Two elements in this situation should have put Miss Cornelius on her
guard, (1) the fact that none of the children in the “window row” were
personally hostile toward the teacher, at least not before they were
kept after school so frequently to make up lessons; and, secondly, that
they were all located in one row. These considerations should have
suggested to the teacher that there must be some general cause, not yet
discovered, which would account for the apparently unaccountable
disorder of that particular group of pupils. Further analysis of the
situation would have disclosed the fact that after the sunlight became
very bright the children’s faces flushed, the eyes looked tired, heads
drooped on the hands, and finally on the folded arms, and in the case of
the children who were suffering most-real headaches, sometimes even
inducing nausea after the long-continued effort to keep looking at the
glazed page of the text-book.
It is a difficult matter at best to control the lighting of a schoolroom
so that no one will suffer. But something will be accomplished if
teachers will remember that too much light is just as harmful as too
little. The best results will perhaps be attained if the windows are
provided with shades which can be drawn for either the upper or lower
half of the window without covering both halves at the same time. This
can be accomplished by having two shades for each window instead of one,
one rolling from the top of the window down to the middle, the other
beginning at the middle and rolling down the remainder of the way, or
else rolling up from the bottom. Very few adults who are suffering from
eyestrain can sit quietly. Still less can children do so, especially
when they do not at all realize what is making them so uncomfortable.
Even if they could be made to sit quietly, this would not in any degree
justify the injury from eyestrain that is being wrought through
ignorance or neglect on the part of school authorities.