8 ms·
Eyeglasses for school kids boost academic performance, study finds
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jraph 5y agoThis study finds that eyeglasses for school kids with vision impairment help. Just from the title I wondered if school kids with eyeglasses performed better than school kids without eyeglasses (and whether eyeglasses gave some self-confidence, or if vision impairment somehow made affected kids more studious, or some shit like this). I was surprised. It's not that. The actual result presented by this article seems far less surprising to me (still interesting even if my first reaction was well, duh - some studies are here to turn "well, duh"'s into actual knowledge). I suggest changing the title to "Eyeglasses for impaired school kids boost academic performance, study finds" (and even dropping "study finds")
- soco 5y agoMy mom was called stupid her entire first school years until somebody thought to test her eyes.
- hunta2097 5y agoI somehow slipped through the UK eye-test system with -5 astigmatism until the age of 12. I was 12 when I first saw a leaf on a tree.
- high_byte 5y agowow the system really dropped the ball on this one
- atatatat 5y agoSupremely curious: as a 12 y/o, did you assume everyone struggled getting around, always?
- hunta2097 5y agoYep! I had an eyetest in primary school, I couldn't read anything. Looking back on it years later I assume she thought I was joking or else just royally cocked-up! It left me with some strange cognitive coping strategies - like I would always dictate what the teacher was saying rather than reading it off the board. The offshoot is I have very poorly formatted but fast handwriting!
- davidivadavid 5y agoThat's funny, I didn't have nearly as bad eye sight, but also distinctly remember first noticing leaves on trees when I got my glasses around that same age.
- glonq 5y agoI remember that first "OMG people can see things further than 20 feet away!?!" revelation.
- doliveira 5y agoI think I assumed everyone saw trees as they're commonly drawn and painted: as just a blob of green
- vladTheInhaler 5y agoI failed high school algebra largely because I lost my glasses and was just trying to imagine in my head what the teacher was talking about. The adults in my life knew I had a prescription, and had the money to pay for them and yet nobody did anything. The bystander effect is truly bizarre.
- aaron695 5y ago> far less surprising to me That's interesting since the study showed it did NOT help students over time. So you are NOT surprised students who need glasses are NOT better off after a year?? Things that don't help students academically - Computers, smaller class sizes, better access to feminine hygiene products, raising teachers pay, worming tablets in regions it matters. Quick fixes for students academically are rare these days.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> whether eyeglasses gave some self-confidence, or if vision impairment somehow made affected kids more studious, or some shit like this Being studious causes vision impairment. We noticed that a long, long time ago.
- iainmerrick 5y agoI don’t know, there could be all sorts of confounders there. Like maybe poor eyesight means you’re not as good at sports which means you tend to focus on more studious hobbies like reading. Or maybe reading and spending time inside tends to ruin your eyesight. Or maybe it does, but only because it takes time away from active pursuits like sports! Does anyone have pointers to research that teases out the causes and effects here?
- erklik 5y agohttps://www.nature.com/articles/519276a https://www.nature.com/articles/519276a This is a nice summary.
- erklik 5y agohttps://www.nature.com/articles/519276a https://www.nature.com/articles/519276a It's less being studious, and more that being studious tends to be correlated with spending time indoors more. It's the spending time indoors that causes it apparently.
- high_byte 5y agoI only realized I needed glasses at 16 (and only started at 17), who knows how long I've been complaining the whiteboard markers are done and needed to be replaced. it's like living with gaussian blur filter.
- ceejayoz 5y agoI discovered mine at 13 when we went on vacation and I said "wow, the TV reception is bad here". It was fine; our TV at home was just a lot closer.
- HWR_14 5y agoUnfortunately, there are large groups of people who will say things like "why help poor kids get glasses". Studies like these allow someone to put "$N in leads to $M out, M > N" equations in place to justify it.
- Gortal278 5y agoWho says that?
- HWR_14 5y agoI assume you're asking who needs numbers relating to academic performance to justify helping poor kids? I don't know if you missed US politics from 2017-2021, but the President's Budget Chief (and later Chief of Staff) (Mick Mulvaney) said “[the US government feeding poor kids is] supposed to help kids who don’t get fed at home so they do better in school, Guess what? There’s no demonstrable evidence they’re actually doing that. There’s no demonstrable evidence they’re actually helping results, helping kids do better in school.” Then he proposed cutting the budget for school lunches. The Secretary in charge also did a number on those programs.
- alexdrue 5y agoI agree with the title change. It's quite misleading, especially if they are referring to the kids who have vision impairment.
- lordnacho 5y agoWhen you first need glasses it can surprise you. Towards the end of my uni days I got an eye test after just assuming nothing was wrong for several months. That first set of glasses was a revelation, like entering a new HD world that I didn't know I'd slowly left. For schoolkids it's probably even bigger. They don't even know that their eyesight might not be just like every other kid. Worth testing, I did so with my kid and she got a light prescription.
- jusssi 5y ago> That first set of glasses was a revelation, like entering a new HD world that I didn't know I'd slowly left. That same thing can happen even when you already have glasses. My lenses were something like 10 years old and I thought they were just fine. Until I got new glasses.
- netrus 5y agoSo true! In High School, we sometimes had to take turns reading out loud from textbooks of literature. I sucked at reading out loud, often reading out words that were not there or losing the line. That was embarrassing, which did not help. Turned out my vision was just not good enough to clearly see the characters when sitting with a straight back! But I never noticed it, because my vision was good enough for everyday situations. I don't remember clearly what finally triggered me to take a vision test, maybe it was for the drivers license.
- lbriner 5y agoI remember the same! I was amazed that my friend could read the number on the front of the bus while it was still 300 metres away. How can you read that? I asked. I just read it, why? can't you read it? I was 14 but fortunately was not really short sighted, although I found that I was instinctively sitting closer to the blackboard (rememebr those!), maybe because I couldn't see clearly from the back of the class. It's funny how a relatively small investment early on could help avoid a load of unemployment, crime, etc. even if there was no money, just make it a loan that you only pay back once you earn, say, $30 a year or more!
- nicoburns 5y ago
- throwaway019254 5y agoIt seems obvious that glasses help at school if you actually need them. But I’m happy to see that it was also proven by research. This will definitely help get funding for more programs like this. I couldn’t afford glasses during my high school and I bet my academic performance would be much better if I could see what’s written on the blackboard.
- AndrewThrowaway 5y agoAgain and again US surprises us all as if it was a third world country. Study shouldn't be surprising at all - pupils who struggle to see, struggle to learn. Giving them eyeglasses helps a lot. I would imagine a study like this would be a thing in some third world country. Reading the title you would imagine some poorly lit classroom, wooden walls and clay floor and etc. But it is Baltimore? I grew up in Soviet and then Post-Soviet country. We all had eyesight tests every year, maybe even twice a year. If anything - you got eyeglasses. Yeah, maybe you were bullied for a week by pupils but that's it. To be fair I am a bit shocked with US...
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoIt's not the United States of Baltimore. While there no doubt are parents spread across the country who neglect their children's health needs, to extrapolate the neglectful parents in Baltimore to the entire country makes as much sense as to do the same for Pripyat's radiation levels to all areas of the former Soviet Union.
- AndrewThrowaway 5y agoI get what you are saying. However I guess I was referring to all healthcare system in the US. I believe all over the Europe kid would be tested for free, every year, mandatorily. If eye correction is needed one would be supplied. So study like this wouldn't even be possible. Of course maybe some minimum payment would be needed, parents involved, etc. etc. But these are only details. However the problem itself is not a problem of neglectful parents. It is a problem of healthcare system/educational system and society as whole.
- Symbiote 5y agoI doubt it's mandatory and every year in all of Europe, although that would fit my expectations of ex-Soviet and former-Eastern-Bloc countries. In England it is free, but at best it's automatic once. Otherwise it's up to the parent to arrange. In Denmark it's done at age 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. Statistics for 30 countries: https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5cb84fac9&appId=PPGMS https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloa...
- helge9210 5y agoIt took me a little more than a year to understand I have a problem with my eyesight (difficulty focusing on close by objects and additional distortion on the left eye). And half a year more to formulate what kind of distortion I have. I'm adult and have a baseline to compare to. Kids might not even understand they have a problem.
- siva7 5y agoIt’s even difficult for adults to admit something might be wrong with eyesight
- ip26 5y agoIt’s hard for children too. I know a very young child (preschool) with glasses, and even they feel insecure about their eyes.
- pantulis 5y agoEven adults with existing conditions! Having heavy myopia I spent more than a year assuming that I had to get new prescription glasses because my vision had became worse. Turns out I had these very nice cataracts and needed surgery. Don't neglect your eyes!
- nottorp 5y agoIt's pretty important to check, especially if you stare at monitors all day like the HN crowd. You may have a small impairment that's not noticeable. Except you'll notice you're far less tired after a day's work when you correct it. Source: discovering my astigmatism (with about zero dioptries) only at 29.
- etempleton 5y agoI had a hard time keeping up with taking notes and then I had my eyes tested and got glasses and it wasn’t an issue anymore . I just thought I was slow because I could read the board, it just took me a few seconds to focus each time I looked up, which slowed me down.
- flexie 5y agoOne of my kids started school last year. He did well, learned to read etc., but we noticed that unlike his older sibling, he didn't seem to like letters, numbers and books much. We never seemed able to concentrate for more than a minute. So in the summer break, we had his vision tested, and it was +6 and +4. Turns out that although you are half blind you can somehow manage to read and write anyways. In a matter of weeks after he got glasses, he taught himself to read in English, a language he doesn't even have in school but that he knows from YouTube and Netflix, and with letters different from the Cyrillic alphabet he knew. If like us, you live in a place where kids' vision is not tested automatically by your physician, I can only encourage you to have your kids' vision tested.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tamaharbor 5y agoSo, you do better if you can see?
- robinduckett 5y agoMy parents didn't get me glasses until I was eight years old. I thought blurry was normal. They thought I was dyslexic because I was routinely failing spelling tests. It wasn't that I was failing them, it's that I relied on spelling phonetically, because when they wrote the words on the blackboard during practice time, I couldn't see them, even at the front of the class, so I just made up my own spellings as the teacher called them out. When I finally got glasses (massive, horrible tortoiseshell things with huge lenses provided (only in part) by the NHS, I finally realised things like: Trees have leaves! all the way up, not just on the ground, and that teachers often had a pained look on their faces.
- trashface 5y agoI suspect hearing is similar. When I was a freshman in high school, nurse calls up my mom and angrily questions her on why I had never gotten a hearing aid for my right ear for the loss. Mom was like, what hearing loss? The nurse had looked up my record from elementary school. I had been failing hearing tests since 2nd grade and nobody told my parents, or me for that matter. They tested it every year, so that's 7 failures in a row. Catholic school BTW, but it was the 80s, might be better now.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoA followup study has revealed blindfolds reduce academic performance
- singularity2001 5y agoAlternative or additional causality: kids with eyeglasses have fewer friends and more time to focus on homework
- james_burden 5y agoYeah because they turn into nerds looooooooool
- glonq 5y agoI didn't get glasses until age 10 (grade 5), and more or less couldn't read what the teachers were writing on the blackboard before then.