one of the greatest is that this great alien population of ours must be made citizens of the United States, and that is the great question that is concerning teachers of today. It is a bigger question than textbooks; it is a question of ideals, it is a question of morale, it is a question of spirit, and if that is inculcated into the children of this land the books will take care of themselves, and the child will take care of himself. We have been talking on the question of textbooks too long and too much, and we must get down to the ideals that confront us, and when we do our efforts will be crowned with success.

C. E. ROSE, superintendent of schools, Boise, Idaho: I seem to have drawn quite a little fire here this afternoon. You seem to have misunderstood some of the things I have said. Perhaps when you read my paper you will get a different view from what I was able to give you when I read it. If there are any schools thruout the country which teach more history than we do, you write to me about it, as I would like to know of them.

The point I was trying to emphasize was the development of ideals. I was trying to make the statement that we should not neglect the study of American history for other history. I was trying to make the point that if we are to teach Americanism, we find no better place today than in teaching the history of the United States. If we are going to teach democracy right, I know of no other nation on earth where the teaching of democracy may be so well brought forward as in the history of our own country. If we are to take our place as people of the United States, in this democracy, if we are going to take our place in the world at large, we must first become good AmeriWe must first learn the principles of democracy in the study of our own history and of our own government.

cans.

THE CHAIRMAN: The meeting will now be adjourned.

THE COUNTY SCHOOL NURSE

M. BEATRICE JOHNSTONE, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS,
GRAND FORKS, N.DAK.

After eighteen hundred years we are only now beginning to grasp the truth that the Master wisht us to grasp when he took a little child and put the child in the center of things. Our educational machinery all these years has been trying to fit the child to the curricula, course of study, and even the equipment, but the change has come, and the adjustable seat is symbolic of this change of attitude. We no longer fit the child for the seat but the seat for the child. Modern methods in pedagogy teach the individual child. Education is socializing the individ-. ual. Education is moralizing the individual, but education is not education until it individualizes the individual. In colonial days the child was taught to read, so that he could read the Scriptures and know for himself the way of eternal life.

Later on we added the other two R's, but now we have come to believe that the child must have a sound mind in a sound body, which arrangement spells efficiency. We have also learned that the school must not only conserve the child's health in the classroom but must reach out into the home.

Our teachers may well shrink from even the thought of so great a task, but be it said for them that they push ahead bravely and cheerfully and

assume one by one the duties laid upon the school system of today. Is it not providential that the medical profession and the teaching profession are in step? The progress of medical science, due largely to laboratory research and sociological investigation, has brought to light the causative factors of disease and has shown that much of what we used to blame on Providence is preventable. Thus preservation of health and life by preventive measures has become the watchword of the medical profession. This endeavor has brought the physician into contact with the school. Both teacher and doctor noted a markt variation in the mental capacities of different pupils and recognized the importance of a combined study of the causative factors. By the union of the medical profession and the teaching profession medical inspection was born.

I shall not enter into a discussion of the history of medical inspection. You can read that in books, but nowhere can you find the wonderful story I have come to tell you, unless you come to our state and read it in healthier and happier childhood and in better and more wholesome home life. I shall only say in passing that medical inspection has past the experimental stage both in Europe and in this country, as is proved by the attitude of legislative bodies toward it. I wish I had time to speak of health legislation in our state. A bill has just past both houses making it mandatory that every county in North Dakota have one or more school nurses, provided a petition is presented containing a majority of the names of the school directors.

Summing up the opinion of the physicians, it is safe to say that the consensus of opinion is this: A physician is more efficient to carry on the work, but a nurse carries it out more carefully and methodically, and it is therefore more expedient to have a nurse than many doctors. An alltime physician is the most desirable, but if we cannot have an all-time county physician, then let us have an all-time nurse.

In this connection it might be of interest to describe our method of visiting schools. The driver leaves one of us at the first school to be visited and takes the other to the next. He then returns to the first school, and when the visit is concluded moves the nurse to the next school. He then returns to the second school and moves that nurse to another school. Her work is to examine each school child in the county and keep a record of such examination in the office of the county superintendent of schools. She does follow-up work in the homes of the chilren who need attention, advises the mothers, and meets with them and with different rural organizations and speaks on hygiene and sanitation. Correct seating, hot lunches in rural schools, organized play, with a big county Play Day in May, clinics, and mentality tests for abnormal children and the subsequent placing of them where they belong are a few of the results of the work of the school nurse.

After a nurse was engaged for six months and the results were tabulated, the county nurse's work has been made a permanent institution in

the county. Her work has resulted in improved schoolroom sanitation. It has checkt the spread of contagious disease and improved the general health conditions of the county. Scores of instances could be given where pupils have had neglected eyes, ears, throats, teeth, and tubercular troubles attended to by competent physicians, and this none too soon to insure the permanent health of the children, simply because a school nurse inspected the child and sent home a little note advising the daily use of the toothbrush or the consulting of a family physician at once. The response to these little notes has been marvelous, for the work is needed and appreciated. But let us consider for a little while the percentage of corrections, for if there were no corrections this work would be entirely useless. The following is a report of a typical village school for the years from 1914 to 1918:

This is 82 per cent. The next year the number of defectives went down to twenty-six, which would be 36 per cent. The next year the number of defectives went down to 16, which would be about 22 per cent, and during the last year ending June, 1918, there were 10 defectives, with 8 corrections. I do not say that this is a usual case; it happens to be ideal, but as it was the first village examined I have kept the data and have given it to you.

The next is the case of a typical rural school:

The following year there were 13 defectives, the next year 10, and last year 9, with 5 corrections. This is also an ideal situation, but I give it to you because it was the first rural school to be examined in our county. The following record of concrete results for our county since the beginning of the work of the school nurse speaks volumes in favor of the

The point that first attracts attention is the gradual lessening of the number of defects. In five years of examination, follow-up work, and applied remedial measures, the tangible, visible, physical defects were reduced from 82 per cent to 28 per cent. In the years 1917-18, with 738 recorded defects, 439, or 60 per cent, were corrected, leaving only 299 that did not receive attention.

Careful investigation shows that the time required by children to complete twelve years of work in the public schools is thirteen years when they have enlarged tonsils and nearly fourteen years if they have adenoids. Therefore every child helpt in this way is a net saving to the state. Surely there is no better way of saving money in education than to prevent this waste. Had these children grown to manhood and womanhood without this help the time lost in their education would have taken many years out of their working lives, resulting in a loss to themselves and to society; but there is another loss. A slow child requires more time and assistance from the teacher than does a normal child, so that all the normal children will receive just so much less attention and in consequence will be robbed of just so much preparation for life. The earning power of a high-school graduate is one hundred and thirty-eight dollars more per year than that of a grammar-grade graduate. Then if we estimate the working life of a man as thirty years, those who leave early lose $4,140.00. Suppose that these few cases of tuberculosis remained undiscovered. Is it not altogether probable that it would have been too late to save these lives? Who can estimate the loss in money, time, and health if these had been allowed to expose other children; but money estimates are paltry compared with the relief of human misery, the correction and prevention of physical defects, the decrease in truancy, and the lessening of criminality, all proving the value of the work of the school nurse as a community investment.

THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF PLAY

SAMUEL HAMILTON, COUNTY SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS OF
ALLEGHENY COUNTY, PITTSBURGH, PA.

To make a plea for play as a necessary part of a system of education is the purpose of this address. It aims to show, not only that play educates, but that its training is so vital, so necessary, and so educative that the child, as Froebel suggests, cannot grow into the full measure of his manhood without it, that the school without play is a misfit in this age, and that the training it gives is an educational deformity, pushing the mental at the expense of the physical.

It is difficult at times to distinguish between work and play. Play seemingly differs from work mainly in its purpose. The aim of work is utility, the aim of play is pleasure. One is economic, the other is recreational. Work is physical activity directed toward some useful end; play

is physical activity intended to gratify one's desire for pleasure, recreation, or amusement. The element of pleasure is found of course in both. But the essence of work is duty, utility, responsibility, discharged obligation; while the essence of play is fun, pleasure, happiness, amusement.

There is a more significant difference, however, between work and play. Play involves contests, man against man and group against group, not found in work. These contests arouse belligerent emotions and combative instincts which make a vital contribution to physical development that cannot come from work. During these contests the belligerent emotions and primitive instincts contribute certain bodily secretions resulting in physical vigor and physical stamina which work, however important, can never supply.

There is still another advantage that the physical contest in growing manhood and womanhood has over mere work. The death-rate from tuberculosis in the nation is rapidly decreasing, while that from organic heart trouble is increasing. The former is due to the scientific study of the disease and to the care of the afflicted, the latter to the neglect of the perfectly sound and healthful who are growing up into young manhood and womanhood. Physical contests, far more than mere work, enlarge and strengthen the vital organs during the stages of their growth and promote deep breathing, which is so essential to the physical well-being. The heart and the lungs during these stages are like other organs. They develop by using them in exercises that are up to the measure of their full capacity. As the race horse will never increase his speed unless he is pusht under favorable conditions, so the heart and the lungs of the growing child need the spur of contest to promote full-sized growth and full-developt capacity. To this end the contest in games and sports is superior to mere work.

1. If play educates, and if it is so educative as to be called a method of education by a distinguisht expert, it must develop in a more or less positive manner certain powers of the mind that are essentially and fundamentally a part of the child's education. In pointing out some of these powers of mind or of personality, six propositions may be stated, which, if reasoned out to a positive conclusion, like theorems in geometry, actually prove that play educates. These propositions may be stated, but for want of space the reasoning that forms the proof or argument must in the main be omitted.

a) Games and sports develop the power of attention and general alertness of mind. If this is true, to that extent at least they are educative. In a game of ball, for example, the player is all eyes and ears. His mind is wide awake, alert, and attentive in a high degree. Not the minutest detail misses him. If you doubt this, watch the game and try to see if the umpire is correct in his decisions. Your own alertness will scarcely be equal to the task. Indeed this game is as valuable in the development of attention and alertness of mind as many classroom lessons.