result of effort in factory or shop, is of infinitely less value, from an economic standpoint, than her contribution as mother in caring for her own children in her own home. A careful study of infant mortality, and the conditions of child life, so far as survival value is concerned, condemns in the strongest and most vital sense this whole practice. The preservation of the race is the essential requisite, and it is the vital industry of any people. Any seeming economic necessity which destroys that industry is one that will contribute largely to the downfall of the people as a race.
Eugenics and the Husband.—The question of the husband's moral and parental obligation, as dictated by the marriage institution and constitution, may be left out of this discussion. We may assert, however, that we do not believe the eugenic principle intends, in devising waysand means for the adequate protection, in its completest sense, of motherhood, to relieve the father of any of his moral or parental obligations. These obligations will be justly defined, and as previously stated, will be the subject of special state legislation. No legislation of an economic character can detract from the performance of a moral obligation, and by no process of sophistication can modern statesmanship accomplish the dethronement of motherhood. The duty of the father is to support his children and the mother of his children, and the duty of the state is to see that this is done. The fundamental law of the eugenist must be to recognize that fatherhood is a deliberate and responsible act, for which a fixed accountability must be maintained. Whatever legislation is undertaken in this connection must be with the object in view of strengthening the efforts of the right kind of father and husband, and of rendering more difficult the path of the irresponsible father and husband. If the supreme duty of a state is the maintenance of justice, its whole effort in the future will be to legislate in harmony with the eugenic principle.
"I hope to live to see the time when the increased efficiency in the public health service—Federal, State and municipal—will show itself in a greatly reduced death rate. The Federal Government can give a powerful impulse to this end by creating a model public health service."Ex-President Taft.
"I hope to live to see the time when the increased efficiency in the public health service—Federal, State and municipal—will show itself in a greatly reduced death rate. The Federal Government can give a powerful impulse to this end by creating a model public health service."
Ex-President Taft.
The Present Educational System is Inadequate—Opinions of Dr. C. W. Saleeby, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Luther Burbank, William D. Lewis, Elizabeth Atwood, Dr. Thomas A. Story, William C. White, Dr. Helen C. Putnam—Difficulty in Devising a Satisfactory Educational System—Education an Important Function—The Function of the High School—The High School System Fallacious—The True Function of Education.
The Present Educational System is Inadequate—Opinions of Dr. C. W. Saleeby, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Luther Burbank, William D. Lewis, Elizabeth Atwood, Dr. Thomas A. Story, William C. White, Dr. Helen C. Putnam—Difficulty in Devising a Satisfactory Educational System—Education an Important Function—The Function of the High School—The High School System Fallacious—The True Function of Education.
The fundamental law of eugenics demands that all education be exerted for parenthood. We have proved that the child is not only essential to the life of the state, but is the state. Consequently any function other than parenthood is a non-essential so far as organic existence is dependent upon it. Education can, therefore, have no higher or more righteous motive than as a contributory agency in the perpetuation of the function upon which all existence depends. If the only function of education is to make one a worthy citizen, or to make him, or her, self-supporting, or able to bear arms in defense of his country, rather than a perfect link in the complete chain of enduring life, its purpose is being perverted. It is not sufficient to provide a girl, for instance, with an exclusive environment which regards her simply as a muscular entity, as is the tendency in some of the "best" girls' schools to-day; nor to fit her as a domestic or society ornament; nor must she be regarded simply as an intellectual machine, as is done under the system styled "the higher education of women." Any one of these isan example of misdirected excess and is only part of the whole. None of these systems strives to develop the emotional side of the complex female character, and any educational system which ignores the emotions is not only inadequate but reprehensible in the highest degree. The ideal which will strive for education for ultimate parenthood will more completely solve the question of complete (eugenic) living.
The Present Educational System is Inadequate.—There is no question that education, as conducted at the present time, is one of the most disastrous institutional fallacies of modern civilization. In support of this contention, we are prompted to quote at length from various authorities bearing on this subject.
Dr. C. W. Saleeby, an international authority on education, writes as follows:
"A simple analogy will show the disastrous character of the present process, which may be briefly described as 'education' by cram and emetic. It is as if you filled a child's stomach to repletion with marbles, pieces of coal and similar material incapable of digestion—the more worthless the material the more accurate the analogy—then applied an emetic and estimated your success by the completeness with which everything was returned, more especially if it was returned 'unchanged,' as the doctors say. Just so do we cram the child's mental stomach, its memory, with a selection of dead facts of history and the like (at least when they are not fictions) and then apply a violent emetic called an examination (which like most other emetics causes much depression) and estimate our success by the number of statements which the child vomits onto the examination paper—if the reader will excuse me. Further, if we are what we usually are, we prefer that the statements shall come back 'unchanged'—showing no sign of mental digestion. We call this 'training the memory.' The present type of education is a curse to modern childhood and a menace to the future. The teacher who cannot tell whether a child is doing well without formally examining it, should be heaving bricks, but such a teacher does not exist. In Berlin they are now learning that the depression causedby these emetics (examinations) often lead to child suicide—a steadily increasing phenomenon mainly due to educational overpressure and worry about examinations.
"Short of such appalling disasters, however, we have to reckon with the existence of this enormous amount of stupidity, which those who fortunately escaped such education in childhood have to drag along with them in the long struggle towards the stars. This dead weight of inertia lamentably retards progress.
"If you have been treated with marbles and emetics long enough, you may begin to question whether there is such athingas nourishing food; if you have been crammed with dead facts, and then compelled to disgorge them, you may well question whether there are such things as nourishing facts or ideas."
The gifted writer, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, in an editorial in theNew York American, expressed herself recently in the following terms:
"A wave of dissatisfaction is sweeping over the country regarding our school system. And eventually this will cause a change to be made. The larger understanding of mothers regarding education will result in the personal element entering into the training of children.
"When women have a voice in the affairs of the nation there will be more teachers, larger salaries, fewer pupils in each department, and more attention will be given to the temperaments and varying dispositions of children by their instructors.
"Instead of regarding the little ones who enter public schools as machines which must be taught to go according to one rule, each child will be studied as a threefold being, and his mind, body and spirit will be cared for and developed according to his own peculiar needs. All this will come slowly, but it will come.
"Before children enter the public schools there should be a great sifting process under the direction of a national board of scientific men. The brain equipment of each child, the tendencies given it at birth, should be tested; then the nervous, hysterical and erratic mindsought to be placed in a school by themselves, under the care of men and women who know the law of mental suggestion.
"Quiet, loving, wholesome rules, followed day after day and month after month, would bring these children out into the light of self-control and concentration. The hurried, crowding, exciting methods of the public schools are disastrous to fully half of the unformed minds sent into the intellectual maelstrom which America provides under the name of Public Schools.
"For the well-born, normal-minded, healthy-bodied child, who has wise and careful guardians or parents to assist in his mental guidance, the public school forms a good basis on which to build an education. For the average American child of excitable nerves and precocious tendencies, it is like deep surf swimming for the inexperienced and adventurous bather.
"The great foundation of education—character—is not taught in the public schools. There is no systematized process of developing a child's power of concentration; there is not time for this in the cramming process now in vogue and with the enormous pressure placed on teachers. No teacher can do justice to more than fifteen children through the school hours. In many of our public schools there are fifty and sixty children under one instructor. This is fatal to the nervous system of the teacher and deprives the pupils of that personal sympathy which is of such vital importance."
Luther Burbank, the famous California horticulturist, declares that the great object and aim of his life is to apply to the training of children those scientific ideas which he has so successfully employed in working transformation in plant life.
In an editorial, entitled, "Teaching Health," theNew York Globestates, "Anatomy and physiology are reasonably exact sciences, and nine-tenths of the hygienic abuses against which the doctors are preaching would be prevented if the laity had an elementary knowledge of physiology. Such an educational reform could be carried out without causing any clash whatever between the warring medical sects."
William D. Lewis, Principal of the William Penn School, Philadelphia, in an article entitled: "The High School and the Girl," in a recent issue of theSaturday Evening Post, wrote in part as follows:
... "The first thing that society wants of our girl is good health. This is the first essential for her efficient service and personal happiness in shop, office, store, school or home. The future of the race so far as she represents it, depends upon her health. What is the high school doing to improve the girl's health? In the overwhelming majority of cases absolutely nothing. On the other hand, it is subjecting her to a regimen planned for boys, without the slightest consideration of the physical and functional differences between the sexes.
"It pays no attention to the curvature of the spine developed by the exclusively sit-at-a-desk-and-study-a-book type of education bequeathed to the girlhood of the nation by the medieval monastery: It ignores the chorea, otherwise known as St. Vitus' dance developed by overstudy and underexercise; it disregards the malnutrition of hasty breakfasts, and lunches of pickles, fudge, cream-puffs and other kickshaws, not to mention the catch penny trash too often provided by the janitor or concessionaire of the school luncheon, who isn't doing business for his health or for anybody else's; it neglects eye-strain, unhygienic dress, uncleanly habits, anemia, periodic headaches, nervousness, adenoids, and wrong habits of posture and movements.... If you believe that the high school is a social institution with a mission of public service, regardless of the relation of that service to Latin or Algebra, then you must agree that it should look after what everyone recognizes as the foremost need of the adolescent girl.
"One fact that every educator in both camps knows is that the home is not attending to the health of the adolescent girl. This problem is pressing upon us now largely because of the revolutions in living conditions that has come within the last quarter of a century."
In a report of a recent Conference on theConservation of School Children held at Lehigh University by the American Academy of Medicine, the following items appear.
Four great reasons why medical inspection in schools is needed were brought out by Dr. Thomas A. Story of New York, who spoke from the educator's standpoint:
"The first reason is concerned with communicable diseases, and the second with remediable incapacitating physical defects. It was reported in 1906 that over twenty per cent. of the children in the schools of New York City had defective vision, and over fifty per cent. had defective teeth. These defective conditions are amenable to treatment whereby the functional efficiency of the pupil is improved. He is capable of better work and the school efficiency is advanced.
"The third reason is concerned with irremediable physical defects. The cripples, the deformed and the delinquents whose incapacitating defects are permanent should be found and classified. This enables special instruction and opens up educational possibilities otherwise unattainable, besides removing retarding factors in the progress of the normal pupil.
"The fourth reason is concerned with the development of hygienic habits in the school child, and through the child, of the community. Medical inspection which influences the health habits of the masses is a matter of supreme importance. The teacher will have pupils of cleaner habits and healthier, with fewer interruptions and disturbances from absences.
"To make medical inspection successful physical examinations should uncover the anatomic, physiologic, and hygienic conditions. Every piece of advice given to a pupil that can be followed up should be followed up and the result recorded. No system of medical inspection in schools can be complete and permanently successful which does not eventually educate the parent and child to a sympathetic and coöperative relationship with the system. Medical inspection is a force working for a better general education in personal hygiene and should coördinate with the class room instruction. Hence itmust be a system in sympathetic relationship with the general management of the school, and should be under the same responsible control. Since it is an educational influence and so directly related to the success of the school, it ought to be a part of the school organization."
A paper was read by Dr. Helen C. Putnam of Providence, R. I., on "The Teaching of Hygiene for Better Parentage." She said:
"Life is a trust from fathers and mothers beginning before history; to be guarded and bettered in one's turn, and passed along to children's children. A definite conception of this trust is essential to right living. Educators are finding that well directed correlation of human life, with phenomena of growing things in school gardens and nature studies, develops a wholesome mental attitude. Since tens of millions of our population have only fractions of primary schooling, there is where the teaching must begin. These primary years are the time to lay foundations before a wrong bias is established.
"Education for parenthood cannot be completed at this early age. The strategic years for making it most effective are from sixteen to twenty-four, when home-making instincts are waking and strongest. We have 15,000,000 young people of these ages in no schools, and eligible for such instruction. All state boards of education were recently petitioned by the American Association for Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality to urge the appointment of commissions on continuation schools of home-making, to investigate conditions and needs in their respective states and to report plans for meeting them effectively through such continuation schools or classes."
Difficulty in Devising a Satisfactory Educational System.—It will be observed that each of these authoritative writers criticises the system of education now in vogue. The criticism is not, nor could it justly be, specialized. It is simply an expression, from different viewpoints, of the feeling that we are not doing ourselves justice as yet, we are groping after something better. Itmay be, as I have previously stated, that no satisfactory system of education will be evolved until the laws of kindred sciences, which have organic relationship to what we understand as education, are fixed and better understood. We are just beginning to appreciate the true meaning of environment. We know little about heredity, but enough to appreciate its vital importance. Psychology is a realm of much hope, but we have only tasted of its surface promise and know little of the mysteries it may unfold. Eugenics, the infant giant of science, promises to establish the race on an enduring foundation. These sciences have laws which we do not yet understand; they relate to that part of human evolution which mind dominates. The quality of the mind's dominion depends upon the mind's education and environment, and since the laws of these sciences, upon which a perfect system of education depends, have not been revealed, it is quite evident that all past systems of education have been more or less deficient. It is further evident that evolution has suffered as a result of the mind's imperfect education,—a condition that is manifest all around us.
It must be appreciated, however, that we are discussing a large subject. If we understood all there is to know about environment; if we knew the laws of heredity, and psychology, and eugenics, and then could apply them, and educate the product of this combination of forces, we would be very near to the super-man. One must have a sober mental horizon to evolve the picture which would be the product of the above solution and then to estimate its meaning on human happiness and progress. We are approaching the ethics of right living,—of justice and truth,—the divine in man. At no time in the history of man has civilization been so near a solution of life's supreme problem as at the present moment.
Education is an important function in life's scheme, and while we may regret that it is not possible to formulate a system that would be perfect and capable of immediate application, we can continue to work patiently and hopefully, with assurance that in the near future the problem will be satisfactorily solved. When heredity,psychology, and eugenics combine to dictate the system, we shall doubtless find, that, in the beginning, it will be a system of individualization. In the interest of health and of justice, and consequently of efficiency, this would seem to be the natural and the logical lead.
So long as human nature is as it is, we must meet conditions as they exist. We know as parents, and some of us know as physicians, that a task easily performed by one individual, without any apparent harmful results, will tax the capacity of another individual to the very utmost. Any educational system which does not recognize this law, is vicious. Yet such is the system in vogue to-day in America. We must adapt the burden to the endurance of the pupil. The administration of an educational machinery must solve this problem from the individual standpoint.
In the departmental work in our public schools there seems to be no system. Each teacher prescribes home work without any knowledge of what others of the same grade do, and without any apparent consideration in favor of the individual pupil. The result is that the total amount for each night is absurdly in excess of the capacity of the ordinary, or for that matter the extraordinary, pupil. This engenders nervousness and irritability, and is contrary to the ethics of education,—the fundamental law of which should be the preservation of good health. We must have regard for the physical and mental health of each pupil, and as the capacity of each pupil is different, the system is committing an egregious wrong by sacrificing the weaker instead of adapting the burden according to the strength and endurance of the bearer.
The High School System Fallacious.—Even the high schools do not seem to be wisely availing themselves of their opportunity from the eugenic or economic standpoint. According to the report of the Commissioner of Education of the United States the percentage of pupils studying some of the more important subjects in the year 1909-1910 is stated as follows:
Latin, French and German 83 per cent.Algebra and Geometry 88 " "English Literature 57 " "Rhetoric 57 " "History 55 " "Domestic Economy,--includingsewing, cooking and householdeconomies 4 " "
If only barely four per cent. of the girls in our high schools are studying subjects which directly contribute to their efficiency as home-makers, what are the prospects for worthy parenthood in the light of the fact that seventy-five per cent. of all women between the ages of twenty and twenty-four are married?
The function of the high school, so far as girls are concerned, is to conserve health, to train for domestic efficiency and motherhood, and if necessary for economic independence. It must also furnish the stimulus for mental culture and direct a proper aspiration for social enlightenment. The curriculum should include biology, hygiene, psychology, home beautifying, the story-telling side of literature, music and a few other studies tending to make woman more like woman than she is to-day. When we have this, teaching for mothercraft will be more nearly realized.
From the eugenic standpoint the present system of education is not satisfactory. To attain our end it is essential to devise other means of education. It must be remembered, however, that no system of education alone can ever enable us to achieve our end, no matter how perfect the system may be. Education can only draw out what is in the child; it cannot draw out what is not there. What the child is, depends upon its heredity. The pedagogic ability of the school-master will never make a genius.
A child's mind may be likened to a block puzzle, each block representing a part of a picture, which can only be completed when they are all arranged in their correct places. Each block is an ancestral legacy,—the child's heritage—and to find its proper place in order tocomplete the character picture—to solve the riddle of the jumbled blocks,—is the duty of the educator. He can only manipulate what is there, and the test of his system will depend upon his ability to solve the puzzle of the ancestral blocks. We must divorce ourselves from the idea that a child's mind, at the beginning, is an empty space, to be filled in with knowledge according to the ability of the teacher; or that it is like a sheet of paper, to be written upon. Education, and the educator, is absolutely limited to "drawing out" what heredity put there. Education frequently is given credit which rightly belongs to nature. A child cannot do certain things until nature intends that it should. A baby cannot possibly walk until the nervous mechanism which controls the function of walking is developed. Many children walk at the first attempt, simply because they did not make the first attempt until after nature had perfected the mechanism and the innate ability to walk was already there. Suppose we tried to teach that baby to walk a month before nature was ready; each day we patiently coax it to "step out," we guide it from support to support, and we protect it from stumbling. Some day it walks, and we congratulate ourselves on the victory, when as a matter of fact, we not only had nothing to do with it but were impertinent meddlers, not instructors. Nature was the teacher and she was quite capable of completing the task without our aid. It is reasonable also to assume that any effort to force a natural function is quite likely to do much harm. We have found this to be so in various departments of education when the system was wrongly conceived. In physical culture this principle has been demonstrated over and over again.
If our ancestral legacy is a good one, our picture blocks will be numerous and it will be possible for the proper system of education, aided by a suitable environment, to arrange them into many designs. If, on the other hand, our heredity did not endow us abundantly the number of our picture blocks may be limited to three or four, and they will be easily arranged so as to form a simple picture. The one represents a child whom heredity has richly endowed, the other one whom it hasmeagerly supplied with innate possibilities. Heredity therefore dictates the function of education; and the school-master can only fashion the picture put there. If the ancestral blocks are not there with which to make an elaborate picture he must content himself with what is there,—he or his art cannot create others. When he congratulates himself on achieving a wonderful result in graduating a particularly brilliant student, he is taking to himself unmerited honors. If his individual ability is responsible in one instance, why not apply the same system to all pupils? If this system is responsible for the brilliancy of one pupil, why does not the same system make all brilliant? The reader knows the answer,—because heredity did not endow them equally. Men are not born equal, despite the Declaration of Independence.
The school-master is not responsible for the apt and the inapt pupil. He is responsible for his system which dictates how he will differentiate between the apt and the inapt pupil, in order to achieve the best results without injustice to either.
The inefficient teacher is a dangerous equation in the school system. I mean by inefficiency, the quality of being temperamentally unsuited to the profession. There are a large number of anemic, hysterical young women teaching in the public schools of our cities who should not be there. They should not be there in justice to themselves, nor should they be there in justice to their pupils. A strict, yearly medical examination should be made of the teachers to decide their physical and psychical fitness to fill their positions adequately. One teacher, physically or psychically inefficient, can do an inconceivable amount of harm in one school term. We cannot afford to experiment along this line. It means too much, and even at the price of one unhappy child it is too much to pay. The teacher who feels that she is not suited to the work; who has constantly to hold herself and her temper under control; whose nerves are such that she cannot do justice to herself, whose sense of justice is capable of perversion on purely sentimental grounds; or who has lost—or never possessed—the gift of maintaining discipline, should promptly find anotherposition. She is earning her salary under false pretenses, and that alone condemns her. I believe, that a large percentage of the inefficiency of the New York Schools is due, not to the academic or scholastic inability of the average teacher, but to the average female teacher's physical, and especially her psychical unfitness to teach. We must concede, however, that in many instances the teacher's unfitness is a direct product of the pernicious system itself.