Vision and Education

Vision and Education

[...Vision and Education

Poor sight is admitted to be one of the most fruitful causes of
retardation in the schools. It is estimated [1] that it may reasonably
be held responsible for a quarter of the habitually "left-backs," and
it is commonly assumed that all this might be prevented by suitable
glasses.

There is much more involved in defective vision, however, than mere
inability to see the blackboard, or to use the eyes without pain or
discomfort. Defective vision is the result of an abnormal condition of
the mind, and when the mind is in an abnormal condition it is obvious
that none of the processes of education can be conducted with
advantage. By putting glasses upon a child we may, in some cases,
neutralize the effect of this condition upon the eyes and by making
the patient more comfortable may improve his mental faculties to some
extent, but we do not alter fundamentally the condition of the mind
and by confirming it in a bad habit we may make it worse.

It can easily be demonstrated that among the faculties of the mind
which are impaired when the vision is impaired is the memory; and as a
large part of the educational process consists of storing the mind
with facts, and all the other mental processes depend upon one's
knowledge of facts, it is easy to see how little is accomplished by
merely putting glasses on a child that has "trouble with its eyes."
The extraordinary memory of primitive people has been attributed to
the fact that owing to the absence of any convenient means of making
written records they had to depend upon their memories, which were
strengthened accordingly; but in view of the known facts about the
relation of memory to eyesight it is more reasonable to suppose that
the retentive memory of primitive man was due to the same cause as his
keen vision, namely, a mind at rest.

The primitive memory as well as primitive keenness of vision have been
found among civilized people, and if the necessary tests had been made
it would doubtless have been found that they always occur together, as
they did in a case which recently came under my observation. The
subject was a child of ten with such marvelous eyesight that she could
see the moons of Jupiter with the naked eye, a fact which was
demonstrated by her drawing a diagram of these satellites which
exactly corresponded to the diagrams made by persons who had used a
telescope. Her memory was equally remarkable. She could recite the
whole content of a book after reading it, as Lord Macauley is said to
have done, and she learned more Latin in a few days without a teacher
than her sister who had six diopters of myopia had been able to do in
several years. She remembered five years afterward what she ate at a
restaurant, she recalled the name of the waiter. the number of the
building and the street in which it stood. She also remembered what
she wore on this occasion and what everyone else in the party wore.
The same was true of every other event which had awakened her interest
in any way, and it was a favorite amusement in her family to ask her
what the menu had been and what people had worn on particular
occasions.

When the sight of two persons is different it has been found that
their memories differ in exactly the same degree. Two sisters, one of
whom had only ordinary good vision, indicated by the formula 20/20,
while the other had 20/10, found that the time it took them to learn
eight verses of a poem varied in almost exactly the same ratio as
their sight. The one whose vision was 20/10 learned eight verses of
the poem in fifteen minutes, while the one whose vision was only 20/20
required thirty-one minutes to do the same thing. After palming the
one with ordinary vision learned eight more verses in twenty-one
minutes, while the one with 20/10 was only able to reduce her time by
two minutes, a variation clearly within the limits of error. In other
words, the mind of the latter being already in a normal or nearly
normal condition, she could not improve it appreciably by palming,
while the former whose mind was under a strain was able to gain
relaxation, and hence improve her memory, by this means.

When the two eyes of the same person are different a corresponding
difference in the memory has been noted according to whether both eyes
were open, or the better eye closed. A patient with normal vision in
the right eye and half-normal vision in the left when looking at the
Snellen test card with both eyes open could remember period for twenty
seconds continuously, but could remember it only ten seconds when the
better eye was closed. A patient with half-normal vision in the right
eye and one-quarter normal in the left could remember a period for
twelve seconds with both eyes open and only six seconds with better
eye closed. A third patient with normal sight in the right eye and
vision of one-tenth in the left could remember a period twelve seconds
with both eyes open and only two seconds when the better eye was
closed. In other words if the right eye is better than the left the
memory is better when the right eye is open than when only the left
eye is open.

Under the present educational system there is a constant effort to
compel the children to remember. These efforts always fail. They spoil
both the memory and the sight. The memory cannot be forced any more
than the vision can be forced. We remember without effort, just as we
see without effort, and the harder we try to remember or see the less
we are able to do so.

The sort of things we remember are the things that interest us, and
the reason children have difficulty in learning their lessons is
because they are bored by them. For the same reason; among others,
their eyesight becomes impaired; boredom being a condition of mental
strain in which it is impossible for the eye to function normally.

Some of the various kinds of compulsion now employed in the
educational process may have the effect of awakening interest. Betty
Smith's interest in winning a prize, for instance, or in merely
getting ahead of Johnny Jones, may have the effect of rousing her
interest in lessons that have hitherto bored her, and this interest
may develop into a genuine interest in the acquisition of knowledge;
but this cannot be said of the various fear incentives still so
largely employed by teachers. These. on the contrary, have the effect,
usually, of completely paralyzing minds already benumbed by lack of
interest, and the effect upon the vision is equally disastrous.

The fundamental reason, both for poor memory and poor eyesight in
school children, in short, is our irrational and unnatural educational
system. Montessori has taught us that it is only when children are
interested that they can learn. It is equally true that it is only
when they are interested that they can see. This fact was strikingly
illustrated in the case of one of the two pairs of sisters mentioned
above. Phebe, of the keen eyes, who could recite whole books if she
happened to be interested in them, disliked mathematics and anatomy
extremely, and not only could not learn them but became myopic when
they were presented to her mind. She could read letters a quarter of
an inch high at twenty feet in a poor light, but when asked to read
figures one to two inches high in a good light at ten feet she
miscalled half of them. When asked to tell how much 2 and 3 made, she
said "4," before finally deciding on "5"; and all the time she was
occupied with this disagreeable subject the retinoscope showed that
she was myopic. When I asked her to look into my eye with the
ophthalmoscope she could see nothing, although a much lower degree of
visual acuity is required to note the details of the interior of the
eye than to see the moons of Jupiter.

Short-sighted Isabel, on the contrary, had a passion for mathematics
and anatomy, and excelled in those subjects. She learned to use the
ophthalmoscope as easily as Phebe had learned Latin. Almost
immediately she saw the optic nerve, and noted that the center was
whiter than the periphery. She saw the light-colored lines, the
arteries; and the darker ones, the veins; and she saw the light
streaks on the blood-vessels. Some specialists never become able to do
this, and no one could do it without normal vision. Isabel's vision,
therefore, must have been temporarily normal when she did it. Her
vision for figures, although not normal, was better than for letters.

In both these cases the ability to learn and the ability to see went
hand in hand with interest. Phebe could read a photographic reduction
of the Bible and recite what she had read verbatim, she could see the
moons of Jupiter and draw a diagram of them afterwards, because she
was interested in these things; but she could not see the interior of
the eye, nor see figures even half as well as she saw letters, because
these things bored her. When, however, it was suggested to her that it
would be a good joke to surprise her teachers, who were always
reproaching her for her backwardness in mathematics, by taking a high
mark in a coming examination, her interest in the subject awakened and
she contrived to learn enough to get seventy-eight per cent. In
Isabel's case letters were antagonistic, She was not interested in
most of the subjects with which they dealt and, therefore, she was
backward in those subjects and had become habitually myopic. But when
asked to look at objects which aroused an intense interest her vision
became normal.

When one is not interested, in short, one's mind is not under control,
and without mental control one can neither learn nor see. Not only the
memory but all other mental faculties are improved when the eyesight
becomes normal. It is a common experience with patients cured of
defective sight to find that their ability to do their work has
improved.

The teacher whose letter was quoted in the first issue of Better
Eyesight testified that after gaining perfect eyesight she "knew
better how to get at the minds of the pupils, was more direct, more
definite, less diffused, less vague," possessed, in fact, by "central
fixation of the mind." In another letter she said, "The better my
eyesight becomes the greater is my ambition, On the days when my sight
is best I have the greatest anxiety to do things."

Another teacher reports that one of her pupils used to sit doing
nothing all day long and apparently was not interested in anything.
After the test card was introduced into the classroom and his sight
improved, he became anxious to learn, and speedily developed into one
of the best students in the class, In other words his eyes and his
mind became normal together.

A bookkeeper nearly seventy years of age who had worn glasses for
forty years found after he had gained perfect sight without glasses
that he could work more rapidly and accurately and with less fatigue
than ever in his life before. During busy seasons, or when short of
help, he has worked for some weeks at a time from 7 a.m, until 11 p.m,
and he reports that he felt less tired at night after he was through
than he did in the morning when he started. Previously, although he
had done more work than any other man in the office, it always tired
him very much. He also noticed an improvement in his temper. Having
been so long in the office and knowing so much more about the business
than his fellow employees, he was frequently appealed to for advice.
These interruptions, before his sight became normal, were very
annoying to him and often caused him to lose his temper. Afterward,
however, they caused him no irritation whatever. In the case of
another patient whose story is given elsewhere symptoms of insanity
were relieved when the vision became normal.

From all these facts it will be seen that the problems of vision are
far more intimately associated with the problems of education than we
had supposed, and that they can by no means be solved by putting
concave, or convex, or astigmatic lenses before the eyes of the
children...]

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[1] School Health News, published by the Department of Health of New
York City, February, 1919

- Dr. W. H. Bates, September 1919