e left and from above. They have
found out, too, and told us, the proper shades of color for the
walls--scientific knowledge, all of it, and therefore thoroly reliable.
But how systematically do we disregard all this valuable information! In
the construction of a new school building there is nothing that should
receive more careful and scientific consideration than the matter of
lighting, but too often the architect is either entirely ignorant of the
entire matter, or else is selfishly interested in so-called
architectural effects.

I do not mean that we all disregard all these things, that we have no
school houses properly constructed, no school books properly printed,
and no teachers intelligent and sensible in their handling of boys and
girls. Not at all. During the last twenty years we have made long
strides in advance along many of these lines in many places. But the
bright spots are still the exception and not the rule. The friends of
children and of the race need to keep vigilantly at work.

Now, let us look at the matter from another point of view. Let us ask
what are the results of this persistent and widespread disregard of the
normal conditions under which the eye should work and of the fundamental
laws of eye development. What do we find? Why, we find just what you are
prepared to expect after considering the above disregard. We find that,
whereas at the beginning of school life the percentage of school
children suffering from visual defects is relatively small, that
percentage increases as we ascend the grades. In other words, the
regular, systematic work of our schools is all the time weakening the
eyes--all the time causing serious visual defects. Gulick and Ayers came
to this conclusion as one of the results of their exhaustive
investigation, made in 1908, which culminated in the well known work on
"Medical Inspection of Schools," published at that time. This is all the
more striking since they found that the prevalence of other physical
defects steadily decreases as the years pass.

An investigation carried on in Jefferson City, Missouri, in 1907-1908,
illustrates the point under discussion; 20% of all children in grades
one to three inclusive were found to have defective vision, whereas in
grades nine to twelve inclusive 40.5% were found thus handicapped. In
some parts of Germany the increase in defective vision as children
ascend the grades is seen to be much more marked than in our own
country. In