RURAL AND CITY SCHOOL CHILDREN COMPARED

Studies have been made of the comparative health of city and rural school children, which show results in favor of the former.  Of 330,179 children examined in New York City 70 percent were found defective, while of 294,427 examined in 1831 rural districts of Pennsylvania 75 per cent were defective.  The preceding chart shows the comparative prevalence of health defects among city and country children.

Investigate the following: 

Meaning of “vital statistics.”  Importance of vital statistics to your community.  Where recorded for your county or town.  What the vital statistics of your community for the last year show.

Causes of deaths in your community for the last year.  The percentage of these deaths that were “preventable.”  Increase or decrease of death rate in your community during recent years, in your state.

The nature of the prevailing sicknesses in your community during the last year.  Per cent of these that were contagious.  List of contagious diseases in the order of their prevalence.

Quarantine regulations in your community against contagious diseases.  Extent to which they are observed.  Who is responsible for their observance?  For their enforcement?

Observe condition of sidewalks and other public places with respect to expectoration.  Is there a law on the subject in your community’?  Is it observed or enforced?  Who is responsible?  Dangers from expectoration.

Medical inspection in the schools of your county, town, and state.  If any, its results.  Kinds of defects most commonly found.  How is it conducted?  Who sends the inspectors?  To what extent the homes of the community cooperate with the schools in getting results from medical inspection.

BETTER CONDITIONS IN CITIES DUE TO ORGANIZED TEAM WORK

We may well ask why ill health and physical defects seem to be more prevalent in rural communities than in cities.  The answer probably is, simply, that in cities they are prevented more effectively.  The chart on page 313 shows that while the death rate in New York City was 20.6 per thousand in 1900, it had declined to 14 per thousand in 1914; while that in the rural districts of New York State remained practically the same during these years (15.5 per thousand in 1900, 15.3 in 1914).

This indicates that health conditions in the city were originally much worse than in the country.  They were rapidly improved by organization for health protection.  There is not the occasion, in rural communities, for the elaborate health-protecting organization that is now found in all large cities, because the people in rural communities are not so completely dependent upon one another nor at the mercy of conditions over which, as individuals, they have no control.  And yet even in rural communities physical well-being depends largely upon organized team work.