Contemporary threats to punish parents for childhood obesity sound novel and to many a bit of an over-reach by government schools. Yet, perhaps the idea isn't as new as we think.

The Jan. 19, 1908 NYT contains is a story concerning hygiene in the public schools:

This plan calls for the establishment of a Department of School Hygiene under the control of the Board of Education. This department would consist of a corps of physicians and nurses, under the direction of a medical expert skilled in the diseases of children. It would be clothed with the power, according to Dr. Maxwell [City Superintendent], not only to make physical examinations, but to prosecute parents who fail to put their children in proper physical condition to profit by the work of the school.

Prosecute parents? Wow.

Education economists today discuss the "education production function" for which the inputs are the student, her teachers, her peers, and the infrastructure. This is the same intuition being offered in the 1908 plan, that undernourished and otherwise physically unfit children are not efficient inputs to the education production function.

The good Dr. Maxwell (of 1908) offers some reasons for why city kids are not physically fit:

Lack of exercise, city children seldom having to walk more than two or three blocks to school, and having little work to perform about the home that would develop muscles and breathing capacity; crowding in poorly lighted and poorly ventilated apartments, which results in various forms of tuberculosis; lack of space for free play; lack of interesting occupation outside of school hours; excessive noise; lack of sufficient sleep; insufficient or unwise feeding; uncleanly habits of person...

Many of these reasons are now applicable to the suburban dweller as well, except, perhaps, the crowding in poorly lighted and ventilated apartments. After substituting asthma and other respiratory problems for tuberculosis, the list is almost exactly the same as we hear directed towards both city and suburban dweller. How many kids are washing dishes and cutting firewood in the suburbs today?

Dr. Maxwell then points out the effects of these maladies:

These conditions tend to produce various forms of nervousness, lowered vitality, defective eyesight, defective teeth, and probably growths in the nose and throat which restrict respiration and drive the child into reckless mischief and defiance of authority.

Is the nervousness of yesterday the ADHD of today? (Note: Although my two kids are 3.5 and 1.5 yrs old, I have no experience with ADHD) Is the "lowered vitality" of 1908 the "couch potato" or "video game fatigue" of today? Is there evidence that the maladies of today lead to poor eyesight and teeth? If so, then it would seem that after dedicating untold billions of dollars (and the efforts those dollars represent) to these problems, we haven't come all that far.

Dr. Maxwell then proposes the "make an example of somebody" approach to getting the parents in line:

If half a dozen parents were fined or imprisoned for failures, after repeated warnings to provide their children with necessary eyeglasses or to have adenoid growths removed, the example thus set would do more lasting good than any preaching on the subject.

At least he didn't suggest throwing one or both of the parents up against the wall.

I would suggest that Dr. Maxwell's plan was just about 100 years ahead of his time, although perhaps his plan will be implemented for a radically different reason.