Part 5 (1/2)

Nor is this all The Optician and the Oculist have studied the matter so carefully and know the eye so thoroly in its various stages of development that they know exactly the size of type that children of various ages should use And they know, too, the kind of paper that should be used in books for children And they have told us all about it But we systeained with such painstaking care, and instead of using the large clear type and the unglazed, soft tinted paper reco the unsatisfactory merely because it is a little cheaper Penny wise and pound foolish we surely are What we save noe shall have to pay later on with coo physical pain and ain We are told by our scientific friends the relative amounts ofand floor space that the schoolroohted! Not one in ten has as ood portion of what has been provided is frequently covered up by shades thru the teacher's perverted notion of relative values--seereater appreciation for certain so-called artistic effects than for eye coain, these scientific friends of ours have told us that there should be in the schoolrooht should not shi+ne upon the blackboards nor into the faces of the children, but that it should come only from the rear and the left and from above They have found out, too, and told us, the proper shades of color for the walls--scientific knowledge, all of it, and therefore thoroly reliable

But how systeard all this valuable infor there is nothing that should receive more careful and scientific consideration than the , but too often the architect is either entirely ignorant of the entire matter, or else is selfishly interested in so-called architectural effects

I do not s, that we have no school houses properly constructed, no school books properly printed, and no teachers intelligent and sensible in their handling of boys and girls Not at all During the last twenty years we haveht spots are still the exception and not the rule The friends of children and of the race need to keep vigilantly at work

Now, let us look at the matter from another point of view Let us ask what are the results of this persistent and widespread disregard of the normal conditions under which the eye should work and of the fundamental laws of eye development What do we find? Why, we find just what you are prepared to expect after considering the above disregard We find that, whereas at the beginning of school life the percentage of school children suffering froe increases as we ascend the grades In other words, the regular, syste the eyes--all the ti serious visual defects Gulick and Ayers came to this conclusion as one of the results of their exhaustive investigation, made in 1908, which culminated in the well knoork on ”Medical Inspection of Schools,” published at that ti since they found that the prevalence of other physical defects steadily decreases as the years pass

An investigation carried on in Jefferson City, Missouri, in 1907-1908, illustrates the point under discussion; 20 of all children in grades one to three inclusive were found to have defective vision, whereas in grades nine to twelve inclusive 405 were found thus handicapped In some parts of Gerrades is seen to be much more marked than in our own country In one particular study that cohtedness alone (published, however, soo) it was shown that the increase was from practically none at all to approximately 100 In other words, the work of the schools had eneral tendency seems to be in this direction Indeed, I know of but one study in which a contrary tendency has been observed And that was in a rural district--St Louis County, Missouri--where a study was o Under the conditions observed there, the frequency of short-sightedness seee And the reasons for this local tendency, being so directly contrary to the general tendency, estions have been ainst the city districts being, in the ienic points of view; or the fewer pupils in the classes in school, thus enabling the teachers to giveundue eye-strain; and the shorter school year ed periods of eye-strain But whatever be the explanation of this interesting exception, it yet reular work of the school, week in, week out, year after year, causes the eyes of our children to deteriorate, or at least the two go hand in hand with grounds for a very strong suspicion in the eneral situation that the one is the cause of the other

With this point established, namely, that the work of the schools is but ill-adapted to the structure the nature of the child's eye, resulting in steady deterioration, let us try to see hoidespread is such deterioration and how serious This can best be done briefly thru the use of a few statistics taken froations that have been made as to the physical conditions of our school children

Froures save those that bear on the matter of visual defects since that is our one topic of discussion

In Cleveland, Ohio, in 1906-1907, a very exhaustive and illueneral supervision of Dr Wallin, one of the most eminent authorities on the relationshi+p of the physical and the mental in the work of our schools Dr Wallin called to his assistance many experts, both medical and physical, and his report was a very noteworthy one from many points of view I touch only two or three points here and there In one school, the Mayflower, located in a fine residence section of the city, 972 pupils were exa from some rather serious form of eye defect In an East End school, another of the so-called better class of schools, 668 children were examined and 324 found with defective vision Eventhan these were the results found in a school of about the saested” district of the city Six hundred and sixteen were exanificant fact was brought to light by this investigation--the disregard paid to the whole matter by parents and teachers Perhaps I should not include teachers in speaking of this disregard since they have, at best, but advisory power In the East End school, out of the 668 children examined, 216, or 324 were found defective, but only 43, or 64, were being relieved by the use of glasses And in the ”congested” district the disparity was evensince out of the 437, or 711 of the entire nu relieved

In one investigation made in New York City in 1908, 1,442 pupils were considered, and 42 found suffering from eye defects In Jefferson City, Missouri, in 1908, the results of the exa from sorees Of these 1,000 children, 410, or 41, were found to need the assistance of glasses, but only 38, or 38, were being thus assisted

In Los Angeles, California, in 1909, 5,000 children were exaain, in Philadelphia, in 1909, the well-known Dr Risley found, in an examination of 2,422 children, that 447 were continual sufferers from some form of eye trouble I could easily cite similar results from many more studies, but surely these are sufficient These are startling facts, and very serious e thinkit in its relationshi+p to anything else But e stop to consider the fact that these sufferers are children, in the schools, and are thus handicapped in their work of education--in their efforts to fit theer proportions and beco

What does it mean? Why, it means, in terms of the school man, retardation and elimination To the layman those wordsof a pupil in his educational progress thru the grades, necessitating the spending of a longer period than that which is considered normal For example, a nore and is prorade correspond to this standard” Thus, the standard age for a second grade pupil, during the year, is 7 years; for a fourth grade, 9 years; and for an eighth grade, 13 years; or in every case, five rade If one is older than the nurade plus five, he is retarded by the amount of the difference; thus a twelve-year-old child in the sixth grade is retarded one year since a sixth-grade child should be but eleven years old Somehow he has lost a year Thru failure to do satisfactory work such a child has had to repeat the work of so out of a child froular course is corades since the compulsory attendance laws require attendance But just as soon as the upper lie is reached there is much of it

I do not kno closely you have followed this matter of retardation in the schools and elimination from them, but I think sufficiently to render it unnecessary for th Letthe seriousness of the situation In 1907, Mr S L Heeter, at that ti under instruction of his Board of School Inspectors, ation as to the matter of retardation in the schools of that city You may be surprised to learn some of the results He found more than one-half, exactly 56, of all the children in the schools at least one year behind norrade, and many of them much more than one year behind To be exact: 12,672 children were below grade Of these, 6,328 were one year behind; 3,650 were two years behind; 1,689 were three years behind; 651 were four years behind; 221 were five years behind, and 133 were six years behind

Nohat is the cause of such a serious situation? Mr Heeter, in his report of his findings, speaks as follows:

”There are evidently many causes of this phenomenal retardation--yet it seeical, and that iven in our schools to the bodily conditions of our children will thro light on our educational problems, and even on the subject of backward children, and of delinquency itself” ”It appears,” he goes on to say, ”that the schools have been too exclusively concerned about the minds of children and too little concerned about their bodies Much ti to ard to physical inequalities, until noaste products are clogging our educational machinery” And Mr Heeter's conclusion is that of all who have studied the matter with any care

Letbetween the two, that is, between retardation and physical defects I can do it briefly by referring to the work of Dr Cronin in New York City This is but one instance, but it is typical of conditions A few years ago, as chief Medical Inspector of the schools of New York City, Dr Cronin read a paper before the School Hygiene association of America in which he made the statement that an examination of all children reported as backward by various teachers revealed 95 of them as physically defective

Thus, in a hasty way, but I think correctly, I have thrown the chief burden of backwardness in school, or retardation, upon physical defects

But our special topic is eye trouble How much of this burden must be referred to this specific source? It is difficult to say exactly But knowing as we do the great prevalence of eye defects a so, too, the close relationshi+p existing between the eyes of our children and the work of the schools (this school work, you know, is nearly all done with the eyes It should not be, but it is); knowing all this, it is not beside the e of the retardationto do about it? What should be done? The reform is easily seen to be a many-sided one It is educational--our teachers should come to know that the book is only one, and not the chief one, of the ical--we should all know the eye better than we do, its normal use and its limitations; the reform is architectural--our architects and boards of education should realize that the seating and the lighting of school houses should receive most careful consideration; the reform is econo ”penny wise and pound foolish,” and recall the old saw, ”a stitch in tiet our people to see that thoro and regular medical inspection of all our school children is the only sensiblephase after phase of the problem It is so many-sided that we can not hope for its immediate and perfectly satisfactory solution But there are certain quite specific ends in view that should at once and all the ti themerely permissive should be mandatory, and should be made to apply to every school community in the state Of course, the cry of expense would be at once raised, but it could easily be shoere there time at my disposal, that it would be an econo the cost of our schools Because every tirade in school, that year's school work in the life of the child has cost the city or school community twice as much as it should Whenever, as in the case of St Paul, already cited, a child is two, three, or six years behind norrade, there is an extra heavy burden of taxation placed on the city Medical inspection, wherever it has been , very materially, the a the co at all about the added effectiveness of the child for the work of the school nor of his greater happiness This statement could easily be substantiated were there time

But that is not necessary It is so apparent that he who runs may read

But the time e can expect such a law to be put in force is, I ae bodies move sloethe good gospel of reforlad day of full and co relief to a very large nu emphasis, whenever the opportunity offers, upon the phase of the subject that is before us this ? The eye trouble is the chiefest of all those of a physical nature It has far irls than any of the other physical defects, and therefore should receive its own pro else Upon this one point let us have immediate relief and keep it up as rapidly as possible Let us adopt so relief as quickly as possible to children suffering from visual defects For I have no sympathy with the position taken by that foolish norant” norant and foolish), who said to lasses fitted for her little girl, ”Why, Mr Ladd, I can't bear to think of Mary wearing glasses I a as she can possibly get along without theard for the coirl, or if you care for her progress in school, instead of keeping glasses away fro as possible, you should see to it that she has the best that can be procured just as soon as they can be of the slightest assistance” I went on to tell her that it was entirely possible that the use of the glasses at that tiht enable her to do without theet them; of course not They would not have added to the attractiveness of the little face How hard it is for the unreflecting to deny themselves a present pleasure, whether in ood!

V

THE HOME, THE CHURCH, AND THE SCHOOL