Beginning of the Use of Schools in the Hygiene Campaign in Shanghai at the end of the 1920s

Abstract

This study focuses on the Hygiene Campaign in Shanghai at the end of the 1920s, and by clarifying the actual participation of schools in the Hygiene Campaign, revealing that schools played a role in the indoctrination of the people while being incorporated into the Hygiene Campaign of the Shanghai authorities.

With the official establishment of the Shanghai Municipal Government in July 1927, the Public Health Bureau (PHB) began to address various health and hygiene issues in Shanghai society, and the Hygiene Campaign was one of its projects. Under the philosophy of improving sanitary conditions and revitalizing the nation, the PHB’s Hygiene Campaign aimed to indoctrinate the general public, and it can be seen that they attempted to transmit hygienic knowledge and raise the public’s awareness of hygiene through the development of “entertainment” activities by pupils who were considered as “future citizens. Children appeared as a “medium” who conveyed hygienic knowledge to the people through their body movements and dialogues, and at the same time, the students themselves had the opportunity to be injected with hygienic knowledge. Through the activity of yugei play in the first campaign, this paper reveals the duality of the school in hygiene education.