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• 1 2020-10-09T18:50:09+00:00 Hygiene and Recreation 7 plain 2021-03-22T15:20:22+00:00     While unassuming compared to the monoliths of English and Economics in the curriculum, Courses on Hygiene and Recreation were essential topics of study in the program, aiming to provide a higher quality of life to the students of the Summer School by instilling healthy habits and practices. Hygiene courses focused on physical and mental health, addressing issues brought upon students by long days in factories and inadequate prior education: correcting postures, describing healthier diets, and advising the best ways to ease muscle stresses and strains brought upon by repetitive motions of industrial tasks. Students were also provided with psychological counseling and one-on-one doctor’s appointments, tailoring the advice to their exact situations. For many, this was the first doctor's appointment they had had in years, and for many more, the first counseling session they had ever experienced. Students were diagnosed with underlying ailments and advised on the best ways to treat it both during their time on campus and beyond. Living on the idyllic suburban campus for months at a time assisted several students suffering from ailments brought upon by industrial fumes or toxic materials—though this was often a short term solution as students had to return to their jobs at summer’s close. Through the Hygiene courses, the Summer School sought to improve the wellbeing of students by providing tailored advising to each individuals’ lived experiences, understanding that the needs of workers in industry were not uniform by any means.
  
      While not strictly a part of the Hygiene curriculum, efforts were made by the administration of the Summer School to provide a proper diet to the students at meals. This was often a tough roadblock to overcome, with students of various backgrounds having strong preferences and traditional diets that varied wildly depending on what was available to them at home. Even as the cooks attempted to balance healthy diets and a sense of comfort and community that was provided by familiar food, several students still refused to eat at meal times, instead spending their evenings consuming food mailed to them from home, gathering to share their bounty with others who craved the familiarity of the cured meats, pickled vegetables, and baked goods available in their home city.
  
      Lessons in sports and recreation were essential, and one of the areas that students had the least experience in when entering the School. Physical Education instructors, alongside undergraduate assistants, taught the women in the Summer School how to play several sports and, most notably, taught students how to swim in the pool of the gymnasium. Exercises included calisthenics, field hockey, tennis, and baseball. A yearly baseball game between faculty and students was held during the summer, often with increasingly elaborate team costumes. Practice with sports and swimming enabled a greater sense of agency for students, and oftentimes allowed them to connect with a community when they returned home at the end of the summer. Florence Hemley Schneider, in a 1941 analysis of workers' lives after attending the Summer School, discussed the ways in which health and wellness training at the Summer School left lasting impressions on students. Pro-labor institutions such as the YWCA often had sports facilities such as tennis courts or pools, and it was here that students could exercise while maintaining their connection to like-minded communities that they had grown close to during their time at the School.