Article May 26, 1917 Issue

Legislation is pending at Sacramento providing for "physical...

Benicia (Cal.) Herald

Legislation is pending at Sacramento providing for "physical education for both sexes" in the public schools, "daily inspection of all pupils," and the supervision of sanitary matters in the home by means of school nurses. Many parents disagree on the matter of vaccination and prefer to impart the "physical education" to their children themselves. They will resent any monkeying with their children on the part of salaried officials. Further, those who know anything about the law of suggestion will object to physicians and health supervisors frightening children, and suggesting disease to them, by lectures and pictures embellished with horrifying details. It is much better to look on the healthy side of life. There will be one recourse left to parents if this legislation is passed—that is, the children can be sent to a private school. This will be done wherever parents can afford it.

Dr. Lewis P. Crutcher of Long Beach, a practising physician and president of the board of education there, says that when they did away with a high-salaried school physician at Long Beach the attendance immediately increased and there were less absences on account of sickness, the children and parents previously taking no chances of a physical examination and health supervision following every little indisposition. Doctor Crutcher, like most of us, wants to see the health of the children protected, but is opposing the pending legislation which would permit the state to invade the home and usurp the place of the parent in the most sacred relations of life, and writes one sentence that should be printed in type a foot high and placed where every citizen could read it,—It is the school that is public, not the child.

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