[il-talk] Braille instruction for children

[Jennifer Perdue]

I think that's a wonderful thing and that we need to contact our congressmen about that with force.

I was not taught braille in school and I fell farther and farther behind until I reached high school.  

At that point, I had to cheat, or have teachers take pitty on my efforts to keep up and just pass me anyway even to graduate, which did me no good.

I was not prepared at all for secondary education and can't do anything mathematically but addition and subtraction.  Maybe a little short devision but that's it.

I taught myself braille in 1999, when I was 26, but even though I can read it, it takes me a long time and is frustrating at best.  

I can't read it two handed as I have coordination issues due to an underdevelopment in my brain, but I know that I would be much faster and more fluent if I had been taught from the beginning.  

I was put at a terrible disadvantage, and I pay the price for it every day.

I pray that no other children experience what I did, so please, make it a point to contact your senators and government officials to make braille education a mandatory part of a child's education from the very beginning.

Jenny