The Great Washed
Mitchell vs. hygiene
March 1986
Hand washing is the single, most important technique for preventing the spread of disease and should be done frequently. Guidelines are attached which emphasize the proper protocol for hand washing. It is imperative that each principal provide his staff and students the opportunity to comply with the protocol for hand washing. Therefore, each principal or his designee is directed to inspect their respective washrooms to ensure that all sinks are operating efficiently and each rest room has appropriate soap and towel dispensers.
Mencken understood vulgarity, and not as a class distinction, but as a mental one. “Hygiene,” he said, “is the corruption of medicine by morality.” And school, we will say, is the corruption of education by morality.
And Emerson, who was not all that dirty, noticed that “people who wash much have a high mind about it, and talk down to those who wash little.”
As to Robert Price’s customary degree of cleanliness, we can make no guess. But we do know that he is the superintendent of the schools of Ann Arundel County in Maryland, and the author and promulgator of the proper protocol cited above. Thus, knowing something about many other members of his tribe, we can make a guess about the height of his mind and of his customary degree of morality. He is a caring man, a sharing man, a man who thinks of others. He loves children.
If it weren’t for the fact that all the school people are caring, sharing child-lovers, who have nobly forgone all the lucrative and prestigious callings open to people of their intellectual powers, our schools would be changed beyond imagining. They would become dreary academies devoted to dull, unmitigated studies in the pursuit of mere disciplines. There would be no enhancement of self-esteem, no free play of the creative imagination for the solution of global problems in the seventh grade rap-sessions, and, probably, not a clean hand to be found.
School is the place where the Uncaring and the Unsharing learn better, where the Great Unwashed get taken to the cleaners—the Great Washed, who know how to devise the proper protocols, and even how to get paid for such work.
We wish we had the space to reprint all of “Proper Handwashing Procedure,” the instruction page that came with Price’s prolegomenon, in which “hand washing” is consistently written as two words. No matter. The important thing is the washing, and the instructions do point out that it is necessary to “wet hands with running water,” and then to “combine soap and water to wash hands.” Exactly how and where to “combine soap and water” is, alas, not specified, and we can not tell whether to “apply liquid, powder, or dispensable machine type soaps” to the running water, which is “necessary to carry away dirt and debris,” or to the still, or stagnant water left on the hands, which may, like “bar soap in soap dishes,” encourage the growth of “bacteria.”
Step Four says, “Wash hands, using a circular motion and friction.” Go ahead. Give it a try. Use a circular motion. Of something. Just for the hell of it, don’t use any friction, and see what happens. That will show you how important it is to have among us men like Robert Price. Without our educators to give us the secret of using friction, we would stand around forever, waving our dripping hands all in vain, and forgetting to “include [in circular motion] front and back surfaces of hands, between fingers and knuckles,” and perhaps even letting bacteria grow on “the entire hand area.”
Yes. The entire hand area. Where but in our schools could we hope to find such finesse, such exquisite accuracy? Who but a school superintendent would show such a lively awareness of unfelt needs, and so gently engender a more perfect cleanliness in those of his subordinates who might very well be washing, even as you read these words, only a portion of the hand area? We only regret that he did not remind everybody to be sure to wash both hands.
In all of this, there is a lesson for us taxpayers. Sure, it must have taken a long time, and thus money, for Robert Price, Ph.D., to polish up the proper protocol for hand-washing and finalize the guidelines for proper hand-washing procedure. And it did take lots of time, and paper, and thus money, to send out all the copies. And it will take lots of time, and dutiful vigilance, and thus money, on the part of each principal, or his designee, to see to it that all the washrooms are operating efficiently, and to be certain that even the gym teachers use friction, and then “wipe surfaces surrounding sink [or the entire sink area] with clean paper towel and discard towels immediately,” lest “damp surfaces promote the growth of bacteria,” and the big service workshops for all the staff will take up lots of time, and thus money, but it will be worth every cent and minute. We can not afford to cut corners on Quality Education.
Richard Mitchell
