Eye Care Blog

To repeat a very important principle: you cannot see anything with perfect sight unless you have seen it before. When the eye looks at an unfamiliar object it always strains more or less to see that object, and an error of refraction is always produced. When children look at unfamiliar writing or figures on the blackboard, distant maps, diagrams, or pictures, the retinoscope always shows that they are myopic, though their vision may be absolutely normal under other circumstances. The same thing happens when adults look at unfamiliar distant objects. When the eye regards a familiar object, however, the effect is quite different. Not only can it be regarded without strain, but the strain of looking at unfamiliar objects later is lessened.

These facts furnish us with a means of overcoming the mental strain to which children are subjected by the modern educational system. It is impossible to see anything perfectly when the mind is under a strain, and if children become able to relax when looking at familiar objects, they become able, sometimes in an incredibly brief space of time, to maintain their relaxation when looking at unfamiliar objects.

I discovered this fact while examining the eyes of several hundred schoolchildren at Grand Forks, North Dakota. In many cases, children who could not read all of the letters on a test card in the first test read them in the second or third test. After a class had been examined, the children who had failed would sometimes ask for a second test, and then it often happened that they would read the whole card with normal vision. So frequent were these occurrences that there was no escaping the conclusion that in some way the vision was improved by reading the test card.

In one class I found a boy who at first appeared to be very myopic, but who, after a little encouragement, read all the letters on the test card. The teacher asked me about this boy’s vision, because she had found him very nearsighted. When I said that his vision was normal she was incredulous, and suggested that he might have learned the letters by heart or been prompted by another pupil. He was unable to read the writing or figures on the blackboard, she said, or see the maps, charts and diagrams on the walls, and he did not recognize people across the street. She asked me to test his sight again, which I did, very carefully, under her supervision, the sources of error which she had suggested being eliminated. Again the boy read all the letters on the card. Then the teacher wrote some words and figures on the blackboard and asked him to read them. He did so correctly. Then she wrote additional words and figures, which he read just as well. Finally she asked him to tell the hour by the clock, twenty-five feet away, which he did correctly.

Three other cases in the class were similar; their vision, which had previously been very defective for distant objects, became normal in the few moments devoted to testing their eyes.

It is not surprising that after such a demonstration the teacher asked to have a test card placed permanently in the room. The children were directed to read the smallest letters they could see from their seats at least once every day, with both eyes together and with each eye separately, the unused one being covered with the palm of the hand in such a way as to avoid pressure on the eyeball. Those whose vision was defective were encouraged to read the test card more frequently—but they needed no encouragement after they found that the practice helped them to see the blackboard and stopped the headaches and other discomforts previously resulting from the use of their eyes.

In another class of forty children, all between six and eight, thirty of the pupils gained normal vision while their eyes were being tested. The remainder did likewise later, under the supervision of the teacher, by means of exercises in distant vision with a test card. This teacher had noted every year for fifteen years that at the opening of school in the fall all the children could see the writing on the blackboard from their seats, but before school closed the following spring all of them without exception complained that they could not see it at a distance of more than ten feet. After learning of the benefits to be derived from the daily practice of distant vision with familiar objects as the point of fixation, this teacher kept a test card in her classroom and directed the children to read it every day. The result was that for eight years no more of the children under her care acquired defective eyesight.

The teacher of this class had attributed the invariable deterioration in the eyesight of her charges during the school year to the fact that her classroom was in the basement and the light was poor. But teachers with well-lighted classrooms had the same experience, and after the test card was introduced into both the well-lighted and the poorly lighted rooms, and the children read it every day, the deterioration of their eyesight ceased and, in addition, the vision of all improved. Vision which had been below normal improved, in most cases, to normal, while children who already had normal sight, usually reckoned at 20/20, became able to read 20/15 or 20/10. And not only was myopia eliminated, but the vision for near objects was improved.

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