Education has changed a lot over the past eighty years, so to get an idea of what was taught in elementary school during that time we are going back to 1935 when the book Good Habits by Charters, Smiley, and Strang, the fourth book in the Health and Growth Series, was written. This book, along with five others, tells short stories of children and how they form good habits in their lives. Throughout the book, there are vocabulary words that are defined in the index. The purpose of this was to teach children health related words so that they were prepared to “read intelligently popular health articles after graduation and in adult life.” As mentioned in the foreword, the authors’ intentions for writing this book was to “make its mastery so interesting that it becomes a favorite subject of study…
establish habits of health…and furnish the child with latest scientific information about health and disease.” This book is very much an old fashioned lesson book used by teachers to teach their students about healthy living.
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By Sierra Scott