Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-11-26
TOO MUCH BOOK STUDY.
Over-Use of the Eyes in Education
Use of Glasses Becoming General.
EGYPT.

From the Literary Digest.
Are We making too much use of the
printed page in educative processes?
That close attention TO books for six to
eight hours a day, with incidental read
ing and writing. is responsible for the
destructive processes that are injuring
our children's eyes, is maintained by DR..
F. Park Lewis of Buffalo in a paper
on conservation of Vision" read be-
fore the last meeting of the National
Educational Association. I'VE are rapidly
becoming bespectacled nation. DR..
Lewis thinks; and by this use of correc-
tive lenses we are not going to the root
OF the matter. We must lessen the hours
Of work during which the eyes are SUBJ
jected to strain. He says:
'"The labor unions have wisely limited
the working day to eight hours for
strong men whose body tissues are de-
Veloped and resistant. while we compel
the child at the formative period of his
life to use his most vital and impress
s1onable eye structures as much as eight
hours, and permit him to use them in
close, taxing work for ten hours or more
day. His eyes will no more tolerate
such unwarrantable abuse than will his
muscles or his brain. Something must in
time give way, and usually it is the re-
tanning coat Whlch gives form and Stabll-
ity to the globe.
1T would seem to me that we are not
getting at the root of the matter at all.
we nave reasons to congratulate our
selves on the splendid advances that have
been made in pedagogic methods during
the last few years. Practical work is be-
ing introduced in the school, such as
printing and industrial and domestic
science, but in the fundamentals we are
still teaching largely through the method
of the printed page. We have made a
fetish of books We have become a
We have come to believe that the most
effective way in which knowledge can be
communicated from one person to an
other is through the medium of the
direct route to the mind. a picture of a
thing-and especially of a thing in ac-
tion-becOmes almost Immediately a
thought. The printed word is not the
thing itself. 1t is not even the symbol
of the thing, as is an Egyptian hero
aborigines 1t consists of group of
arbitrarily chosen forms, which placed in
certain combfnations-more or less vari-
able as we modify our spelling-repre-
sents the symbol of the thing. Consider
for moment the number of mental pro-
cesses that are required to enable a
child to grasp the idea which the word
is intended to convey. That which re-
QulreS page OF description Is told IN
much less than half the time required to
read it-and all of this and much more,
if seen, is comprehended at glance.
The expression of the face the tone of
the voice, the gesture, the human in
terest conveyed, are all interpretative.
With a foreign language, still another
additional mental process is exacted. and
we find our students after two, three or
four years devoted to the study of
French or German disappointed and I'M
happy to find that it is to them dead
language and that the result of their
labor is book knowledge only; while a
little gamin from Palermo or Budapest
will pick up a useful vernacular in the
streets to which he will add a richness of
slang, and, thereby. of vitality, that we
may envy. but can never hope to attain. y
We must realize, DR.. Lewis goes on to
say, that there is another and more
direct way of getting at the intelligence
of the child. than that which We COM
monty employ. We have too many books;
too many studies: not enough athletics
of the right sort; not enough training in
mental agility and logical thinking We
should teach real values; not their SYM
bols: and we should make our teaching
more direct and personal.