Reading has many factors. First, reading is a visual process. It is the ability to see symbols clearly with the eyes. It is a perceptual process-perception meaning that our thought processes are able to take these symbols and to invest them with meaning. It is an experiential process, because without experience there can be no perception, for without experience the mind will be unable to invest meaning to the symbols that we see. Reading comes about when we take meaning to the printed page, not just the act of taking meaning from the printed page.

We often expect our students to be able to read and to gain meaning and knowledge directly from the page or book without background, without experience, without further information, without ever having been given the background knowledge about the information that he is expected to learn. A student cannot learn from his text without any experience beyond the page of print. This is a virtual impossibility. He must have experiences which surround it. For example, it would bean impossibility to learn chemistry from simply reading a book. One may learn possibly something about it; but one could not really learn chemistry, about the formulas, about acids, about the catalysing substances-without some knowledge other than a reading knowledge of it. One has to see them, smell them, handle them, know them by actually working with them. One may say that one can secure good grades even after learning by the book only. But this is probably because of the poor examination that was given, for it may have tested just his rote memory. Giving back ideas on an examination might have been a totally factual situation, completely devoid of any real learning.

What is Learning?

Learning means that there is a change in behaviour through experience. Reading in this case is the experience, and there can be a change of behaviour only if there has been other things that go along with the reading. Suppose a person mixed a chemical substance to make a formula but his only experience to this point is by reading. He will therefore not know the chemicals by sight, by smell, and what happens to them when the other things in the formula are added. Unless he knows about these facts by actually handling them by himself he cannot be sure about the formula he makes. Even if something goes wrong he will not know whether it is wrong if he has only a book-knowledge and no actual experience outside the books. In other words, reading must have an experimental factor. Reading must have experiences tried in and related to it.

Vision and Reading
Vision in reading and perception in reading
Here we will discuss the function of each subsystem and indicate how each of these areas works together for final conscious vision.
In this discussion of vision we will be covering the following three aspects:
1. The Sensory mechanism
2. The Motor mechanism-a binocular coordinating mechanism.
3. The Mental process which produces a conscious organizational patterning of this process into what we call visual perception.

First, we will discuss the basic mechanical equipment that initiates the act of seeing. The first of these is the two eye-balls, weighing only an ounce a piece. This ocular equipment does the fantastic job of seeing for us. This eye-ball has a lens, a shutter device, and internal fluid that aids focusing light waves. The shutter device is that part of the eye we usually think of as brown (or blue, for many Europeans). The black dot in the centre surrounded by the brown (or blue) ring is the window or lens into the internal part of the eye. Through this black dot light rays pass to the back of the eye. Finally there is a nerve sensitive area or retina at the back of the eye to which the light rays are focused. The light rays enter the eye, they are modified and adjusted by the fluid in the eye-ball to hit directly at a point of focus at the very back of the eye. The point to which it is focused is called the Fovea. The eye-balls make up the optic or refractive system.

The second system is the binocular coordinating system. The eyes are not fixed in a single permanent position, but they are free to move in their sockets through a wide angle. There is a set of muscles that performs this task of movement as well as another set that makes fine adjustments within the eye itself. There are six muscles that move or steer the eye towards the object at which it wishes to look. Any misalignment or maladjustment of those muscles will cause one eye to look at a slightly different point of reference than does the other eye. Then the person will either not see at all or he will see double. This problem of muscular imbalance, as it is called, or lateral or vertical forea does have some relationship to reading difficulty. If one is a slow reader and finds it difficult to learn to read rapidly even under training it is not impossible that he has a visual problem and that problem is muscular imbalance which causes the eyes to steer rather poorly, one eye being slightly out of alignment with the other eye.

There are two more sets of muscles. They are the intrinsic muscles and the ciliary muscles. They do the very delicate job of adjusting within the eye. One set of muscles adjust for light conditions just like a camera would-it opens or closes the curtain of the eye. The other set of muscles inside the eye adjusts the shape of the lens in terms of depth of field or the distance at which one is looking. When one is looking at a distance, the eye is slightly different in shape than when one looks at something rather close up. The whole idea is that there must be a sharp point of focus on the retina at all times. So these muscles work together to lighten or darken in relation to the amount of light which is falling on the retina while the other set of muscles adjust the shape of the eye so that there is always a constant point of sharpness on the retina. As one gets older, these muscles get weaker and they a little rigid. And thus the ability of these fine muscles to focus is not as easy as when one was younger. This is why older people have to hold things at a distance to see clearly or use lens or glasses to make that correction. So in dealing with people beyond 35 or 40 years of age who are taking reading courses, the chances that they have progressive difficulty in focusing is a problem to be reckoned with.

Vision is a learned process. For example, we learn to move our eyes for a maximum of visual efficiency according to the visual task. Secondly, when the data from the optic nerves reach the brain, it is interpreted through our entire past experiences and visual reactions that we have previously made to like situations or like stimulations For example, take two persons, one who can read and one who cannot read and have them look at a printed word. Now first of all the non-reader has not learned visual-motor attack techniques. He may not know, for example, that his eyes should move from left to right. He does not know what part of the word he is to look at to make the best visual discrimination. In fact he may move his whole head as he scans back and forth because he has never learned the fine muscle movements needed for a close exacting task like reading. Now both the reader and non-reader would receive visual impulses to the brain from the word. But the reader's visual impulses will be orderly, organized and structured for immediate interpretation in the brain. This is a learned process. He look at the front part, he knows that some parts of words are more suggestive to the meaning or the pronunciation of the word, so the eye seeks for these clues. It is a learned task-a technical task which a person who does not know how to read does not know. The non-reader will be haphazard and disorganized. Even if he knows the letters of the alphabet he may not know the rules of visual combination based on common sound units. A person who does not read may have good vision, but he does not know how to use his eyes, he will not have been taught to operate in a directed logical way to figure out what the word says.

For the one who can read, however, the eye muscles steer the eye through a learned pattern of responses which select light energy from an object like a printed word. This light energy transformed into electro-mechanical impulses is finally perceived in the brain as a decoded word The perceptual area in he brain for the one who can read is prepared by many such previous experiences so that immediate visual memory takes over and decoding is accomplished. In other words, there has been a lot of previous preparation for a person who can use his eyes adequately for recognition of words.

Final conscious awareness of what is seen is more than the sum of the parts of vision taken separately. This is important, because working to correct one part of the system will not necessarily assume correction of the entire system. Neither does an observed problem in a part of the system necessarily mean that acceptable visual data for processing cannot be received by the brain.

The research shows that there is a small relationship between vision and reading, (not a high relationship). Yet, in a broader sense, vision is the key to a person's whole development including general school achievement. Personality, posture and adjustment to life are closely related to visual development. Experiments at Purdue University indicate that posture problems developed through faulty vision are retained throughout life. Spinal curvature, head tilts, unequal shoulder heights can be traced to uncorrected visual problems in the classroom. Behaviour is the most important clue to visual difficulties and various behavioral symptoms will be discussed later.

If we think about the whole cycle of vision it seems possible that a highly organized ad well-programmed brain could indeed create conscious perceptual experience from less than an ideal sensory input. This reasoning also suggests that trying to find out a single cause for a reading failure such as a visual sensory defect is seldom realistic. While learning, the disabled students may need visual correction. But it does not necessarily follow that his learning will automatically improve or that his learning difficulty was casually related to his visual problem, e.g., a person may have relatively poor visual acuity which is the product of the sensory mechanism and he may even have poor muscular control. Yet the perceptual area may be so highly and richly programmed by earlier experiences that his reading will be adequate.

We cannot learn much from books if we have not had any earlier experiences relating to the subject. If the teacher gives an assignment and asks the students to learn a particular thing without any experiences other than those out of the textbook, the mind is not collating or filling away experiences to which he can relate this reading and thus very little is learnt. Even in the learning of languages, just a learning of a language of a book is a very poor way of doing it. One has to have experience with the language; the brain has to have a lot of experiences in order to finally come around to say that is what this is and that is what you are seeing. As was said earlier, perception is related to the sound, smell and touch of things that has been sensed in real experience. Reading is simply recalling these memories through the visual use of symbols. This idea of forming perceptions is related to the idea of forming concepts. Concepts cannot be formed except through a great many varied ways of approach to the same area of knowledge, e.g., if all that a person does is to get information from a book, this concept of the idea is extremely narrow and he will never know much about that area, although he may be able to quote the book backwards and forwards. It is more than book learning, it is more than rote learning. It would be more useful to teach only half of the amount this way compared to rote learning. It is better to have direct experiences of a thing, than to only read about all kinds of experiences.

Now let us look back to the Sensory Process to the thing we call vision. Several conditions may interfere with it. For example, there may be a blurring condition. There may be a muscular condition. These can obviously interfere with the ability to read. There are symptoms which are observable with these conditions. For example, if you see someone who excessively rubs his eyes, a person who frowns when he reads, who seems to want to rub away a blur, avoid close work, who blinks a great deal, who may stumble over small objects, who holds small objects close in order to see them or who may be sensitive to light, etc., a vision problem may be indicated. If three or four of these kinds of symptoms seem to be present, then there may be a visual problem and this person should be examined by a vision specialist.

The main point in terms of perception and vision in reading is that one can have a very god mechanical, optical system, and still be a poor reader because the perceptual system in the brain has not been richly endowed with ideas from other sources. On the contrary, one may have a poor optical system from a sensory point of view and be a good reader because he may have a very highly enriched perceptual system which has been built up through a great many experiences. The best and the ideal system, of course, is good eyes and a good mind. Vision is important but the build up of information through other ways is as important to the reading act as is good vision.

Lighting and Vision

Good lighting is important to good vision. Light is measured by foot-candles. It is suggested that about 70 foot-candles of light is required in a room. Poor lighting causes discomfort. It can cause visual strain. But it does not injure the eyes. Too little light cannot hurt the eye, but too much can hurt it.

Try to keep a proper light level. Do not get the room too dark. Have the light come over the shoulder preferably rather than having students facing a window.

Summary

While vision is important for reading, all kinds of experiences are also important to build up concepts so that reading can be meaningful and a minimal number of clues for reading can bring ideas to the readers' mind. So if the reader has either good or poor vision, the best way to use that vision in the best possible way is to build up perceptions other than through reading by many other ways.

Vision is very important, but the eye in itself cannot create meaning from the printed page. Meaning has to come through the touch, the taste, the feeling, the attitude, the talking about all kinds of experiences that can be fed into the brain mechanism if reading can really work.

The teacher has a role in vision by remembering that-

1. While vision is important for reading all kinds of experiences are also important to buildup a concept formation. So that the reading can be meaningful and a minimal number of clues for reading will bring ideas to the reader's mind because he has had an enrichment of ideas through other sources besides reading. So if a person has good or poor vision, the best way to use that vision to the best possible way is to build up perceptions other than through the reading act, through many other ways of teaching.

2. If there seems to be any students who have problems with vision that should be attended to, parents should be informed about it so that they can take him to an eye specialist.

3. Try to keep a proper light level. Do not keep the room too dark. Have the light come over the shoulder preferably rather than having students face a window.