IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 |50 """^ ^ lis, 12.5 izo 1.8 U_ IIIIII.6 V <^ /}. 'i^l s %. # ^ y Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 \ iV '^ <> ^ V ^ ri>^ ''i i>^ c^- CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHM/ICMH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions / Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques Tachnical and Bibtlographic Notat/Notaa tachniquas at bjbllographiquaa Tha Instltuta has attamptad to obtain tha baat original copy availabia for filming. Faaturas of this copy which may ba bibliographlcally uniqua. which may altar any of tha imagas in tha raproduction. or which may significantly changa the usual mathod of filming, ara chackad balow. <•' r*-fi-^J:a%it,^-X'^ f;. 'Wm Mh KINDERGARTEN AND PRIMARY GRADE WORK IN THE PUBUC SCHOOLS AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE EYESIGHT.' BvCasbv a. Wood, M.D., Professor of Ophthalmology in the Post-Gradu'ite Medical School, Chicago. Within the past ten years the kindergarten has so expanded within the United States that we bid fair to rival France and Germany in the number of our schools and pupils. Not only is this true of private institutions, but the primary grades of our public school system have been largely affected, and to some de- gree modified, by the teachings of Froebel and his successors. The child trained in the kindergarten is hardly satisfied by the, to him, old-fashioned forms in vogue in the lower graues of the school through which he is expected to pass. He misses the object lessons and craves the practical training of the kinder* gartner. The lower form teacher, in her turn, is influenced ►o demand methods that will appeal to and satisfy the awakened interest of the children under her care, and these, when adopted, are usually arranged along kindergarten lines. As it happens, I have given some time to a study of these questions, particularly as they are related to the visual function iu children, and I venture to bring the matter before you to-day. At the outset, let me say, that for those engaged in kinder- garten work, whether it be the teachers who come directly in {K>ntact with the children themselves or whether it be those who lecture in high schools or kindergarten colleges, and are largely responsible for the work done by the teachers themselves, I have only words of praise. As a medical man I have often felt it my duty to call in question some of the means by which the kinder- gartner seeks to gain her ends, but I cannot remember a single instance in which even sharp criticism has been received in other than the kindly spirit in which it was meant. Moreover, I am 1 Read before the American Academy of Medicine, Denver, June 6, 1898. 9 free to confess that our American schools are freer from certain objectionable qualities, to which I shall allude, than are those of France and North Germany. As I have said elsewhere,' the public kindergarten especially does a work of incalculable value, often under the most disadvantageous conditions. Especially must we recollect that many a child, in our large cities particu- larly, finds in the teacher the only mother he ever knew or ever will know, and in the garten the only home that in after-life he can look back upon with any sentiment of pleasure or satisfac- tion. The phase of civilization one commonly meets with, at least in our cities, seems to make it desirable that the individual should not only be myopic to the extent of one or two diopters when he reaches the school or kindergarten age, but that he should not add to this shortsightedness in after-life. He is, and is to be, interested in near work of various kinds and need not have any care of distant objects. In the savage state, for obvious reasons, the converse was true. The pleasures and necessities of the chase, the almost constant warfare with wild beasts and with his own kind, the nomadic life — all these called for good distant vision — hyperopia. The myope would have been killed and eaten by some of his biped or quadruped enemies before he had reached man's estate. The eyes of the modern child are, however, still those of the savage. We are all born hyperopes and if, by chance, any of us have developed a constant, comfortable, and opportune myopia, he is a happy and, in this country, rather rare exception to the rule. Although we have thus far failed to evolve from eyes origi- nally hyperopic a short-sighted eye capable of safe, continuous, and painless work all day long and part of the night, yet in a crude and usually exaggerated fashion, excessive child labor, per- sisted in for several generations, may accomplish that end. In Germany, for example, where children are schooled with a de- termination and a perseverance worthy of a better cause and where the kindergarten holds universal sway, myopia of one de- gree or another affects about one-half the population. - Tbe Effect of Kindergarten Work on the Eyesight of the Children, New York Med- ical Journal, July 17, 1897. 5I5E The investigations of Cohn, Schmidt-Rimpier, Fuchs.and many others, have time and again demonstrated that the amount and the degree of myopia in the German schools are directly de- pendent upon (i) the age at which near work is begun, (2) the number of hours per diem the child has been thus occupied, and (3) upon the disabilities under which the tasks are performed — notably poor light, ill health, bad food, vicious habits of study, etc. Again, the myopia of the parents is visited upon the children. During their investigation of defective vision in the New York schools, Noyes and Loring examined 2,265 children. Twenty- five per cent, of the pupils of German ancestry were found to be myopic, while only about 15 per cent, of the others were short- sighted. If the conversion of the hyperopia into the myopic eye (through elongation of its antero-posterior axis) always stopped at the one or two diopters, referred to in the beginning of this paper as desirable, and if the eye muscles and other portions of the visual apparatus readily adjusted themselves to this changed condition, the ophthalmologist would have little fault to find with the operation of the cause of the short-sightedness, but we know that the abnormal enlargement of the globe and the con- sequent stretching of the delicate coats of the eyeball often in- duce destructive lesions of the choroid, retina, and optic nerve, and that these doom the sufferer to partial or total blindness. During the period of ocular enlargement, also, the patient fre- quently suffers from chronic headache, eye pains, and systemic disturbances, — to say nothing of the anxiety attendant upon a knowledge that what may prove to be a serious disease has at- tacked the all-important organ of vision. The effects upon the general health of the pupil whose far- sighted eyes are undergoing this sort of forced adaptation to the requirements of early school-life have not perhaps received that attention that the importance of the subject demands. Chief among them is an abnormal change in the habits of the child. As soon as he finds that he does not see as well as his fellows and cannot, consequently, take an equal share in outdoor sports requiring good vision the child-myope takes to books and to solitary dreaming in corners. The erstwhile player of baseball and football becomes a student. Now, it is not good for either man or boy to be too much or too long alone, and it is especially wrong for the nervously-developed and high-strung American child to live an indoor life. Unless my observations have led me astray we have in these days too many children's books and magazines and not enough outdoor occupations for our preco- cious children. To have his boy cr girl grow up to be a hearty, robust animal seems to me to be the highest ambition that any American parent can entertain for his offspring. To this may be added as much " knowledge" as the individual child will healthfully tolerate — but no more. In the majority of instances all those educational advantages which, to the superficial ob- server, have been wofuUy neglected in childhood, will be added, later in life, to the man or woman thus brought up. I contend, then, that the character of the kindergarten and lower grade work done by the owner of defective or far-sighted eyes, has its share in determining what sort of man or woman is to develop from the child. If the work be trying to the visual apparatus, it will also affect the general condition and may, to an extent, be responsible for those nervous and other disorders that pursue the physically incompetent through life. Recognizing the drawbacks as well as the advantages of the kindergarten and the primary grades in schools, how may we avoid the former and yet retain the latter ? I have the following answer to give in the shape of suggestions made by me last year at the Kindergarten Conference, Chicago University. 1. Every kindergarten and every school should be provided with certain well-known and simple tests of vision, and no child of any age should receive instruction who has not good eye- sight. 2. It should be a part of the teacher's duty— in the public schools and in some private institutions the teacher is the only guardian (in any sense) that the child possesses — to note any defects of vision and have them corrected, if possible. 3. No child with chronic ill health or with incorrigible ocular defects should be allowed to use his eyes for any kind of close work before he is eight or nine years of age, lest worse things befall. 4. In the kindergarten the children should be taught only those things that demand the minimum employment of the ac- commodation for near work. Froebel's " gifts" are sufficiently numerous and varied to enable both pupil and teacher to pass happy and profitable hours without damaging the precious inheri- tance of vision, and without inflicting defective eyes upon gen- erations yet unborn. 5. Some kinds of instruction are in their very nature unsuited to infants' eyes. I admire the work and teachings of such well- known authorities as Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora Archibald Smith, and agree with them in many of their contentions. For example, I feel that it is questionable whether " children nat- urally incline to large movements in drawing," and believe that "they instinctively make pretty figures." I would cer- tainly not allow them to engage in any kind of drawing, — ex- cept the cruder kinds of blackboard work — because the tendency always is, as with the grown-up folk, to indulge more and more in elaborate designs. 6. If one turns to the plates in the back of Josephine Jar\'is' translation of Frederick Froebel's Spiel imd die Spiel gegenstande der Kinder, or to the elaborate designs affixed to many similar text-books on kindergarten study (Mrs. Rowland Hill's Brush Work for the Kindergarten, for example), it will not be diflBcult to eliminate those occupations and studies that are palpably inimical to the eyesight of the child. Speaking broadly, Froebel's first four " gifts," and the uses to which they are ordinarily put in the kindergarten, and the occupations to which they may give rise, are mostly devoid of harm, so far as the eyes are concerned. They also suggest many Mutter- and Kose-Lieder, the use of which in kindergarten work is so much to be commended and leaves so little to be criticised that I sometimes ask myself whether with balls and blocks and the accompaniment of song and play, kindergarten children might not be made to undergo a healthier development than that which the more complex and elaborate occupations subserve. 7. Above all do I deprecate certain occupations commonly recommended by, and pictured in, most of the latest kindergarten text-books. These are perforated cards, embossing, fine sew- ing, copy-book drawing in all its forms and phases, most kinds of paper interlacing, intricate paper-cutting and folding, peas work, clay modeling, chain-making (except where the links are very large), bead stringing, etc. These practices, however lit- tle indulged in, are almost certain to damage the eyesight of kindergarten children. 8. Among the less hurtful occupations — some of them harm- less — are games not involving near work to any extent, slat in- terlacing (with wide slats of well-contrasted colors), sand work (especially if indulged in as German children use it — out of doors), gardening, that Froebel loved so well, building with large blocks, as well as the occasional and interrupted use of simple apparatus, like Putnam's "busy work tiles." Finally, I have here two "prize" kindergarten Afappgn or work-books, to pass around for your inspection as examples of kindergarten vices. They would, I am happy to say, be repu- diated by the teachers of probably the majority of our schools, but would be recognized as profitable and praiseworthy work by many others. As a matter of fact one is lo years old, the other not quite so ancient. See how extremely intricate are the pat- terns, how painfully precise are the small figures, and so realize what months of ocular energy, what an amount of eye strain have been expended on accomplishing ends that are not only useless and purposeless but that, at the tender age when they are usually recommended, are positively and surely harmful. ^^^^^^^ypmj^^^^^ ^^Prw m iing, fine sew- es, most kinds folding, peas e the links are s, however lit- le eyesight of 9 i them harm- ;xtent, slat in- s), sand work ise it — out of building with rrupted use of s." :en Mappen or s examples of > say, be repu- [ our schools, orthy work by old, the other e are the pat- and so realize t of eye strain .t are not only ge when they y harmful.