No Child Left Behind

When I found an article that said that 20% of school-aged children have undiagnosed vision problems.  This is after they had passed taken a vision test at school, which is obviously insufficient in detecting vision deficits.  Apparently schools only check for the distance aspect of vision, and a child can have 20/20 vision but still have a problem.  For example, maybe their eyes are not in sync with each other, or maybe they have trouble switching from near focus to far focus. This can lead to disaster when it comes to their learning abilities.

Kids that have problems often fall behind their peers in reading ability.  I had a friend who need eye correction surgery when he was very young.  Although he recovered very quickly, he still had to repeat a grade because before the surgery he had fallen way behind.  It is hardly fair that someone who is just as smart as everyone else had to put up with teachers and school-mates thinking that he wasn’t learning because he was stupid.

Imagine what it would be like not being able to take notes from the board because your eyes can’t adjust from the wall to your notebook fast enough, or having the words blur together on your textbook, or even getting a headache every time you try to read a short story.  Many times kids will feel defeated and just give up altogether, and can you blame them?  With all the techniques for correcting vision, there is no need for so many kids to suffer like this.  I think that it should be the school’s responsibility to detect vision problems more accurately and even the playing field when it comes to academics between the vision impaired and everyone else.