[nabs-l] Training centers not the real world

Mon Nov 11 20:48:17 UTC 2013

Tyler,

You and I have been on other lists and I've read things you have written long before you joined this list, and I 
know you are a very capable person who is also very resourceful.  I don't know how well you travel independently 
or handle other aspects of blindness so I can't make judgements.  I can therefore only relate the role of training 
centers to my own experience and my firsthand observation of others.  

The importance of a training center experience goes well beyond just learning particular skills, although they can 
help one to do it.  One can read up on the theory of the touch technique of a cane, how wide to make the arc, how 
long the cane should be, and all of that, and one could practice such a skill in one's home.  In this particular 
case, a training center can add two more layers to this experience.  First, it provides a way for a student to see 
other students with varying abilities and at different points in the training cycle.  One can observe students who 
can handle situations that one may find difficult and one gets a sense of how one's abilities should evolve over 
time.  The second layer is the provision of an atmosphere where one must use what one learns while one is 
learning.  Often, I feel that the most significant thing I got from the travel training I received, and it was 
before we had NFB centers, was that the world didn't come to an end if I got lost.  Having a perfect cane 
technique does not guarantee that one won't get lost.  A perfect cane technique does very little to make one feel 
that they can travel in an unfamiliar area, either, although it helps.  Handling situations that arise from 
traveling in an unfamiliar area or dealing with a situation where one had gotten lost has more to do with one's 
confidence level and one's problem solving skills.  These other layers are important in filling the gape between 
understanding what good cane technique is and truly independent travel.

Another area where a training center can help is when one can't find good information as to how to do something.  
The ability to work with other students and staff to solve a particular problem is significant.  I've seen people 
who are to some extent isolated from other blind people define what blind people are able to do by what that 
individual can do.  On more than one occasion I've seen cases where an individual was critical of what other blind 
persons were trying to do because that individual felt that since he couldn't do it, it clearly couldn't be done 
by blind people.  Training centers can expand one's horizons by demonstrating that the capabilities of blind 
people as a group vary greatly, and that one's limitations are far fewer than one might think.

Finally, most of us grow up adopting some of society's stereotypes about us.  We understand from our personal 
experience that some of those stereotypes are not accurate, but training centers can help us see that because we 
may fit certain stereotypes does not mean all blind people fit that stereotype.  What this means in the end is 
that even if we fit a given stereotype, we gain the understanding that perhaps it doesn't have to be that way.  It 
is very difficult to understand possible gas in our knowledge, to know what we do not know.  Training centers can 
provide that information through experience and exposure.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Sun, 10 Nov 2013 22:09:36 -0500, Littlefield, Tyler 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 dont get such visual 
feedback and our sighted peers either dont know how, or dont 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 dont 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, im 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. Im sure this last sentence is what 
parents must think.  Its 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 isnt to say that PE classes at public schools cant 
modify their curriculum, but many arent going to do it just for one student, or thats how it was when i was in 
high school, but Im sure things have changed in the past six years.
>>
>> Back to the training programs, many people have heard, 
you cant do this. youre 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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