This paper examines how "school hygiene" was taught and thrived around Republican China. The 1920s and early 1930s saw a proliferation of hygiene textbooks for the use of even the youngest schoolchildren. Designed to teach students to wash their hands, brush their teeth, and pay attention to how they dressed and ate, these materials were simple, everyday lessons that created models for students’ own personal behaviors. Later, the formalization of nursing and basic medical knowledge into teacher training courses indicated an expansion of the types of services expected of educators. Finally, during wartime, schools became centers of hygiene outreach. Far from facing oppressive, national- government demands to conform to hygienic standards, an educational institute’s ability to demonstrate hygiene competence became a symbol of its usefulness and patriotism. Schools and administrators were even able to use their status as potential hygiene ambassadors to leverage additional resources during wartime, as it demonstrated their ability to design and implement progressive initiatives and lead efforts for local mobilization.
