Читать книгу The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools онлайн

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These reports were given wide publicity; the ladies waited six months, over the summer vacation, and then came back to see what had been done. Out of twenty-three buildings reported dangerous as to fire conditions, twenty remained unchanged. Only two out of twenty-two schools had made any improvement as to provisions for the comfort of the teachers. As regards sanitation, fourteen had been improved, twenty-three had not been changed; and so on. How much the public authorities were concerned about such matters was shown by the experience of the Teachers’ Union, which prepared for an exhibit of the Public Health Association a series of posters and charts showing the physical condition of the schools. “Over nine hundred thousand children suffer from lack of a good ventilation system,” declared one of these posters. “No soap, no water, no towels,” declared another; and so on. Privately the nurses of the Health Department at this show all admitted that the posters represented the truth; but for three days the man who was then commissioner of health and the man who is now commissioner of health sought desperately to compel the Teachers’ Union to remove these posters; failing in this, the publicity agencies of the show cut out all the press notices of the teachers’ exhibits.

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