[Report 1930] / School Medical Officer, Somerset County Council.

  • Somerset Council
Date:
1930
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1930] / School Medical Officer, Somerset County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    26/48 (page 24)
    The classes lieltl by INIiss Smith (hiring the year have been;— \Veston-super-i\lare—a classes for girls, 4 classes for boys. Jfaiiwell—1 class for girls, 1 class fur buys. Hath Rui'al area—4 classes for girls, G classes for boys. Clevcdon—‘2 classes for girls, 2 classes for boys. I’he children are classified by the Hosture Chart before taking the exercises and again at the end of the course. [Marked improveinent was shown as well as a definite increase in breathing capacity. Follow-U]) classes by selected teachers who had altended Miss Smith’s posture classes and seen the children cariw out the exercises were carried out ;it Street, Wells, (ilastonburv, Weston-super-Mare and Jbinwell. Miss Smith visited from time to time and reported that tliese classes were competently given and of decided benefit. (c) It is not enough to t.ake children with defective posture and treat them. It is far .more important and fa.r-reaching to try and develop the utilisation of physical exercises so that they result in the jirevention of postural defects. Such detects are to a considerable extent manufactured in, school actively- owing to faulty instruction as regards sitting, standing or writing positions, or passively by failure to control faulty physical development. Miss Smith conducted an interesting experiment at two (Ilastonburv schools during 11)29-80. The teachers of those schools met her for 1 to T.^- hours each week for S weeks. During these .periods she gave talks on physical training with special regard to posture. She explained -fully all the exercises which the teachers intended teaching during the following week in the physical training lessons, giving details of correctness and ])ointing out all possible mistakes which might be made. Thus the actual exercises of the Hoard of Education's Syllabus were correctly taught. In addition to these exercises the teachers were asked to include in each lesson h\e exercises specially important in ladation to jiosture. Idle exercises were demonstrated by boys stripped to the u aist, thus enabling tlu' teachers to observe the exercises correctly' and incorrectly .piud'ormed. In this v ay tiiey were able to realize the \ alne of each se])arate exercise and w itness how quickly muscle fatigue occurs in the growing child. The results attained have been very satisfactory. The exercises jic-rformed by the children have been really beneficial and did de\(dop wind they were intended to develop and wore upon the right lines. A considerable series of comparative ])hotographs were taki-n from these -eliildren before and after the course and for comjiarison at otlu'r sch<x>ls, the teachers from w Inch had not had the benelit 'uf Ibis special course and tlu' demonstrations but carried out the same exercises. These jiholographs an<l exaiuimdion of the children showed the superiority of the results when this special instruction had been given.