Race, class, and health: school medical inspection and "healthy" children in British Columbia, 1890-1930.

Abstract

School medical inspection provides a window on the construction of "healthy" children in British Columbia over the turn of the 20th century. Public health reformers, doctors, teachers, and school nurses encouraged children and their parents to conform to a particular model of healthy living. This paper argues that this model, reflecting Anglo-Celtic, middle-class, and urban sensibilities, pathologized children and families unable or unwilling to conform to this powerful social ideal. Far form simply signaling the triumph of sanitary science, school medical inspection was a powerful means of legitimizing existing relations of power and confirming social boundaries.