ave learned the necessity and the advantage of writing the
teacher an "excuse" when their children are absent. Furthermore,
neighbors' children are apt to learn by friendly inquiry what the
teacher may not have learned by official inquiry, why their playmate is
no longer on the street or at the school desk. While physicians are
sometimes willing to violate the law that compels notification of
infection, rarely would a physician fail to caution an infected family
against an indiscriminate mingling with neighbors. Whether the family
physician is careless or not, the explanation of the absence which is
demanded by the school would give also announcement of any danger that
might exist in the home where the child is ill.

If it be said that in hundreds of thousands of cases the child labor
law is violated and that therefore school examination is not an index
to the poverty or neglect occasioning such child labor, it should be
remembered that the best physical test is the child's presence at
school. The first step in thorough physical examination is a thorough
school census,--the counting of every child of school age. Moreover, a
relatively small number of children who violate the child labor law are
the only members of the family who ought to be in school. Younger
children furnish the index and occasion the visit that should discover
the violation of law.

Appreciation of health, as well as its neglect, is indexed by the
physical condition of school children. Habits of health are the other
side of the shield of health rights unprotected. Physical examination
will discover what parents are trying to do as well as what they fail
to do because of their ignorance, indifference, or poverty. In so far
as parents are alive to the importance of health, the school
examination furnishes the occasion of enlisting them in crusades to
protect the public health and to enforce health rights. The Committee
on the Physical Welfare of School Children found many parents unwilling
to answer questions as to their own living conditions until told that
the answers would make it easier to get better health environment not
only for their own children but for their neighbors' children.
Generally speaking, fathers and mothers can easily be interested in any
kind of campaign in the name of health and in behalf of children. The
advantage of starting this health crusade from the most popular
American institution, the public school,--the advantage of ins