e
can judge of the two methods that are open to us,--_treatment at
school_ vs. _treatment away from school_.

Society is so organized that the treatment of serious physical defects
and social needs at school would upset the machinery a very great deal.
For the school to do for its children whatever they may need during
their school years will require the setting up of a miniature society
in every school building or under every school board. Unless schools
are to equip themselves to take the place of all existing facilities
for relief and surgery, children would not be so well taken care of as
at present. It should not be forgotten that the physical welfare of the
school child is the most accurate index to the physical needs of the
community. After all, the child lives for six important years before
coming to the school and leaves at the early age of fourteen or
fifteen; even while attending school it sleeps at home and is
influenced more by home and street standards of ventilation,
cleanliness, and morality than by conditions at school. It would seem,
therefore, the wider use of the school's influence to use the child's
appeal to strengthen every agency having to do with community health,
rather than to concentrate upon the child himself. If babies were
properly cared for up to the sixth year, the protection of the school
child's health would be infinitely easier. To take our eyes from the
child not yet in school and from the child just out of school is to
make the mistake that so many advocates of the child labor movement
have made of going whither and only so far as our interest leads us and
of not continuing until our work is accomplished.

[Illustration: "DOING THINGS" THROUGH MODEL TENEMENTS]

Do we want to make of our schools miniature hospitals, dispensaries,
relief bureaus, parks? Or shall we use the momentum of society's
interest in the school child to put within the reach of every school
building adequate hospitals, dispensaries, relief centers, and parks
for school child and adult? Shall every little school have its library,
or shall the child be taught at school how to use the same library
that is available to his parents and older brothers and sisters? If
the library is to be under the school roof, if dispensary and relief
hospital are to be conducted on the same site as the school, shall they
be known as dispensary, library, relief bureau, each under separate
management, or shall they be known as sc