les N. Chapin, M.D.

CHAPTER XXX

SCHOOL AND HEALTH REPORTS

For every school-teacher or school physician responsible for the
welfare of children at school, there are fifty or more parents
responsible for the physical welfare of children at home. Therefore it
is all important for parents to know how to read the index for their
own children, for their children's associates, and for their community.
School reports and health reports should tell clearly and completely
the story of the school child's physical needs.

[Illustration: NECESSARY TO EFFICIENT DEMOCRACY]

It is impracticable at the present time to expect a large number of men
and women to be interested in the reports published by school and
health boards, for, with few exceptions, little effort is made to write
these reports so that they will interest the parent. Fortunately, a
small number of persons wishing to be intelligent can compel public
officials to ascertain the necessary facts and to give them to the
public. So backward is the reporting of public business that at the
present time there is probably no service that a citizen can render his
community which would prove of greater importance than to secure proper
publicity from health and school boards.

Generally speaking, these published reports fail to interest the
citizen, not because officials wish to conceal, but because officials
do not believe that the public is interested. A mayor of Philadelphia
once furnished a notable exception. He called at the department of
health and complained against publishing the number of cases of typhoid
and smallpox lest stories in the newspapers "frighten the city and
injure business." A sanitary inspector who was in the room asked if
Philadelphia's business was more important than the health of
Philadelphia's citizens. As a result of her "impertinence" the
inspector was removed. That same year an epidemic of smallpox spread
through all the rural districts and cities of Pennsylvania, because
physicians thought it would be kinder to the patients not to make known
to their neighbors the presence of so disagreeable a disease. Almost
all health and school authorities, however, can be made to see the
advantage of taking the public into their confidence, because public
confidence means both public recognition and greater success in
obtaining funds. With more funds comes the power to do more work.

Other details with regard to health reports will be found