[nabs-l] Training centers not the real world

Mon Nov 11 04:26:28 UTC 2013

RJ,

I think these are good questions.

First, you say that "we" send blind people to centers and schools. The
NFB does not have a collective policy on where blind kids go to school
or where they get training or even if they get training. But in the
NFB, we believe that blind children deserve the same educational
opportunities as sighted children. Furthermore, we believe that
blindness training centers equip blind people with the skills and
confidence necessary to pursue fulfilling lives.

I will say that personally, I would love to see a day when we don't
have to have specialized facilities. In this world, blind children
would receive appropriate educations and have opportunities to
interact with blind and sighted children. And in this perfect world,
blind kids would gain all of the nonvisual techniques and confidence
necessary to leading fulfilling lives. But as of now,  our society
isn't like that, and unfortunately, many schools for the blind and
training centers do not equip blind people with the skills and
confidence they need. That's why we have worked so hard to develop the
teachers of blind students educational curriculum and why we host
programs for TBS's and blind students like Youth Slam to provide
examples of how to educate blind children. And that's why we have
opened 3 training centers that do not make excuses for blind attendees
but put them through a curriculum that while taken at face value does
not mimic an exact day-in-the-life of a blind person but prepares
blind people for real life. And I would argue that going to training
is quite like reality. Sure, I am probably never going to live in an
apartment complex with 20 other blind people just for probability's
sake, but the interactions we had, and the curriculum at the training
center very much represent reality. For example, I will never get into
a van and ask the driver to drop me off somewhere randomly and not
tell me, but the confidence during drop offs has prepared me for
several real-world situations when directions from Google maps didn't
tell me about the giant diagonal intersection or when I am dealing
with a cab driver who drops me off in the wrong place.

I think that taking time off to go to training is very important for
getting the full value. For example, when I was in college, there were
times when I had technology access issues. Instead of plugging through
alternative techniques for hours, I often hired a reader. Sometimes
this is more efficient, but it can also become an excuse. My priority
was to get an education and to turn an assignment, not to learn
accessibility workarounds for a particular software. So, if blindness
training was a class or something done while one is continuing their
life, it would be very easy to fall back into those patterns of making
excuses. For example, I went to training, because I knew that I was
making excuses not to use public transportation, so I had to be put
into a situation where it was my only option to help me become more
comfortable with traveling alone.

When you go to training, you are literally giving yourself time to
solely focus on skills of blindness and the confidence to use those
skills and go to school or get a job and live independently. I am
thankful that I was able to take advantage of such an amazing
opportunity. There are some strict policies at training centers, and
not every day was an amazing euphoria of learning 700 new skills, but
the curriculum is set for a reason, and we have hundreds of success
stories to prove that the reasons are valid. I would encourage anyone
who is able to take the time to go to training, because you will never
be able to concentrate like that on blindness skills at any other time
in your life. Other things will always take priority and your
nonvisual techniques will go to the back burner.

I tend to agree with you more about your schools for the blind point
simply because I have yet to witness a school for the blind giving
blind students better education than I have seen done in public
schools. This may be the case for some students who attend because
their school at home wasn't providing services, but overall, I haven't
seen much. I do think that Valerie's point is well taken though. Most
of the blind people I know who play sports went to a school for the
blind or lived near a goalball team or something like that. Similarly,
I know that access in math and science is sometimes better at schools
for the blind. So organized blindness-related schooling, sports,
training, and everything else can be good and is essential so blind
people meet role models and friends. But it would be awesome to live
in a society where this is not necessary, but chosen because of the
positive value of blind people interacting with one another. That
being said, I have enjoyed my times with other blind people because I
have developed a lot of great friendships.

Cindy

On 11/10/13, Jamie P. <blackbyrdfly at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, many parents of autistic children will sometimes send them to a
> school or specialty resource center for people with autism. While I totally
> agree that at least the training center nearest my home does not seem to
> give its students a realistic taste of the world while supposedly preparing
> them to live in the real world, I see the idea behind the training center
> for the blind. While most parents can at least bumble around and figure out
> how to "train" their sighted children to be self-sufficient, employable
> adults with at least a touch of ambition, many sighted adults have very low
> expectations of their blind children. You also sometimes get sighted adults
> who would love for their blind children to be as self-sufficient and
> capable as they themselves are, but either can't fathom how to teach them
> the skills they need, or become lazy in the process and decide it's just
> faster/easier/less expensive/less messy to do things for them. My parents
> were guilty of this. They knew I could easily learn to serve and cut my own
> food at the dinner table, but I wasn't going to learn how simply by
> watching them do it, and at meal time, once the food hit the table, they
> found it less stressful for them to do it themselves so they wouldn't have
> to deal with the mess I would make the first few times I tried, or the
> extra time it would take to stand over me and show me the proper way to
> hold a steak knife... Consequently, I had to teach myself to do this in my
> late teens when I began having more meals without my parents present...
> This is just one example of many, and a very basic one at that. It gets
> harder and harder for sighted parents who have been taking these
> "shortcuts" in parenting their blind kids from early on as they move
> towards things like food preparation, laundry and home maintenance skills,
> independent travel, money management, the skills of employment, and so on.
> Many parents think the "experts on blindness" at their local public school
> are supposed to take on these tasks of parenting for them, but that is
> neither fair nor realistic in the slightest, and consequently, some blind
> folks reach adulthood and need a way to gain these skills and this
> knowledge from someone who has both the knowledge and the patience to teach
> them thoroughly and properly. Training centers are (should be) a great
> resource for this.
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 8:39 PM, Valerie Gibson
> <valandkayla at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> 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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-- 
Cindy Bennett
Secretary: National Association of Blind Students

B.A. Psychology, UNC Wilmington
clb5590 at gmail.com