This week’s readings were based around the standards of health that were prescribed onto peoples of different race, ethnicity, sex and class through their children. These standards of health were based around Western European ideals. Health is an important lens that can tell us as historians more than level of healthiness of a society however it shed lights on other facets of society helping understand cultural ideas and perspectives.
In the chapter of Children’s Health Issues in Historical Perspective, written by Mona Gleason, she investigated the ways Inspectors across British Columbian schools set up standards of health to discipline children that did not fit within the Western ideas of health. The inspections carried out by teachers on children unfairly attacked the kids of different races, classes and locations. Her research was facilitated by University of British Columbia and used the Public Health Board of British Columbia’s reports to write the chapter. Even though the chapter seems a bit extreme when it claims that there was intentional pathologizing of those outside the health norms of white middle class British Columbians, the chapter is still useful in its application of using health as a historical lens. Rather than looking directly at the actual “healthiness” of children, the chapter rather illuminates the differences in personal experience and culture depending on people’s ethnicity, location and class, using the notions of health. For example, a Chinese child from Armstrong, British Columbia did not meet the health standards in place because of the time she spent working before school, thus coming to school unclean.[1]
In Myra Rutherdale’s chapter in Children’s Health Issues in Historical Perspective, she focuses on many of the similar ideas about health, however looking at how Western ideals in Northern Aboriginal communities were used to intervene in Aboriginal lives and create good health habits by reshaping Aboriginal children. “Children and their bodies stood at the centre of the battled waged with Native people over the regimes and rituals.”[2] Through the help of the University of Saskatchewan, Rutherdale relied heavily on the testimonies of newcomers that were entering many of these northern communities to help with perceived health problems. In the context of Canadian Aboriginal history, it is hard to imagine the number of levels of discrimination and attempts to “culture” Native children. Health became another avenue of this “assimilating” taken in order to make Native people adopt Western ways.
In Health Promotion in the Hutterite Community and the Ethnocentricity of Empowerment, the authors focus in on the struggle to find ways to implement healthy living techniques for Hutterites in way that is culturally specific to them. Considering their different modes of life, the authors take a historical look at the views of health and empowerment in Hutterite communities. In this article, the authors illuminate that health in Hutterite communities is much different where it is not appropriate to pray for good health and death or disability are not a motive to leading healthy lives because there is little fear associated with these factors due to their religious beliefs.[3] Understanding health from the Hutterite perspective shows the Hutterian culture and ways of thinking.
Bibliography
[1] Gleason, Mona. “School Medical Inspection and ‘Healthy’ Children in British Columbia, 1890-1930,” in Krasnick Warsh and Strong-Boag (Eds.), Children’s Health Issues in Historical Perspective, Waterloo, WLU Press, 2005: 298.
[2] Rutherdale, Myrna “Children, Health, and Hygiene in Norther Canadian Communities,” in Krasnick Warsh and Strong-Boag (Eds.), Children’s Health Issues in Historical Perspective, Waterloo, WLU Press, 2005: 320.
[3] Brunt, J.Howard, Elizabeth Lindsey, and Jennifer Hopkinson. “Health Promotion in the Hutterite Community and the Ethnocentricity of Empowerment.” Canadian Journal of Nursing Research 29, no. 1 (1997): 24.