[nabs-l] Training centers not the real world

Mon Nov 11 04:21:59 UTC 2013

Valerie,
All of us learn indirectly for some things.
I see your point about needing to be explicitly taught some fundamentals, 
but I think your statement was oversimplified.
We can learn without it being explicitly taught. We just use other senses.
For instance, using the sense of touch or hearing.
Some examples about social etiquette come to mind.
By listening, I learned about conversation rules, how to politely interrupt 
a person, how to end a conversation, and the appropriate use of titles such 
as when to use Mrs. and Mr.

I learned many computer keystrokes on my own such as with jaws short cut 
keys by simply trial and error and reading the daisy training book.
However, I did get the basic jaws training in face to face training through 
my vr agency who paid for it.

So, I think we learn more on our own  than we give ourselves credit for 
sometimes.
But point well taken about googling. You can only google what you know to 
google. If you have no knowledge, you cannot ask the question.

Ashley

-----Original Message----- 
From: Valerie Gibson
Sent: Sunday, November 10, 2013 10:39 PM
To: tyler at tysdomain.com ; National Association of Blind Students mailing 
list
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Training centers not the real world

Yeah, you google them, which means indirectly learning from others.  That’s 
not learning it completely and soupy on your own.  And how would you know 
what to google if you didn’t know the question?  If that makes sense.

for example, a blind person, who’s bee blind their whole life, most likely 
wouldn’t know that looking at a person when speaking to them is culturally 
acceptable if he or she was not told or if he or she did not find this out 
through another way.
On Nov 10, 2013, at 8:09 PM, Littlefield, Tyler <tyler at tysdomain.com> wrote:

> Valerie:
> I am confused on one point you make. While I did get some basic training 
> from my school district (and by basic I mean very very basic) and my mom 
> provided a bit more, a lot of what I did learn I did teach myself. I've 
> always been able to take some small knowledge of something and put it to 
> some use--if I have questions, more times than not I can find them out 
> with Google. I also know other blind people who have lost their sight or 
> have always been blind who do the same thing. How is this hard to believe? 
> Do we need someone to show us everything?
> On 11/10/2013 10:05 PM, Valerie Gibson wrote:
>> Greetings,
>>
>> This could get ugly. haha.
>>
>> I think the reason being that people who can see are taught mostly 
>> through modeling as children.  They watch how their parents act and react 
>> to situations and they follow suit.  As blind children, we don’t get such 
>> visual feedback and our sighted peers either don’t know how, or don’t 
>> think to tell us how, things are done.  They see the world visually, and 
>> unless they can think non visually, they find it difficult to express 
>> such ways of doing things like crossing a street.  To us, things such as 
>> crossing streets or cooking seem like a “Duh” moment, but in order for to 
>> seem like that, we must have had someone tell us how to do things non 
>> visually.
>>
>> I don’t usually buy it when people, who have been blind their entire 
>> lives, say, “Oh i taught myself this or that”.  Sometimes it may be true, 
>> but more often than not, scaffolding has ucurred.  Sorry, i’m working on 
>> a psych paper. it shows. :D
>>
>> For people who have been sighted and who have gone blind, hhow difficult 
>> it must be for them to have to see the world differently…no pun intended.
>>
>> You mentioned autistic children…most autistic  children are treated 
>> differently than their sighted peers or peers who are not autistic, 
>> unless their autism is mild enough where they can get away with 
>>  “normalcy”.  I could be wrong here. I only know a handful of autistic 
>> people.
>>
>> In the case of blind schools, I believe this starts with the parents 
>> thinking that surely a blind school will be able to teach my child what i 
>> cannot, and for some kids this may be true. Better send the child off to 
>> a school where teachers specialize in disabled children than risk making 
>> a mistake. I’m sure this last sentence is what parents must think.  It’s 
>> a valid concern, I think.
>>
>> Another reason may be that schools for the blind offer the child with a 
>> more rounded life as far as extra coriculars.  It did for me, and I only 
>> went my last two years of high school.  Sports are adapted so that blind 
>> people can participate, unlike your typical PE class.  This isn’t to say 
>> that PE classes at public schools can’t modify their curriculum, but many 
>> aren’t going to do it just for one student, or that’s how it was when i 
>> was in high school, but I’m sure things have changed in the past six 
>> years.
>>
>> Back to the training programs, many people have heard, “you can’t do 
>> this. you’re blind” their entire lives. Training centers, such as the 
>> ones sponsored by the NFB, do provide confidence building skills for the 
>> train.  This, i think, is the most important skill one can gain at a 
>> center.  For those who have condifence, they may not need the center as 
>> much as others, but who can say.
>>
>> I hope this helps, and if I am speaking that which is incorrect in 
>> anything that I have said, please feel free to correct me. :)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Nov 10, 2013, at 7:48 PM, RJ Sandefur <joltingjacksandefur at gmail.com> 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Why do we send blind people to training centers? Why do we send blind 
>>> people to "schools for the blind" We as blind people live in the real 
>>> world,Why do we do it? You don't see mom sending Johnny who has autism 
>>> to aschool for autistic kids!
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>
>
> -- 
> Take care,
> Ty
> http://tds-solutions.net
> He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he 
> that dares not reason is a slave.
>
>
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