Library Collections: Document: Full Text

Pupils borderline because of defective eyesight are also misfits in regular classes either in the public schools or in those for the blind; and yet schools like ours have usually admitted a good many such on the ground that we might save the eyesight they had. And in many cases we have done so. Often, however, these pupils have developed here "types of behavior" which increase their difficulties on leaving school. For this reason we have gladly promoted the opening of special classes for the "semi-sighted" in the public schools of a few of our cities, -- Boston, Springfield, Cambridge and New Bedford, -- which the investigations of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind have shown to be demanded. By a recent vote of our trustees we are prepared to foster other similar classes. The Perkins Institution counts it a privilege to be able to aid individuals and the community in ways which come within its province, and certainly promoting the prevention of possible blindness through eye-strain among the young is its business. We are now making possible at the expense of the Kindergarten for the Blind a study by Dr. Abner Post of cases of interstitial keratitis among children, a disease of the eye which brings eye impairment to many people and a consequent lowering of their efficiency.