If it follows-and it does-that first and foremost the physical health of the children must be looked after, and that we are to have a proper care of the children in school, then the teacher must come in for her share of responsibility and duty. She must not only conserve the health of the children, but must contribute something for public health through the proper study of hygiene in schools. The function of the school has greatly changed in past years and greater demands are made upon it. In response to increased public requirements and changed conditions, it must loyally undertake new tasks. A hundred years ago, about all the parents expected from the school was that their children be taught to read, write and cipher. Now a score of school subjects and arts are required by law. They didn't expect the public to pay much for their school education. To-day the school is supported wholly by public taxation. In all these changes the school has been assuming more and more the function of the home in the training of children and youth. The home in village and city no longer gives to boys and girls a valuable manual training. The school is trying to supply the lack. Under urban conditions, more and more, the child is sent to school to learn those things that you and I, perchance, learned on the farm.

I would have the school so ordered and conducted as to be a strong agency, both by practice and instruction, for the education of the public in matters of health. The school certainly can do much to enlighten the home. By properly training its pupils it can promote a healthy public opinion, an intelligent public opinion, in regard to sanitary conditions, both public and private.

A good schoolhouse is a prime condition, not only for the health of pupils but also for the efficiency of the teacher. Teachers are too often handicapped. We must realize that a teacher is susceptible to every influence, that good conditions not only enhance her work but also make her a better teacher. Many of our teachers are immature and untrained. They are yet to be trained by experience. Our very schoolhouses help train our teachers. Put a fair teacher into good surroundings, with good health conditions, and with everything arranged so as to inspire her with an ideal of cleanliness and the proper care of the children and she will easily learn and constantly improve. But take a refined and intelligent woman, put her into an old dilapitated schoolhouse with leaky roof, rotten floor, broken windows, dirty walls and filthy outbuildings, she can accomplish very little. And the weak teacher soon becomes no better than the schoolhouse. If our school boards will make good schoolhouses everywhere, all our teachers will soon be educated up to the demands of the people.

Do not misunderstand me as saying that conditions are generally bad. Two thirds of our children go to school in good buildings. Poor schoolhouses are the exception, but we must get rid of them. We want good schoolhouses everywhere. For example, one schoolhouse comes to my mind. When it rained the children had to huddle together into one corner; the door had been carried away, but somebody had put up an old window shutter; the roof of the outhouse was gone; everything was in the same dilapi

dated state; and a school was actually taught last summer under these conditions here in Vermont! It is, of course, an exceptional case, and great improvement is actually making. We build twenty-five and repair four hundred schoolhouses yearly. And in all this great improvement, I heartily appreciate the work of the Health Board of the State and of the service of health officers. Vermont has no greater public interest than this work. I can see the results of your work all over the state. I could relate very pleasant reports about conditions remedied.

There are in this state a few old buildings that were built forty or fifty years ago that are still being used for schoolhouses. The children of to-day in them are not having as good opportunities as their grandfathers did, for the buildings have deteriorated. A man will say "I went to school there forty years ago, and what was good enough for me is good enough for my boy." It is not as good as the father had. There has been deterioration all these years. The schoolhouses of fifty years ago compared with the homes of that time. Children reared in the homes of to-day need schoolhouses to correspond. It sometimes happens that children of refined homes are forced to attend school in schoolhouses utterly out of keeping with the comfort, cleanliness and refining influences of this day and generation. What would happen if an officer should undertake to enforce the truancy law under such conditions? I believe that no court would compel children to attend school in some of our schoolhouses.

We are doing fine things in Vermont educationally. Her people are loyal to their paramount interest of school education. According to a statement of the United States Commissioner of Education the tax rate for schools in the United States is the highest in Vermont with a single exception. Vermont spent in ten years a million and a quarter dollars for new school buildings. They are the pride of many communities. And yet the building I described makes us all ashamed. Improvement must go on till there is not an unhealthful schoolhouse in Vermont. Nothing less will satisfy her people.

It has already been stated here that schoolhouses are a great source of contagion. You know that a little boy or girl may go to school in the morning, take a chill, come home at night, sicken and even die. You know that diphtheria breaks out in school, and one or more pupils never return. And you know it might have been prevented by care. I might give you many examples in which the school has sent disease and death into the home. With only a hint of the sad and serious story that might be told, I plead, as parent and citizen, in behalf of the people of Vermont that you will do all in your power to remedy these conditions.

Now most improvement is to come through you doctors and health officers. The people will pay attention to what the dectors say. The people will give reasonable attention to us teachers and superintendents, but when the doctor puts his foot down and says a thing, his opinion is respected. If the schoolhouses are to be improved, it can best be done through the doctors and health officers, on the ground of the health of the people's children.

The law up to last fall was that the State Board of Health could direct the building of new schoolhouses, but made no provisions about remedying old buildings. I think it is time for some of our progressive communities to put a decent system of heating and ventilation into old buildings. Most of our new buildings are built according to approved rules of sanitation. But there is need of improvement in many old buildings, even in some of our larger towns.

Reference has already been made to-day to the work of janitors. After a building is built according to sanitary rules, it is too often left to take care of itself. The boys are allowed the run of the building. Floors are not properly swept and too rarely. Dirt and dust accumulate, walls are defaced and disorder obtains. What is needed more and more is more competent janitors who will take proper care of buildings. School hygiene demands better janitor service.

I would like here to sound a little note of encouragement in calling your attention to the fact that Vermont paid for janitor service last year over $40,000, being a gain of $6,000 in three years. We appreciate more and more the importance of care of the schoolroom. Only two days ago I received a letter from a village making inquiry regarding the engagement of a competent janitor.

There is a law which requires the health officer to report the conditions of the different schoolhouses and public places in his town to the annual March meeting. I know how you feel about it. Some of you do it year after year, and little notice is taken of your report. I would like to submit to you that it is just this repetition that is often needed to stir the public mind. If a health officer, March meeting after March meeting, reports to the citizens of his town that they have a schoolhouse that is not fit to be used, sooner or later the public is going to be influenced. I do not wish unduly to urge this matter upon you, but I do believe that a great deal of good has been accomplished by the health officers impressing upon the people year after year the necessity of better conditions. Health officers made such report in seventy-two towns in 1902; in seventy-four towns in 1903; in one hundred and three towns in 1904.

In 1904 there was another important law passed which provides for the testing of eyes and ears of children in school, and which, I firmly believe, will greatly promote the health of school children.

I wish also to call your attention to a law which was passed last fall, under which the State Board of Health has power to examine or cause to be examined, any schoolhouse or schoolbuilding, anywhere in the state of Vermont, and if found unsatisfactory it may be condemned by the State Board of Health. This is progressive legislation and gives practical opportunity for improvement.

If, in your town, there is a schoolhouse totally unfit for use, I hope that you will have the condition of such schoolhouse brought to the attention of the State Board of Health for their examination. The condemnation of a few schoolhouses would not only conserve the health of children but stimu

late a public appreciation of needed improvement. The time has come when we cannot tolerate certain conditions, and I expect we shall reap results from this law and its administration in coming years.

Discussion by Dr. Goss, Norwich.

There is an old saying "that a thing smells as bad as a summer school," and that means something too. I have some very vivid recollections, and have in my mind now some very good pictures of things which certainly did exist when I went to school. I occupy the position of servant to the school and health board; that is some advantage to myself and I hope to the schools and health of the community. I am chairman of the board of school directors and health officer of the town. When I see a schoolhouse that is not right, I fix it right and say nothing about it. That of course cannot always be done.

There are a few things that I wish to speak about. I wish that our State Board of Health would make a ruling, making it absolutely necessary that running water be placed in every schoolhouse in the state of Vermont. There is hardly a country schoolhouse that has not some good source of drinking water. It could be arranged so that it could be shut off at the end of the term. If there is anything in the state of Vermont that spreads contagion and disease it is the old tin water pail. I have known of a contagious disease going through a whole school, every child in the school; one child contracts the disease, the next one takes it, and the next, and so on. All this is not necessary; the expense of putting a stream of running water would be very slight indeed.

I don't know what to say about our country schoolhouses. I don't say anything about the schoolhouse in the towns and cities; it is the schoolhouse out on the hillsides that I want to call attention to. The outhouses are filthy, the floors decaying, the windows admit more air per capita than is necessary. I was in a schoolhouse a short time ago, and you could put your right foot right down through the boards of the floor; that is what you might call direct indirect ventilation. That town thinks it has a pretty good system of schools. That is a fact; I have seen it, and I regret to say that two years ago when I was first appointed chairman of the school board, there were several schools in the same condition in our town.

The heating problem of most of our country schools is a problem indeed. An old box stove that has done service for fifty or sixty years and is still in use, patched up with some tire iron; the stove door is broken and that is patched up and a fire is started up; then the children are roasted for a while, then the fire goes out, and they are frozen. Some system should be adopted whereby heat could be applied more economically and with better results than at the present time. I confess I am unable to solve the problem. The country schoolhouses have no basements, no furnaces, and as has been suggested, no janitor. We have adopted the janitor service, and placed it under the care of the teachers, paying the teacher so much per term, and if we have a filthy schoolhouse, we come back on the teacher. We have adopted a plan

of applying a good parafine oil to the schoolhouse floors, then when it is swept, use sawdust, and we think we can get up most of the dust.

Most every

I wish to say a word about the filthy old blackboards. teacher I find has some throat difficulty, as well as the children. They stand at the blackboard and use the erasers, and inhale the chalk. I wish some way could be suggested to remedy this. I think perhaps a schoolmaster could solve that problem, to see if it could not be done. I don't know of any way.

I have made it a plan for the last two years to call the teachers together once every term, and give them a little instruction in the common diseases that are likely to appear in a schoolhouse. I think every teacher should be instructed in these matters. It is a surprising thing to go into a schoolhouse and hear the teachers give instructions in physiology and hygiene. It is so scattered and desultory, that we wonder that any results follow. I believe that not only the health board but the school board should require that teachers be instructed sufficiently in these matters to give them an idea of what is expected of them when they go into a schoolroom.

I think every teacher should know ophthalmia, or any of the simple diseases. If a child comes to school and complains of a sore throat, send that child home at once. We have not had any serious disease in our schools in the last two years. It is the duty of the health officers to instruct the teachers so that they can look after the health of the children under their charge.

This matter of disinfection of schoolhouses has been pretty well discussed. I make a practice of spraying the room, filling it up with a strong solution of formaldehyde and allowing it to remain until within a few days of the beginning of the new term, then have it swept and cleaned out, and I find that is a pretty good way to get the disinfection. I leave word with the committee or some one in charge to notify me when the school is closed, and I go there and do the disinfecting, and I think it is a good way.

This matter of putting running water into the schoolhouses, I do feel to be very serious, for the old dirty water pail is responsible for a great deal of the sickness among school children, and I call your attention to a few things that are now in existence.

Suggestion by Dr. Clark.

Dr. Goss asks for some way of dispensing with the old blackboard. We can easily dispose of it. In my town of Castleton we make blackboards of soft slate, such as is used in making slate pencils, and slate pencils could be used. The boards could very easily be washed and kept clean. I wish to submit that as a matter for consideration.

Further discussion by Dr. Norcross, Judge Fisher and Mr. Butterfield.

I think the people of Vermont are in close sympathy with the work of the health board. There are some conditions which are bad and which should be changed. I will tell you one which is most illustrative of it.