Metro

Eye doc’s shocking charge: NY schools are making your kids nearsighted

They’re blinding them with science — and reading assignments.

Too much homework may be causing young students to develop nearsightedness, requiring them to wear reading glasses prematurely, a prominent Upper East Side pediatric eye doctor claims.

Students in first to sixth grades who attend rigorous private elementary schools are more vulnerable than their public-school counterparts because they are saddled with heavy reading.

Even kids who don’t have a family history of poor vision are developing myopia, or near-sightedness, says pediatric ophthalmologist Mark Steele.

“There’s a correlation between private schools and nearsightedness,” Dr. Steele told The Post.

“The kids in private school do more reading, and that puts them at increased risk. Youngsters doing a lot of reading tend to become nearsighted. The bulk of students get it between the ages of nine and 14.”

When nearsighted kids shows up in his Upper West Side office, Steele said, he often diagnoses them as “private school” or “selective magnet school.”

“Does your child go to Hunter College Elementary?” he jokes with parents, who often admit he’s right.

Kids with achy eyes and prescriptions for glasses often do hail from the city’s toughest schools, he said. “These schools screen for intelligent kids, who probably would have read more no matter what.”

“There’s been a huge shift toward more homework,” said Will Craig, educational director for Partners with Parents, a Manhattan-based tutoring firm. “Some homework in kindergarten is now expected almost across the spectrum.”

Many second-graders in private schools get about an hour’s worth of work per night — studying spelling, filling out math worksheets, and completing reading assignments, according to private-school tutor Andrea Sclarow.

The heaviest homework loads typically begin in fourth grade, where students are assigned research papers in which they answer 50 questions, tutors say.

“I see a lot of young kids who complain about headaches and are rubbing their eyes and saying their eyes are tired,” said a tutor who has been working with private-school students for 10 years. “It seems like the private schools feel like they’re forced to increasingly up the ante.”

Some parents say the workload is overwhelming.

“The homework at the private Riverdale Country School in The Bronx was obscene,” said the mother of a 12-year-old.

“Each teacher was supposed to give 30 minutes of homework, but it was at least an hour per course. It was four hours of homework a night. We asked, ‘Are we supposed to cut it off after 30 minutes?’ And the school told us yes but then the teacher would get mad.”

Hitting the books for hours after school might hurt young people’s eyes for nothing, according to education professionals.

Psychology professor Harris Cooper, who heads up Duke University’s Program in Education, said educators recommend a rule of 10 minutes of homework per grade, beginning in first grade.

“Two to four hours of homework a night is too much and could be scaled back without any noticeable impact on a child’s achievement level,” he said.

Doctors report that nearsightedness is on the rise across the country.

“The incidence of myopia has been increasing . . . and the demands of reading may play a role,” said Dr. Kathy Lee, a spokeswoman for the American Association of Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus. “But to say that reading load is the direct cause of increased myopia is a very large stretch.”

Victoria Goldman, author of “The Manhattan Guide to Private Schools,” holds the screen time, not the homework, responsible for blinding kids.

“These kids have BlackBerries and [iPods] and computer games and video games,” said Goldman. “The eye strain is from all of those things. It isn’t just the homework.”

akarni@nypost.com