Ah,those were the days when it was the responsibility of the parents to sort out the child's healthcare....

A friend of mine is a primary (Kindergarten) teacher, and frequently gets children aged 5 and 6 who cannot dress themselves, and even had one 5 year old still in nappies (diapers) and totally untrained in the use of the bathroom. When her child was "excluded" until trained, the mother complained bitterly saying "you're a school, you're supposed to teach them"!

As for the 'boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses' there are several issues. Women were supposed to learn homecare and childcare. You don't need to be able to read to have babies so women weren't considered as students. Boys had to be able to see the target in order to hit it and eat. Because of this, eyesight problems in girls went undetected or uncorrected. Glasses have been around since the 1400's in one form or another, and seem to have been almost exclusively for men. Certainly pictures of women in glasses are rare. Not until the vignettes and pince-nez of the 18th Century do we see women using eyeglasses. It's only since girls have been going to school regularly say, late 1800's, that it's been noticed they can't see, so have corrective lenses, and even then, it would be only the upper classes who could afford them.

Consequently, a girl who wore glasses was obviously a scholar, and therefore not suitable, childbearing, wifely material.

Since then, I think a lot of the trouble is to do with the complete and utter disregard for taste, fashion and attractiveness of the frame makers. There's a display in Londons' Science Museum of glasses frames from the middle ages upwards. The examples for the 1920's - 1970's, especially the UK's National Health frames are some of the ugliest creations in the world! There's even an exapmple of Gary Larsons' "butterfly" frames!

LTS