Conclusions: How to raise the level of educational work in common rooms?
I. Re-organise existing common rooms. Up until now, common rooms have been set up at the Point and for all children from that Point. Of those children, only a few are suitable for the common room. Some suffer from tuberculosis, anaemia, and are delayed in their physical and mental development. There is only a small handful of children fit for the common room and they suffer from the fact that they are grouped together with an element that inhibits the work of the care worker. The majority of children is wasted in such conditions and is often exposed to tuberculosis. Thus, the following should be done:
II. Carry out a selection and organise common rooms for children suitable for them, as there are still those at the Points. The remaining children, sick, underdeveloped, lying in beds due to lack of clothing, would remain under the care of a mobile care-giver, who in her work would strive to prepare such a child systematically for the conditions of the common room, to “heal” the child. An example of such “healing” I still have in my mind this [27] sad image of a boy aged 11, a full orphan, lying in a bunk for days, having lost the will to live. And yet, by systematically taking care of him, I managed to lift this child out of apathy and then direct him to the common
room. Today, at the common room, he is cheerful, eager to learn, and hard-working – the result of the work of a mobile care-giver and then [stationary?] care-giver. The Education Committee can be organised and teaching introduced at such a common room.
December 1941 Cecylia Apel,²⁷⁹ CENTOS mobile care-giver
[28] Report on the work of the common room, Bagno [Street] 1
When the common rooms were established at the Points, care workers outlined a very broad programme of work: the common room was supposed to be a warm, bright corner, where children would find everything they needed: toys, books, pencils, a wise, kind word, and a caring hand. They intended to
279 Berman mentions Cecilia Apel among highly qualified pedagogues. See Berman, Vos der goyrl hot mir bashert, pp. 114–15.
