SIGHT AND HOMEWORK

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 786, 5 October 1929, Page 6

SIGHT AND HOMEWORK

OPTICIAN S VIEWS ABOUT PROBLEM “ALARMING SITUATION” “Eyesight forms a problem which vitally affects both education and industry,” said a prominent Auckland optician, in an interview this morning, following the recent action of the Director of Education, Mr. T. B. Strong, in circularising principals of secondary schools to the effect that too much homework was the cause of the increasing amount of defective eyesight among secondary school pupils. “Organised reserach in eye conservation has revealed an alarming situation among the children in the public schools, students in the colleges and workers in the factories,” said this optician. “Educators are now keenly aware of the necessity of accurate vision, for many hold that 87 per cent, of the knowledge acquired by a child is transmitted through the eyes. The eyes of not a single school child In the Dominion should be neglected. No child’s eyes should be subjected to the demands of school work unless it has been previously established that this delicate organ is in fit condition to stand the strain.

“An extract from the Suffolk ‘News’ states:-—‘Less than one-third of the 25,000,000 school children of America undergo tests' of vision that may be called reasonably accurate. Of 100,000 school children in New York City who failed to pass their examinations, 50,000 were found to be suffering from defective vision.’ It is quite logical to suppose that the demands upon the eyes of New Zealand children are no less than those upon the eyes of American scholars. “ Authorities everywhere have pointed out how vitally necessary it is to have children's eyes examined before and during school life. They have explained, further, how, easily the delicate organ of sight may be permanently injured by overstraining during the time when the eyeball is undergoing changes in accordance with the growth of the child’s body. Since it is in the classroom that the greatest strain is put upon the eyes, so also it is obvious that the teacher is the first one to frequently notice the first symptoms of defective vision in the scholars. Very often the child who is called ‘lazy or stupid’ and is backward in its lessons is made so by defective vision or eyestrain. “In most schools of today a sort of vision test is made by getting the pupils to look at a test chart on the wall. A preliminary test like this will aid the detection of only the most serious cases of defective vision; but it should be borne in mind that perfect vision does not mean perfect eyes, and that normal vision does not always indicate a normal eye. Many children—alsb adults—with perfect eyesight may have headache, red or swollen eyelids, sties, crusty looking lid margins, nervousness, and other distressing symptoms wholly due to eyestrain. Such visual defects can only be detected by a competent ophthalmologist or optometrist specially trained to measure the refraction of the eye.”