STILES, CH.WARDSLL Country Schools and Sani- tation, Qass_ f-B3fOy Book. Rl. C/>iv\J/ X UNITED STATES PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE COUNTRY SCHOOLS AND RURAL SANITATION SIX SAMPLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN ONE COUNTY DOES THIS COUNTY NEED MEDICAL INSPECTION IN ITS SCHOOLS? THE COUNTRY SCHOOL TEACHER BY CH. WARDELL STILES Professor of Zoology, Hygienic Laboratory United States Public Health Service REPRINT NO. 116 FROM PUBLIC HEALTH REPORTS Februaey 1913 WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1913 ^^■^ 'if 1^ -1> 5 -" '-■ n 0. OF 0, MAY 17 1913 COUNTRY SCHOOLS AND RURAL SANITATION.^ SIX SAMPLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN ONE COUNTY. DOES TfflS COUNTY NEED MEDICAL INSPECTION IN ITS SCHOOLS? THE COUNTRY SCHOOL TEACHER. By Ch. Wardell STn.ES, Professor of Zoology, Hygienic Laboratory, United States Public Health Service, The town of A , county of Z , has about 1,000 inhab- itants. It boasts of an excellent brick school building with 9 teachers. There are two privies back of the school and within short fly-flying distance to several houses. Neither privy is sanitary and both have been in filthy condition the several times I have seen them. The food of the near-by families is supplied, by flies, with fecal mate- rial from these two privies. Consider the possible results of the presence of a typhoid carrier among the pupils. The settlement of B is only a few miles distant from A . There is a two-room school there which is in good condition and well painted. Two privies are present, but both are so filth}^ that they would naturally prejudice the children against privies in general. There is a driven well, with pump, in front of the school; the water has hollowed out the ground and forms a muddy puddle in which hogs wallow and children wade — ^for instance, after visiting the privies; the washer of the pump is so poor that it is often necessary to pour in water in order to start the flow. For this purpose water is dipped from the muddy puddle in which the children have been wading and the hogs wallowing. This pump furnishes the drinking water to about 60 children and 2 teachers. A small village, C , is located 2 miles farther on with about 150 inhabitants, (No person in town, including the mayor, could give me an estimate of the number of inhabitants.) Upon inquiring here for a privy, one of my assistants was informed that there was none in town for men except [a miserable] one near the church. The school, however, has two privies. Both of these are within short fly- flying distance to two houses which take boarders, including traveling transients. About 3 to 4 miles farther on is a rural school, D , with about 30 pupils. There is no privy present, but the boys go down the road in one direction, the girls up the road in another. About 2 miles farther along the railroad is the town of E : , with about 600 inhabitants. There is a school with 1 male and 3 female teachers and about 200 enrolled children. When T first 1 Reprint from Public Health Reports, Vol. XXVIII, No. 6, February 7, 1913. 79259—13 (3) visited this school (the week before it opened for its fall term) there was no privy either for the boys or the girls. The boys went down one fork of the road, the girls the other. The school building Avas open and the passing public Avas using the upper room — intended for the higher classes — as a public privy. Several women in town informed me that they had repeatedly urged that privies be provided for the 200 boys and girls at this school. Recently the school has been provided with two privies. About 2 miles farther is another school, F , with about 80 pupils and 1 young woman teacher. The pupils have an abundance of hookworm disease, but no school privy. The foregoing observations were made since August 15, 1912, They are published herewith without comment, except for the remark that the county in question is by no means exceptional. The schools represent American rural education — namely, teaching the American rural children hoAV to live. The country school teacher. — If a county superintendent of educa- tion gives an address before a State convention he does not seem to feel that he has done his full duty (judging from a number of meet- ings that it has been my privilege to attend Avithin the last few years) unless he says something about the inefficiencies of the country school teachers, the few years during which they remain in the work, and the fact that many of them teach simply in order to earn money for their AA'edding trousseau. While I would not for a moment presume to be capable of debating Avith the gentlemen in question, it is difficult to escaj^e the impression that theirs is not the only point of vieAv in the premises. Many years of field work in the rural districts have given me an opportunity to see a great many rural schools and their teachers, and as a practical sanitarian I take the liberty of presenting for consideration a side of the problem Avhich I have not yet heard county superintendents emphasize in their convention addresses. First of all, the point so often made that these young AA^omen teach but a few years and then marry might well be interpreted as meaning that they are of such a high standard that they are in great demand as AA'ives — an interpretation Avhich should be heartily indorsed. Certain it is that the aA^erage young AA^oman has fcAv inducements offered to her to remain a teacher in the many country schools I have seen. As a rule, she leaves a home AA-hich is superior to the homes of the parents of her pupils in which she is forced to board if she lives in the community where she teaches. She is paid a miserable salary as rcAA'ard for exposing herself five days a AA'eek to indecent and insanitary conditions surrounding the school which jeopardize and occasionally end either her health or her life. She is blamed by her patrons for not giving a bette" education than she succeeds in giving to unhealthy children who on an average are not plwsicalh^ or mentally capable of digestmg the education she does give to them. She has little or no sympathy from her school board in regard to the difficulties that she faces. If she suggests improvements in the sani- tarj surrDundings, her suggestions usually fall upon deaf ears. She is superior in education, refinement, culture, and in nearly every other respect, to the majority of parents in the community in which she teaches. She lives a life of self-sacrifice, too often combined Avith indigestion and pimples, because of the class of food she is forced to eat. If she sends home from school a pupil who has the itch or in whom she suspects some contagious disease, she is blamed for her officiousness; if she contracts the disease herself, she furnishes a substitute at her own expense.^ But she is the greatest civilizing influence to-day in. our rural dis- tricts and is deserving of much more sympathy and support and of much less criticism than she is receiving. Without denying that a more pedagogically trained class of teachers might be obtained if they were paid better salaries, I venture to sug- gest to their critics that they will probably be able to retain their young women a year or two longer if they improve the present inde- cent and insanitary conditions under which these young women have to work to a point where the girls can teach without endangering their health and lives; and these teachers will certainly have better success in their pedagogic efforts if the sanitary conditions surround- ing the schools are improved to a point where the country school will not form — what it is to-day — the great disease-spreading center for rural and semirural communities. In conclusion, I can not refrain from mentioning what may be admitted to be an extreme and somewhat exceptional case : A young woman from a town contracted to teach in a rather remote country school. She was advised to engage board with the family of the chairman of the local school board and did so before leaving home. Upon arriving at her destination she was shown into the one-room house, containing five beds, and was asked which bed she preferred to occupy. All honor to our country school-teachers, who are to-day the greatest factors for good in our rural districts. ^ For instance, two of the throe young women teaching in the rural school where I am studying the children, the day this short article is written, have just contracted itch from their pupils and have the honor of paying a substitute. There is no medical inspection of the children, and the teacher was blamed for sending home a boy infected with scabies, 'but sentiment would be distinctly against the teachers if they themselves were known to attend school when they had this infection. o i / *,