[nfbmi-talk] Here is something from Federation Literature that youmay wish to read.

[Jacalyn Paulding]

Let me clarify I was speaking of the email that contained DR Jerrnigans criticism of therehabilitation teaching manual that Terri sent out some time ago. , not this most recent one. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 5, 2013, at 12:54 PM, Jacalyn Paulding <jacalynpaulding at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> I understand what Elizabeth was saying , the original email was confusing. It sounded as though the speech was the writing of the author of the email. It is important to give credit where credit is due. 
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On Mar 5, 2013, at 12:12 PM, Jordyn Castor <jordyn2493 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> It just so happens that there is this little well-known tool called Google.
>> If you type in "NFB To Man the Barricades" the very first link that comes up is:
>> https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/convent/banque71.htm
>> Under the first heading is who it's by, where the address was delivered, and the date if you need that information as well. Very easy to find...
>> So there you have it, the link to the properly cited article and all. I hope you enjoy it.
>> Jordyn
>> On 3/5/2013 2:25 PM, Elizabeth Mohnke wrote:
>>> Hello Terri,
>>> 
>>> If you are going to post works that are not your own, please give credit to the person who wrote it.
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> Elizabeth
>>> 
>>> --------------------------------------------------
>>> From: "trising" <trising at sbcglobal.net>
>>> Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 1:08 AM
>>> To: "nfbmi List" <nfbmi-talk at nfbnet.org>
>>> Subject: [nfbmi-talk] Here is something from Federation Literature that youmay wish to read.
>>> 
>>>> Here is something from Federation Literature that you may wish to read.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> To Man the Barricades
>>>> Some of you may remember the story Will Rogers liked to tell about his early career as a comedian in vaudeville. "I used to play a song called 'Casey Jones' on the harmonica with one hand," he said, "and spin a rope with the other, and then whine into the old empty rain barrel ... and then in between the verses I used to tell jokes about the Senate of the United States. If I needed any new jokes that night, I used to just get the late afternoon papers and read what Congress had done that day, and the audience would die laughing."
>>>> 
>>>> This story reminds me of my own activities over the past twenty years. I have gone all over the country as the guest of blind groups and civic associations; and, like Will Rogers, I tell stories about the Government of the United States-particularly the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and the other "professionals" doing work with the blind. And when I need any new jokes, I just get the latest reports from the agencies and foundations and read what they have been doing recently-and the audience dies laughing. Unless, of course, there are people in the audience who are blind, or friends of the blind-and they die crying.
>>>> 
>>>> Which is a roundabout way of saying that much of what goes on in the journals and laboratories and workshops of the agencies for the blind these days is a cruel joke. It is a mockery of social science and a travesty on social service. Far from advancing the welfare and well-being of blind people, it sets our cause back and does us harm.
>>>> 
>>>> The blind, along with some other groups in our society, have become the victims of a malady known as "R and D"-that is, Research and Demonstration. The R and D projects are largely financed by the Federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and account for an ever-increasing chunk of its budget. The whole tone and direction of programs for the blind in the country-rehabilitation, education, social services, and the rest-have been altered as a result. The art of writing grant applications, the tens of millions of dollars available to fund the approved R and D projects, the resulting build-up of staff in universities and agencies for the blind, the need to produce some sort of seemingly scientific results in the form of books and pamphlets to justify the staff salaries and the field trips and conferences, and the wish for so-called "professional" status have all had their effect. Blind people have become the objects of research and the subjects of demonstration. They are quizzed, queried, and quantified; they are diagnosed, defined, and dissected; and when the R and D people get through with them, there is nothing left at all-at any rate, nothing of dignity or rationality or responsibility. Despite all of their talk about improving the quality of services to blind people (and there is a lot of such talk these days), the research and demonstration people see the blind as inferiors. They see us as infantile, dependent wards. The signs of this creeping condescension-of this misapplied science, this false notion of what blind people are, and of what blindness means-are all about us. Some things are big, and some are little; but the pattern is conclusive and the trend unmistakable.
>>>> 
>>>> Consider, for instance, what has happened to the talking book. From the very beginning of the library service back in the 1930's, the first side of each talking-book record has concluded with these words: "This book is continued on the other side of this record." The flip side has always ended with: "This book is continued on the next record." Surely no one can have any serious quarrel with this language. It serves a purpose. The reader, absorbed in the narrative, may well not remember whether he is on the first or second side of a record, and the reminder is useful and saves time.
>>>> 
>>>> In the last three or four years, however, something new has been added. After the familiar "This book is continued on the next record," the statement now appears: "Please replace this record in its envelope and container." That one, I must confess, crept up on me gradually. Although from the very beginning I found the statement annoying, it took some time for its full significance to hit me.
>>>> 
>>>> Here I was, let us say, reading a learned treatise on French history-a book on Gallic statesmanship-one which presupposes a certain amount of understanding and mental competence. The narrative is interrupted by a voice saying "Please replace this record in its envelope and container." Then it strikes me: These are the words one addresses to a moron or a lazy lout. These words do not appear on records intended for the use of sighted library borrowers. They are intended for the blind. To be sure, they are not an overwhelming or unbearable insult. They are only one more small evidence of the new custodialism, the additional input of contempt for the blind recipient of services which is in the air these days.
>>>> 
>>>> I have heard that the words were added at the request of some of the regional librarians because certain blind borrowers were careless with the records. Are sighted people never careless with books or records? Are such words at the end of the record really likely to make the slob less slobby? The ordinary, normal human being (blind or sighted) will, as a matter of course, put the record back into the envelope and container. What else, one wonders, would he do with it?
>>>> 
>>>> Regardless of all this, one thing is fairly certain: My remarks on the subject will undoubtedly bring forth angry comments from library officials and others that I am quibbling and grasping at straws, that I am reading meanings that aren't there into innocent words. To which I reply: I am sure that no harm was meant and that the author of the words did not sit down to reason out their significance, but all of this is beside the point. We have reasoned out the significance, and we are no longer willing for our road to hell to be paved with other people's good intentions, their failure to comprehend, or their insistence that we not quibble.
>>>> 
>>>> Here is another illustration-again, a slight and almost trivial affair. I had occasion recently to visit a public school where there was a resource class for blind and partially seeing children. The teacher moved about with me among the students. "This little girl can read print," she said. "This little girl has to read Braille." Now, that language is not oppressively bad. Its prejudice is a subtle thing. But just imagine, if you will, a teacher saying of a pair of children: "This little girl can read Braille; this little girl has to read print." The supposition is that the child possessing some sight, no matter how little, is closer to being a normal and full-fledged human being; the one without sight can't cut it and has to make do with inferior substitutes.
>>>> 
>>>> Confront that teacher with her words, and she will be hurt. She will say, "But that is not how I meant it. It was simply the way I said it." It is true that she was not consciously aware of the significance of her statement and that she did not mean to say what she said; but she said exactly what she meant, and how she felt. And her students, as well as visitors to her classroom, will be conditioned accordingly. I don't wish to make too much of the teacher's terminology, or the words on the talking-book record. Neither exemplifies any great cruelty or tragedy. They are, however, straws in the wind; and either of them could be the final straw-the straw that breaks the blind man's back, or spirit. Far too many backs and spirits have been broken in that way, and the breaking must stop.
>>>> 
>>>> As I have said, some of the recent incidents in our field are small, and some are big; but they fit together to make a pattern, and the pattern is conclusive. During the past decade, for instance, the vocational employment objective of rehabilitation has steadily receded before the advancing tide of "social services" and "research and development," and the Division for the Blind in the Federal Rehabilitation Service has diminished accordingly in prominence and importance. By 1967 rehabilitation had taken such a back seat that it became submerged in a comprehensive pot of Mulligan stew set up by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare called "Social and Rehabilitation Service," with the emphasis clearly on the "social." A new public-information brochure turned out by HEW, listing all the department's branches and programs, placed rehabilitation-where do you suppose?-dead last.
>>>> 
>>>> As far as the blind were concerned, the ultimate blow fell late last year. Federal Register document 70-17447, dated December 28, 1970, announced the abolition of the Division for the Blind altogether, and its inclusion in the new Division of Special Populations! And who are these "special populations"? They include, and I quote, "alcoholics, drug addicts, arthritics, epileptics, the blind, heart, cancer, and stroke victims, those suffering communication disorders, et cetera." (I leave the specifics of the "et cetera: to your imagination.) Therefore, half a century after the establishment of the Federal vocational rehabilitation program, and almost as long after the development of a special division of services for the blind (and still longer since the creation of separate agencies or commissions for the blind in most of the States) the blind of America were to lose their identity and return to the almshouse for the sick and indigent.
>>>> 
>>>> This was too much, and every major national organization and agency (both of and for the blind) combined to resist it. By February of 1971 the HEW officials had made a strategic withdrawal. They announced that they had never intended to downgrade or de-emphasize services to the blind; but that in order to clear up any possible misunderstanding they were establishing a new "Office for the Blind," to be on a par with the "Division of Special Populations," and in no way connected with it. Thus (for the moment) the tide was reversed and the power of united action demonstrated; but the tide is still the tide, and the trend is still the trend.
>>>> 
>>>> It is not difficult to find the evidence. For example, under date of February 4, 1971, the Federal Rehabilitation Services Administration issued an information memorandum entitled "Subminimum Wage Certificates for Handicapped Workers." The document is self-explanatory; it is damning; and it is all too indicative of what is happening to the blind in America today. "A recent revision to the wage and hour regulations," the memorandum begins, "broadens State vocational rehabilitation agencies' certification responsibility with respect to employment of handicapped workers at subminimum wages. The responsibility was previously limited by regulation to certain categories of handicapped persons employed by sheltered workshops.
>>>> 
>>>> "The revision to the wage and hour regulations, effective February 4, 1971," the memorandum continues, "authorizes State rehabilitation agencies to certify certain disabled persons for work in competitive employment at less than fifty percent of the statutory minimum wage but not less than twenty-five percent."
>>>> 
>>>> So said HEW in February of this year! No longer must the pay be even fifty percent of the minimum wage! No longer is it limited to the sheltered shop! It may now be extended to private industry, to so-called "competitive" employment! And this, we are told, is rehabilitation. We are not to quibble. We are not to read meanings into things which are not there. We are not to find patterns or trends or hidden significance. No! We are to take our twenty-five percent "competitive" employment, and be grateful for it. That is what we are expected to do, but I doubt that we will do it.
>>>> 
>>>> I have already spoken about R and D-the so-called "research and demonstration"-financed ever more heavily and lovingly by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. I have at hand a typical product of "R and D"-a comprehensive 239-page publication of the American Foundation for the Blind, entitled A Step-by-Step Guide to Personal Management for Blind Persons.1 I invite you now to accompany me on a step-by-step guided tour through its pages and mazes. But let me warn you: It may be a bad trip.
>>>> 
>>>> "One of the areas," we are told at the outset of this guidebook, "where independence is valued most highly by a broad spectrum of blind persons ... is personal management." I myself would put that a little differently. I would say that the blind person should, and commonly does, take for granted that independence begins at home-that self-care comes before self-support-but that what he values most highly in life is not his ability to master the simple rituals of daily living, such as are detailed in this manual. It is not his ability to wash his face, take a shower, clean his nails, brush his hair, sit down on a chair, rise from a chair, stand upright, wash his socks, light a cigarette, shake hands, nod his head "yes," shake his head "no," and so on and so on through two hundred-plus pages of instruction. No, these are not the supreme attainments and values in the life of the blind person, or of any other civilized person. They are merely the elementary motor and mechanical skills which represent the foundation on which more meaningful and significant achievements rest. The skills of personal management are rudimentary, not remarkable.
>>>> 
>>>> However, the American Foundation's Guide to Personal Management for Blind Persons does not put the matter in such modest perspective. Rather, it is blown up to majestic proportions, as if it were not the beginning but the end of self-realization and independence. Most of all, it is presented as a very difficult and complicated subject-this business of grooming and shaving, bathing and dressing-virtually as the source of a new science. Much is made of the "need for an organized body of realistic and practical personal management techniques." The American Foundation, out of a deep sense of professional obligation and the excitement of pioneering on new scientific horizons, agreed as long ago as 1965 (in its own words) "to undertake the responsibility for developing, ov