Education: Next to Godliness

For 50 years, New York City public schools have made no provision for soap or towels in their washrooms. There was always plenty of water, but most schoolkids had to dry their sticky hands & faces on handkerchiefs, toilet tissue, or sleeves. Others just didn’t wash.

Last week the school board’s Committee on Hand Washing and Drying Facilities, formed to look into such matters, made a triumphant report of progress: the city had set aside $100,000 to provide soap and paper towels for 143,000 kindergarten and first-grade pupils. Could the 740,000 other unwashed New York City youngsters, from second grade to senior high, look to a cleaner, brighter future too? Said the committee’s secretary guardedly: “We have hopes.”