1 The Rochester Health Bureau and Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health and Department of Pediatrics, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, N.Y.
Editors: JOSEPH STOKES JR., M.D..
Present knowledge of child growth and development hinges around three general principles: the pattern-formation or stage, the individual uniqueness, and the interrelationship of all aspects of the growth process.
If we are to apply these principles to school children we need to recruit and select better personnel to work with them; we need to bring the benefits of this knowledge to such personnel in their training; we need to break down the tendency to compartmentalization of such personnel in their daily work with children.
If we are to apply these principles to a school program we need to knit all aspects of that program together more closely than ever before. This is particularly true of the relationship of school health services to the school curriculum.
Technics of measuring physical growth have been devised which are superior to former technics. Although they have a useful, if limited, role to play in the total school health program, their role in the screening and assessment aspects of the program remains in an experimental stage.
Submitted on July 27, 1952