I was listening to comedy radio, and a comedian was talking about his younger days at school when he was screened for lice and scoliosis. (Joe Matarese joked about how his school just had an “all purpose room” unlike “fancy schools” today with gyms and auditoria.)
I had forgotten about this, although I don’t have interesting stories. There was a day when some public nurse took chopsticks and looked at the hair of all the kids. A different day when they measured the back curvature. I can also distinctly remember a school vaccine day where they gave out sugar cubes that had pink liquid, oral polio vaccine, on them. I think they gave us some shots too but am not certain. They might have looked at our teeth and checked our vision at some point - these are very vague memories from decades ago.
How many of these things do they still do? I’m sure they must have told the parents about the vaccine, but it seems like a higher percentage of parents would be difficult about it these days. Any good stories from lice or scoliosis day? They do these (or other public health measures) at your school? Did you get vaccines at school too?
I do have vague memories of some such things—a vaccine on a sugar cube (and one from a vaccination “gun”), vision and/or hearing tests, a demonstration on dental health. I don’t remember anything about lice, which I think means that my school was fortunate enough to escape that particular scourge while I was there.
How common is it for elementary schools to have a dedicated auditorium? High schools, yeah, but what I’ve always seen in elementary schools is a stage on one side of the gym, so that you could turn it into an auditorium by filling it with folding chairs.
While I’m sure they exist, in my middle-class upbringing and raising my own kids, I’ve never come across an elementary/grade school that wasn’t just “Here’s the gym… we roll out the tables for lunch period and set up the folding chairs for school events” (the kids just sit on the floor for assemblies).
I asked my 14 year old if he can remember any lice checks or scoliosis exams in his history and he said no but that doesn’t mean a whole lot. I think I remember getting an email once about lice checks but that was because they had found some and now had to look at everyone instead of an annual “Let’s look for bugs” thing. My own childhood memories involve both lice & scoliosis testing, plus getting fingerprinted in case we were kidnapped.
I got the Saulk vaccine at the doctor’s office. The Sabin vaccine was administered on “Sabin oral Sundays” at the school. I also got tetanus and smallpox vaccinations at the doctor’s.
No other vaccines for childhood illnesses. Measles had just had a vaccine in 1963, but I got the measles before I got the shot ( my brothers got it after I got sick, and didn’t catch it).
They had lice outbreaks, and subsequent lice checks, at the preschool my son went to. This was around 2012, so not all that long ago. In an affluent suburb of San Francisco.
Hearing, vision, and scoliosis checks. No lice screening.
K-6 school had a small auditorium which only held maybe 50 people, in addition to a full gym. No cafeteria. Everyone walked home for lunch and watched Bozo’s Circus.
Junior High (catchment school of four K-6 schools) had a huge auditorium and a gym. Also a cafeteria.
I’m just going by memory. I don’t know if they were checking for lice just because, or because the prevalence had skyrocketed that year.
Most of my elementary schools had a gym that doubled as an auditorium, dance hall, bake sale room and much else. In one of them, it was carpeted, which was odd - bad for indoor gym, except surprisingly good for floor hockey. None of my elementary schools had a cafeteria where you could buy food.
I remember the tablets you chewed up to check for plaque(teeth turned pink where plaque was) and an actual dentist from town gave us a talk on brushing properly. We all got a new tooth brush.
I’d forgotten about those pink tablets! We had those too. The dental assistant felt my brushing job was very mediocre, chastised me when my gums bled slightly after flossing, and suggested brushing for ten minutes or whatever they do. “Just put Inna-Gadda-Davida into the cassette deck and simply brush your way through that”.
Born in 1963,
Vague memories of a Scoliosis check.
Less vague memories of one dental and at least one vision check.
Clear memories of yearly hearing tests.
Nightmare memories of Tuberculosis tine tests!
I actually had head lice when I was in 3rd grade. I remember having to have some sort of cream put in my hair that made my scalp feel like it was on fire.
I also remember the polio vaccine vividly. It had just come out, and my mother took me to a school where there was a line of kids and parents out the door waiting to get the vax. A lot of crying going on. When it came my turn, a nurse jerked my pants down and plopped me face down on a table and then someone else stuck me with a needle. People today don’t understand how terrified parents were about this crippling disease, which had no cure. The only treatment was the iron lung. Little known fact: Neil Young had polio when he was five and still limps.
I was supposed to get vaccines at school, but I didn’t because they needed parental permission and I never gave my parents the forms to sign. (I had a needle phobia. Nowadays I can manage as long as I very steadfastly look the other way and don’t think about what’s happening.)
No scoliosis checks and I never heard of that happening. No lice checks in school, but if a parent found lice they would tell the school and the school would inform all the other parents. Then if we had nits upon checking at home, our mum would apply an insecticide treatment that has since been banned. My daughter has been at school for two terms and we’ve already had a couple of warnings about lice.
Why would that be uncom… oh, that kind of hernia. No idea, sorry.
For some reason, the doctor who gave me my pre-school boosters choose to inject me in the bum, and it was extremely painful and I had a huge bruise afterwards. This was the origin of my needle phobia, and it took me 20 years to get over it enough to willingly have another injection.
I’ve had probably a million+ needle or lancet sticks in my life.
Every about 20th one, I get the willies.
Even if I’m injecting myself. Freezes you right up.
I know, I know, insulin needles are tiny compared to vaccine needles.
I was forced to get over the jitters when I went into the service. I remember precisely when it happened. We were marched over to the infirmary and stood in line outside of a large tent, then asked if anyone was allergic to chickens, chicken eggs, etc. In my head, I knew I had no choice in the matter, so I basically flipped a mental switch from ‘fear’ to ‘fuck it’, and vaccinations and blood draws haven’t bothered me since.
I remember the scoliosis checks in the 90s. If there was a problem, what did they even do? A friend of mine had spine surgery in undergrad but I never got the impression that was common.
My pediatrician did this every year. Never anyone associated with school or independent sports.
My elementary school had a building which housed the library and the administration offices, plus the school nurse. I had my speech therapy in that building, in a room next to the nurse’s office.
Scoliosis checks were done in the nurse’s office, with the line going into the library. When we were done we exited on the other side, which was in front of the school’s receptionist.
The gym and cafeteria were in a separate building. The cafeteria had a stage with stairs going up on one end and the gym was at the other end. The gym and the cafeterial were separated by a folding wall.
