[blindkid] O/M School Cane issues, Final. Read this one.

[H. Field]

Hello Lauren,

I, like Susan, accidentally sent before I was finished. The first 
e-mail was only the draft. Please read on for the final. I certainly 
do not mean to cast o&m instructors as villains. They are, in my 
experience, good people who mean well. But experience has shown that 
most of them teach children using an approach that is inappropriate 
and restricting. It is not based on the principles of early childhood 
development or learning by doing; two fundamental criteria for 
teaching children. Nor is their approach based on age-appropriate 
expectations. While some choose to embrace the approach being promoted 
by the NFB, most do not.

Unfortunately, this approach of very gradual acquisition of safe,
independent cane travel does not work for blind children, and is even
less useful for teenagers. Blind children and youth need safe,
independent travel techniques which allow them to do age-appropriate
activities with their peers. They need to be equipped with techniques
that allow them to function independently, without being dragged and
led about by peers or, worse, an attending adult. Age-appropriate
behaviour is what parents want for their blind sons and daughters and 
this is also what competent, blind adults want for your children. 
However,
it is not so easy to achieve in the current educational environment:
low expectations, the push for children to use vision at any cost,
many more children with multiple disabilities of which blindness is
only one, and the opposition to the blind being the experts on
blindness by so much of the sighted educational establishment - are 
just some of the factors. There is so much working against blind
children reaching their potential.

As competent blind adults who use appropriate techniques we know two
things, We know that most of these travel techniques are not that
complicated to learn and we know that they are essential if blind
children and youth are to grow up truly believing in their ability to
function as competent, fulfilled and contributing members of society.
This is why people like me sit around on a Saturday night and write
e-mails to people like you. I believe that I am fighting for your
child's right to be allowed to get what she needs, as a blind child,
to get to where she can go in life if only she is allowed and
empowered to go there. I do not get paid to uphold my position and I
do not risk working myself out of a job or discrediting my career 
choice, or losing credibility with other "blindness professionals" by 
telling you that the tap technique is just fine for your daughter to 
use if it works for her and gives her confidence to travel
safely independently.

However, this is not so for your daughter's orientation and mobility 
instructor. Unfortunately, she has a vested interest in insisting 
things be done her way. I need to add here that it is not a conscious 
agenda. She is not a n evil person seeking to sabotage your child's 
life. She truly believes that she knows what is best for your child. 
Just as dodctors in earlier times sincerely believed that practices 
such as bleeding patients or dosing them with vile concoctions 
containing magic ingredients would cure people, only to learn later 
that many died as a result of the supposed cure, so today, in our 
times, many well-meaning people who instruct blind children, do far 
more harm than good. And, just as there were dissenting voices 
speaking out against accepted practise then, so their are now. If 
things are to change these voices must continue to speak out, loudly 
and firmly.

Your daughter's o&m instructor is in a difficult position. If she 
gives in and lets your child use your cane technique of
choice, what need is there for a teacher to guide your child from one
intermediate step to the next, and the next etc. throughout all the 
years of schooling your daughter receives? She wants to be the expert 
and, as such, in control of what is happening. In fact, she sincerely 
believes that she is, indeed, the only o&m expert at the school and 
that she should, therefore, be in control of the instruction your 
child gets and the kind of cane she uses and where and when and how 
often she uses it. She has been trained in a certain "method" and her 
voracity as an
expert is based on insisting that all those years she put in studying
to teach o&m to children makes her the expert and way more qualified
in this area than you, a mere parent, and your daughter, a mere blind 
child. If just anyone can come along and say "moving my
cane this way works best for me and other blind people agree with me
so I'm going to do it my way and ignore what you say," then what need
is there for an expert to come and teach her gradual development of
cane technique? None...and that is the problem.

But there is afurther problem. Most O&M instructors are still trained
from an adult centered perspective using concepts and approaches and
models of training which were developed to teach blinded war veterans.
As the NFB has fought for years and years about the need for blind
children to be given canes and allowed to develop from babyhood as
cane users, evidence has mounted that early orientation and mobility
training is valuable to blind children. So, instructors have been
hired to teach them. However, few of these instructors have been
trained in a "bottom up" child-centered approach to Orientation and
mobility education. Most o&m instructors do not  understand the real
life mobility needs of children and youth of various ages, or the
incredible competence that blind children can develop if allowed to
acquire travel techniques in a developmental, needs-based discovery
model. So, lacking both an understanding of what children need and the
knowledge to give it to them in an appropriate delivery model, most
o&m instructors can only fall back on what they learned at college.
And so they argue with you. To put it simply, they don't know what
your child needs, or how best to give that to her, or what she can
achieve as a blind person if she is given what she needs. So, your
daughter is given what the o&m instructor does know, which is mostly
inappropriate or inadequate, or is restricted by bias and
defensiveness.

Now. If you look at the various questions you've been asking in the
light of the above explanation as to why your daughter's o&m
instructor is fighting you, it is very easy for you to come up with
answers.

Question: is the tap technique that successful blind adults taught my
daughter appropriate for her to use?
Answer: if it works for your daughter and is making her feel more
confident and travel more competently and age-appropriately ... yes.

Question: if competent blind travellers say that in their experience
my child needs to use her cane at all times in all places, using the
technique which will keep her safest, and the o&m instructor
disagrees; who should I believe? The blind people who work with blind
children and who have lived the experience themselves, as well as
continuing to live it personally? Or, a sighted person who went to
college and learned other sighted peoples' ideas about what should
work for children.
Answer: The blind people who have successfully taught cane travel to
blind and low vision children and who travel as blind people
themselves day in and day out.

Question: am I in for an ongoing disagreement with my child's o&m
instructor.
Answer: if national trends are anything to go by, yes.
Question: what should I do.
Answer: do your research and make an informed choice about what is
best for your daughter. Then, fight till you get it for her. Never
give up. Get as much help, by way of advocates at meetings, mentoring 
for your daughter, encouragement from other parents of blind children 
and from
competent blind people, until your daughter is successful despite any
and all opposition.

I'm sorry to say Lauren that there is no easy way out of this dilemma.
Other people, many of whom don't know what's best for your child, will
continue to try and make you doubt yourself, Or try to bully you or to
ignore you and hope you'll give up and leave your child's education to
them. If you truly want what's best for your daughter, then you must
decide what that "best" is and fight to get it for her. You must
become the expert you trust. As I try so hard to point out to parents
who are being intimidated by blindness professionals, this is just a
job to them. Even if they do their sincere best in that job, it is 
still, in the end, a job.
Any teacher could be transferred anytime and then the
damage they may have done to your child is just a vague memory to
them or, more likely, not even recognised. But you, you must live with 
the very real outcomes of what those
teachers did - or didn't - give your child. One day, your child may
turn to you and say "why did you let them do that? Why didn't you
fight for me to be taught...?" Perhaps the issue is cane technique,
perhaps it is braille for a child with limited vision. Perhaps it is 
being allowed to take part in phys. ed. or marching band or walk 
unescorted with their peers on a field trip. Whatever the issue, only 
parents are in it with their kids for life. I encourage
you to fight for the kind of life you want for your child who will all
too soon be an adult. Whether that young adult believes that he or she 
can
accomplish their life goals and has the skills to do it will largely 
be
a result of the decisions you are making now, and the way you are
teaching them to stand up for what they know is right, or to just give 
in to the
self-proclaimed experts.
I speak from experience, in my own life as a blind person and as
someone who is working with parents all over the country to get the
education their blind child needs. If I have learned anything it is
that you will have to say "no!" to many educators along the road to
your daughter's adulthood. How you choose to do it is up to you.
Whether you're polite or rude, confrontational and angry or cool, calm 
and low key, in the end
you will still have to simply say "no!"
We are here to help you educate yourself and to fight if you have to.
We will even fight along side you if that's what you need. Just let us
know.

Best regards,

Heather Field


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "L W" <mama2sally at yahoo.com>
To: <blindkid at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, October 23, 2009 8:16 PM
Subject: [blindkid] O/M School Cane issues


Hi all
Thank you for your continued advice. The latest is that Joli’s
mobility teacher has just started teaching her the diagonal
technique. I asked Joli to show me how the O/M has her using the
cane. It looks like she holds the cane in her right hand. It is
crossed in front of her left hip with the tip maintaining constant
contact with the ground. I asked her what happens if there was an
obstacle on her other side, and she said she can switch hands. This
technique seems really awkward to me as it looks like she can’t
completely clear the space ahead of her without switching hands, which
is tricky if she carrying anything. Of course it would be rare for her
to moving around her school with both of her hands free. I was
wondering if the NFB has any thoughts on this diagonal technique.Â
Joli got her cane from the NFB and has been using the touch tap, step,
tap, step technique they showed us at the NFB. Her O/M teacher says
that the NFB touch
 tap technique is only for outdoor use. She didn’t even want Joli
using her cane indoors until she had learned the diagonal technique.Â
 So far we have an understanding that Joli can use the touch tap
technique until she learns the diagonal technique. I am not sure I
want Joli using the diagonal technique and am wondering how the NFB
feels about this technique.Â
I can anticipate that if I want this instructor to stop the diagonal
technique and to instead teach & encourage the touch technique Joli
has been learning, I going to have a fight on my hands. That is
another reason why I am wondering if the NFB supports use of this
diagonal technique.
Thanks for any advice,
Lauren Wibbe



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