Schools
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Schools. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
MEDICAL INSPECTION OF, a function which has been taken up by municipal and state governments only within recent years. As has been shown by statistics, many pupils are backward in their studies only because of lack of physical vitality. In 1920 it was shown that so many pupils in the schools of Brooklyn, N. Y., were compelled to pass through the same grades twice that, at the average cost of forty dollars a term for each pupil, the borough lost $2,000,- 000. On this basis various social organizations demanded an appropriation from the city of $100,000 for more effective medical aid to the school-children, contending that more than half of the extra expense could thus be saved. Medical school inspection was first instituted in France in 1886; then, in succession, this example was followed by Belgium, Hungary, Chile, Germany and Great Britain, the latter in 1908. In this country it was first instituted in New York City, in 1892; then in Boston, in 1894; in Chicago, in 1895, and in Philadelphia, in 1898. Practically every American city now has adopted medical inspection and several states have made it obligatory in all schools. In the larger communities this includes the services of visiting nurses, who instruct the children in personal hygiene. Out of 252,000 school-children inspected in New York City, in 1919, 74 per cent were found defective physically, defective teeth and vision being the chief faults.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
Common. The following statistics are taken from the report of the United States Commissioner of Education for 1908: Expenditure for public schools $343,602,738 Permanent school funds $177,488,515 Pupils enrolled 16,820,386 Male teachers 105,773 Average monthly salary of same $56.10 Female teachers 369,465 Average salary of same $43.67 Number of schoolhouses 256,789 Average length of term in days 147.2 Number of reform schools 96 Number of inmates 31,468 See also references under EDUCATION.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 table reports 16.8 million pupils, a school year averaging 147 days, and separate salary scales for men ($56.10 a month) and women ($43.67) han than than as a scandal but as a statistic; American public schools now enroll close to 50 million children for roughly 180 days a year, and paying women teachers less for the same work was made illegal by the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Collier's 1921 note that "practically every American city now has adopted medical inspection" describes the beginning of a permanent system: school nurses, vision and hearing screening, and required immunization records are now standard, and the defective teeth and eyesight found in 74 per cent of New York children in 1919 are far rarer, helped by fluoridation from 1945 onward and school meal programs. The 96 "reform schools" holding 31,468 inmates have become a juvenile justice system reshaped by the Supreme Court's 1967 In re Gault decision, which gave children due-process rights. Two things the accounts do not mention have since transformed the schools themselves: compulsory attendance in every state by 1918, and the end of legally segregated schooling after Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
Written for this edition, 2026.