When Millions of Youth Can't See.
I still remember the sinking feeling I got, deep in my gut, when I held the spatula-shaped utensil over my left eye, back in the fifth grade. Sure, I could read the humungous “H” at the top of the chart, and the “T” and “L” propping up the “H” were pretty clear too. The next level of letters was a little bit fuzzier though, and the fourth row might as well have been barbed wire.
The nurse confirmed it with a note home to my parents: I needed glasses, like every single member of my family before me. And the sinking feeling in my stomach was the fear I had of being ridiculed for wearing them in class.
A familiar story? Approximately one in every four school-aged children has vision problems that can pose a significant threat to learning. Yet where many of these children may face the inevitable teasing associated with eyeglasses, some of the children in greatest need of vision correction face a much crueler fate: they don’t get glasses at all.
What kind of a problem does this pose for the children, their classes, and their ability to learn? Turns out it poses a very serious one. A December 5 Washington Post article tells the story of thousands of Miami Dade County Public School children taking eye tests, learning that they need glasses, and yet not being able to afford them. The trend exists nationally as well: a University of Michigan study found that in 25% of all instances in which children have notices sent home about possible vision problems, no follow-up appointments are scheduled with an eye-care professional. Put bluntly, if there are 50 million school aged children, 12 million of whom need glasses—something on the order of two-three million children are out there trying to learn while barely being able to see the board.
The problem, of course, is exacerbated when one looks at the kind of children who are most likely to make up the subgroup of children who need but do not have corrective lenses. Another U of M study discovered that children living in poor families were far less likely than other children to have glasses, with similar results for the nine million children without health insurance. When race is considered, black and Hispanic children were more than two times less likely to have the glasses they need than white and Asian children.
In Miami, a private philanthropist Leonard Turkel stepped forward to provide a free traveling eye-care center to give thousands of children free eye care appointments and glasses in the 360,000 student school district. But in the vast majority of low-income rural and urban school districts there are no similar programs—and little hope for children who cannot see the blackboard and cannot afford glasses. For them, the sinking feeling they get in their guts when they see the nurse and hold the spatula-device over their eye is much, much more serious than the one I experienced years ago.
It’s helpful to think about factors like these—and similar health issues like asthma, obesity, and malnutrition that affect the ability of millions of youth to learn. At a time when legislators are beginning to squabble over billions of dollars in federal funding for the academic provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act, one might wonder if the money will do anything at all so long as such crucial underlying gaps in opportunities remain among children based on wealth and race.