Low vision is recognized as one of the leading causes of academic underachievement. It is estimated to account for 25% of students who frequently fall behind on tests.
Visual impairment involves much more than the mere inability to see far away or to use one’s eyes without pain or discomfort. Visual impairment results from an abnormal mental condition, and when the mind is in an abnormal state, it is obvious that none of the educational processes can be conducted effectively. By fitting a child or teenagers with glasses, we can, in some cases, neutralize the effect of this condition on the eyes, and by providing greater comfort to the patient, we can improve their mental faculties to a certain extent; however, we do not fundamentally alter the mental condition, and by reinforcing a bad habit, we may exacerbate it.
It can easily be demonstrated that, among the faculties of the mind that are impaired when vision is compromised, is memory. And since a large part of the educational process consists of storing facts in the mind, and all other mental processes depend on the knowledge of facts, it is easy to see how little is achieved simply by putting glasses on a child or teenager who has “vision problems.”
The extraordinary memory of primitive peoples has been attributed to the fact that, due to the lack of suitable means for keeping written records, they had to rely on their memories, which were thereby strengthened; but, considering the known facts about the relationship between memory and vision, it is more reasonable to suppose that primitive man’s retentive memory was due to the same cause as his keen vision: that is, a calm mind.
When a person’s two eyes differ in vision, a corresponding difference in memory is observed, depending on whether both eyes are open or whether the eye with better vision is closed. On one occasion, a patient with normal vision in the right eye and partially normal vision in the left, when looking at the Snellen chart with both eyes open, was able to recall a twenty-second period continuously, but could recall only ten seconds when the eye with better vision was closed. A patient with partially normal vision in the right eye and one-quarter of normal vision in the left eye could recall a twelve-second period with both eyes open and only six seconds with the eye with better vision closed. A third patient with normal vision in the right eye and one-tenth of normal vision in the left eye could recall a twelve-second period with both eyes open and only two seconds when the eye with better vision was closed. In other words, if the right eye is better than the left, memory is better when the right eye is open than when only the left eye is open.
In today’s educational system, there is a constant effort to force children and teenagers to memorize. These efforts always fail. They impair both memory and vision. Memory cannot be forced, just as vision cannot be forced either. A healthy person remembers effortlessly. A healthy person sees effortlessly. And the more we strain to remember or see, the less we are able to do so.
The kind of things we remember are those that interest us, and the reason children and teenagers have difficulty learning lessons is because they are bored by them. For this reason, among others, their vision is impaired, as boredom is a state of mental tension in which it is impossible for the eye to function normally.
Some of the various forms of educational coercion currently employed in today’s educational process may have the effect of arousing disinterest in children and teenagers.
Betty Smith’s desire to win a prize, for example, or simply to outdo Johnny Jones, may spark her interest in lessons that had previously bored her, and that interest may develop into a genuine desire for knowledge; but the same cannot be said of the various fear-based incentives still so widely used by teachers. These, on the contrary, generally have the effect of completely paralyzing minds already dulled by lack of interest, and the effect on vision is equally disastrous.
The fundamental reason for both poor memory and poor vision in school-age children and outdo lies, in short, in our irrational and artificial educational system. Montessori taught us that children only learn when they are interested. Similarly, it is true that they only see when they are interested.
Once, a child named Beth, who had perfectly healthy vision, hated math and anatomy; not only was she unable to learn them, but she also became nearsighted whenever she was presented with them. She could read letters half a centimeter tall from six meters away in low light, but when asked to read numbers two to five centimeters tall in good light from three meters away, she got half of them wrong. When asked what 2 and 3 added up to, she would say “4” before finally settling on “S”; and throughout the time she was engaged with this unpleasant subject, the retinoscope showed that she was nearsighted. When asked to look at an object through the ophthalmoscope, the child could not see anything.
Another child of the same age, Julia, on the other hand, who was nearsighted, had a passion for math and anatomy and excelled in those subjects. Almost immediately, when asked to read numbers two to five centimeters tall in good lighting from three meters away, she saw everything perfectly, clearly. She saw everything clearly. Some experts can never do this, and no one could do it without normal vision.
In both cases, Beth and Julia, the ability to learn and the ability to see went hand in hand with interest.
In short, when someone is not interested, their mind is out of control, and without mental control, one cannot learn or see.
Not only memory, but all other mental faculties improve when vision returns to normal. It is common for patients who have been cured of vision problems to notice an improvement in their ability to work.
A teacher, whose letter was quoted in one of the early issues of “Better Eyesight,” testified that after achieving perfect vision, she “knew better how to reach the students’ minds,” was “more direct, more precise, less diffuse, less vague,” and possessed, in fact, “central focus in the mind.” In another letter, she said: “The better my vision gets, the greater my ambition. On days when my vision is better, I feel a greater eagerness to accomplish things.”
From all these facts, it is clear that vision problems are much more closely linked to issues in education and how the educational process is conveyed to children and teenager, and that they cannot in any way be resolved by placing concave, convex, or astigmatic lenses, or other glasses and contact lenses, in front of the eyes of children and teenagers.