Your Part in Fighting
Malnutrition
Herbert Hoover says, “If we could grapple with the whole child situation for one generation, our public health, our economic efficiency, the moral character, sanity and stability of our people would advance three generations.”
This grappling with the lives and health of children is a tremendous responsibility. All mothers and fathers do not meet this responsibility, and therefore teachers, health workers and nurses become more or less accountable for the normal development of the younger generation.
Well known educational authorities claim that teachers have as a matter of fact a greater influence on the lives of children than the children’s own parents. Children—and parents too—look to their teachers for help.
Because of the strategic position they occupy teachers have an unusual opportunity to govern the physical as well as the mental development of the children with whom they come in contact. By so doing they can at the same time help to overcome the serious problem of dealing with retarded and backward children in school.
Health workers and nurses are also in an advantageous position to combat malnutrition, since they are constantly in contact with a number of children, either in the children’s own homes, or in clinics, day nurseries, settlement houses or other places where children are gathered together. In addition, they can do a great deal in the way of instructing parents in the rules of child health.
One of the most direct and effective ways in which teachers and health workers can deal with malnutrition is to start health and nutrition classes among children.
In order to bring the necessary information for starting such classes within reach of every teacher and health worker, the Borden Company has worked out a health program in careful detail which can be used as a practical guide by anyone wishing to carry on this work.
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