Eyes on the prize: improving education through better vision

It’s long been the case that the need to wear glasses has been conflated with a higher intelligence. But what if improving vision in children actually led to better performance in school? A study in China endeavoured to answer that very question, offering free eye care to students in the rural part of the country. A Standford Rural Education Action Program study of some 20,000 children in the Gansu province of Western China, reported in The Economist, showed that 24 per cent of these had reduced uncorrected vision in either eye, while 16 per cent had visual difficulties in both…