The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-03-05
oH1LDREN's EYES.
How We Injure the Sight of Our Lat- fle Ones.

f "A cbuas eyes are farsghted. and it is only for a few moments that 1t should LOOK at any any fh,,S Hars.y T Sutherland in Ainsiee's "And yet from the time it begins to take notice we are forever trying to get 1t to see things ciose d 'I don't know what not The day after IL IS weaned we start in to teach IL 70 Fesn. <sS soon as eyer we can ar we pack ,n on the health giving arts of braiding coored paper ana working at such tasks as would make grown persons eyes ache. Then We send It to pup
 have seen public school buildings in New York city that the builder ought to go to S'ee tb child in the public school and tell It to slt right still with it's nose in a book and be IIee and not make a noise when we know that it's nature clAmors to run and play and jump and halioo as to grow up to De inaae ol meat and not of putty In some pup,ic senoo,c aS,s of time has been recognized to the extent .. abolishing even the stingy fifteen minutes recess doIea out in most most are neatly paved with artificial stone and almost pig ehousn to swing a cat in. Sometimes the playroso,ns is in nice dark cellar "heie '"s 'o''e'
 .:But the child may play after school hours; Oh bless your heart we @ nave sen, nNe1 Same work to addle their brains oven by artinciai nsn., . And if the child is a girl we plan how We can ,.assible in her adult life. We choose the critical time and set her at the piano. Taper can be cut to play better tnan SifS cNc' "h'i hui that isn't 1t. We want to come as near as possible to killing her without actually doing so No your hour isn't up yet. Dorothy. You march right back and don't you come out of that parlor again till you have >practiced a fuII hour Do you hear me2
 we keep the poor little things up tiii all hours excite thefn with novels and tneaters' feed them on stimulating and relatively ihsu- tritious foods and encourage them to poisoi themselves with candy, crunched ana gulpea down before the cane sugar has been digested in the mouth. We give them coffee ana tea to set their nerves on twitter. Good Lord what don't we do to kill them? We act ike a pack of fools. parents. and II any or our young ones live to be 20. are toierabiy ssound of mind. aren't sick more than haIt the time and have ae least seven teeth that don't ache it is more by good luck than good Judgment Is if any wonder that the eyes suffer along with the rest of the body? .
 ssRut most Of all it is the crazy notion that the chfid's mind is developed by reading that Is to blame for what we call the degeneracy of inc eye Observing and comparing are what dcyeIop the mind but you can't beat that into a teachers head. one of them told me the other day how much better the schools were In Germany than in this country. rl4itte cnli- dren there she said. do sums In long oNi- sion much faster than American children. wanted to shake her. They keep the German children in school almost all the waking day. and the barbarous type they print books m Increases the shortsghtedness from 70 per cent in the lower grades to 50 and even ~ Der cent in the upper grades NO wonder s,ernnans are so prone to suicide"