[nfbwatlk] Competing On Terms of Equality

[KAYE KIPP]

I remember that article.  It's a good one.

Kaye
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Freeman" <k7uij at panix.com>
To: <nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 5:15 PM
Subject: [nfbwatlk] Competing On Terms of Equality


>I consider the article shown below to be a "classic" of NFB literature. As 
>far as I know, its essence was first given as a talk by Dr. Kenneth 
>Jernigan (then President of NFB) at a JOB (Job Opportunities for the Blind) 
>seminar at the National Center for the blind in Baltimore in 1980. JOB was 
>a program operated by NFB in partnership with the U.S. Department of Labor 
>designed to teach blind job-seekers the things they'd need to know to get 
>and keep good jobs in competitive employment and to match qualified blind 
>job-seekers with employers willing to hire them. In that setting, the 
>article was called (My Experience in Employment" and conveys the sort of 
>inventiveness and ingenuity as well as the sort of attitude required to 
>compete in most jobs with the sighted. This version appears in the TOPS 
>(Teaching Others to Serve) handbook. Here's the article.
>
> **********
>
> The Freedom Bell
> "Competing on terms of Equality"
> Top of Form
>
> by Kenneth Jernigan
> At one time in my life I sold life insurance a most interesting 
> occupation. I had a big rate book in print. I could not always afford to 
> hire somebody to go with me and read it for me. I was trying to make a 
> living, not be an executive. I couldn't put it into Braille. I didn't have 
> enough reader time for that and even if I had, it would have meant 
> carrying around volumes. So that wouldn't have been practical.
> I had another problem: The company kept changing the rate book as new 
> policies and procedures came along. So what was I to do?
> I could have asked my prospective customers to look up the information I 
> needed, but that wouldn't have worked because the book contained 
> information I didn't want them to have. I wasn't trying to hoodwink them. 
> But if you're a wholesaler, you don't ask your customers to look in the 
> manufacturer's catalog and see what kind of markup you make. It isn't good 
> psychology. Besides, most of my clients would not efficiently have been 
> able to find what I wanted. But what would have been even worse was that 
> it would have destroyed their confidence in me. They wouldn't have 
> believed that I was competent to handle their insurance business if I had 
> done it that way.
> I either had to figure this out or stop selling insurance. By the way, 
> when I'd tried to get the insurance job, the first company had said they 
> wouldn't hire me but would let me sell in the name of another established 
> agent and split commissions with him if I wanted to. I said no, I didn't 
> think I'd do that. Then, I went off and found a company that would put me 
> on.
> So I tried to discover if there was any way to figure out shortcuts to 
> work with the rate book, a formula. I learned that if I knew the annual 
> premium on a policy, the semiannual premium (if a client preferred to pay 
> it that way) would be 51 percent. The quarterly was 26 percent, and the 
> monthly premium was 10 percent. So right there I saved myself lots of 
> columns. It isn't very hard to figure out 51 percent of something, or 26 
> percent, or 10 percent. Ten percent is easy all you have to do is move a 
> decimal.
> Then, I started on the other end of it, the hard part. I learned that if I 
> knew what an individual of a given age would be charged for a particular 
> policy, there was a formula by which I could determine what that 
> particular policy would cost an individual of any age.
> I arbitrarily took age 26, and (knowing the premium on an ordinary life 
> insurance policy for a person of that age) I could figure the semiannual, 
> quarterly, or monthly premium for a person of 50, 60, or any other age. 
> Since we mostly sold fifteen or twenty kinds of policies (there were a few 
> exotic things, but they were not ordinarily sold), I could put all the 
> information I needed (name of policy and annual premium for age 26) on a 
> Braille card or two and put them in my pocket so nobody would even know I 
> was looking at them.
> It occurred to me that my competitors might also have such data available. 
> Rate books are rate books. So I thought, "If ours are like that, I wonder 
> what theirs are like." So I lured some of my competitors out to my house 
> to sell me insurance and deduced a number of things about their policies 
> unraveled the formula and found that they worked.
> One lonesome, rainy night I went to see a fellow who was quite well-to-do, 
> a man who could buy (and intended to buy) a relatively large life 
> insurance policy. It was going to make somebody a whopping good 
> commission. There are always fewer things than there are people wanting 
> them, and in this case a lot of us wanted his insurance business but only 
> one of us was going to get it. And it didn't matter whether you explained 
> it, or called yourself blind, or said, "I can tell you why I didn't do 
> it." Only one thing counted: did you or didn't you? That was the test.
> So I went over to see him, and he said he'd been thinking about buying 
> this insurance. I said, "Well, if you do, it will cost you this amount."
> Suppose, he said, I decided I want to pay it on a semi-annual, 
> twice-a-year, basis?
> You could do that, I said, and if you did, it would cost you this amount.
> I've considered buying from this other company, he said. Well, I answered, 
> they're a good company, and if you buy the policy from them, it will cost 
> you this. And I went on to tell him as honestly as I could the advantages 
> and disadvantages of the other company's policy and of mine.
> Then, he said, I'm going to give you my insurance business, because I 
> think you know what you're doing. I had a fellow out here the other night 
> who didn't know a thing. Every time I asked him any question he had to 
> look it up in that little book he had.
> Now, I'm as lazy as anybody else. We all have a tendency to that, and 
> there's nothing wrong with being lazy if you properly understand that it 
> means extracting as much as you can for the labor you exert. That's 
> perfectly proper. It's just that a lot of people don't know how to be 
> lazy. If you'll work hard up front, it will allow you more time to do 
> whatever it is you want to do, and you can do it more effectively, and 
> have more time left over to do something else.
> If I had had sight, the chances are I never would have been motivated to 
> have hunted up all that stuff and reasoned it out. But once I did, it 
> proved to be a tremendous advantage and an asset. Yet a lot of people 
> would have told me that I was handicapped in selling insurance because I 
> was blind and couldn't read my rate book. And they would have been right 
> unless I did something about it.
> I also did a stint teaching school. I taught in a school for the blind, in 
> a day when blind teachers were not highly regarded. The question was: 
> Could I carry my own weight, and (specifically) could I keep discipline? I 
> figured out some methods that worked for me.
> At the beginning of the first class I made a speech to the students. I 
> said to them, "We are entering on a new relationship." (That sounds nice 
> and bureaucratic, doesn't it?) "We're entering on a new relationship, and 
> we can live at peace, or we can engage in war. If we engage in a peaceful 
> relationship, all of us can live happily. On the other hand, if you choose 
> to go to war with me, I have certain advantages that you do not possess. 
> You may have some that I don't possess-and some that I haven't thought of. 
> But let me tell you what mine are.
> "I can give you assignments, or not. I can assign things to you in a 
> minute or two that will give you a great deal of trouble, either to do or 
> find ways of avoiding doing. One day (whether you now know it or not) it 
> will help you if you have nice recommendations written on your reports 
> from me not a lot, but it will help some.
> "But beyond that, if you try to engage in conflict with me, there are 
> times when you will succeed in putting things over on me, because all of 
> the brains didn't come here when I got here. So you'll win sometimes. But 
> on the other side of that is this: All of the brains didn't come here when 
> you came, so you'll lose sometimes, and I will catch you. It remains to be 
> seen, then, whether or not I can make it desirable for you to try to live 
> in peace with me. I choose peace if I can have it, but I will engage in 
> war if I must." I made them that speech and passed on.
> I had a student named Johnny Lindenfellow, who was at that time in the 
> seventh or eighth grade. He took every occasion to be as mangy as he knew 
> how, and he was an expert at it.
> I tried to reason with him; I tried to be good to him; I pleaded with him 
> about the good of the school and humanity; I talked with him about living 
> and letting live. But nothing worked. There was no getting along with him. 
> Nothing made any difference. In fact, whenever I would lay some punishment 
> on him, he seemed to glory in it as being proof that he was a tough 
> customer.
> So I changed tactics. One day when he had done something I didn't like, I 
> said, "Johnny, you will please stay after class."
> I could feel him expand with pleasure. He knew I wasn't allowed to kill 
> him, that there was some limit as to what I could do.
> After class, when we were alone, I said, "Johnny, it's been a long 
> conflict between you and me, and I want to tell you now what I'm going to 
> do. As you know, I teach other English classes in this school. In about 
> two hours I'm going to be teaching an English class, and I'm going to 
> provoke an incident in that class so that somebody misbehaves.
> "It's not difficult to think up some way to get it done. Then, I will say 
> to the student who misbehaves, `Why can't you be a good little boy like 
> Johnny Lindenfellow"' I will do that over and over and over until I make 
> you the most hated boy in this school. You will fight fifty times every 
> day. I will call you a good little boy to every class I have until the day 
> comes that they will beat you to death. You will fight all of the time."
> "You wouldn't do that to me," he protested. "Oh, but I would!" I said. 
> "It's clear that I can think it up... I did; I've already told you about 
> it. And I will do it." He said, "Look, I'd like to get along."
> "So would I," I said. "I'm perfectly willing to have it either way, peace 
> or war. You have declared psychological war on me, and I'm no longer 
> prepared to be passive about it. I'm going to pull out all the stops and 
> go to war with you now."
> "Look, I want to get along," he reiterated. "Fine," I said, and he and I 
> became the best of friends and had no more trouble.
> That is one way you can maintain discipline. It didn't hurt him. It 
> probably helped him. It certainly helped me.
> I discovered another very effective technique, which is translatable 
> beyond school. One day I found a student engaging in an infraction of the 
> rules. I said nothing about it until the next day. Then, in the middle of 
> the class period, I interrupted what I was saying and remarked: 
> "Yesterday, Frances, you violated this rule (and I specified). Your 
> punishment is this." Without another word I returned to the discussion.
> Nobody said much, but I could hear people thinking about it. In a day or 
> two I caught somebody else doing something, and didn't mention that for 
> two days. The next time I let it go three days-then, a week-then, two 
> weeks-and then, three. Thus, the culprit never knew whether he or she had 
> been detected in crime, and the agony of the suspense cut down on the 
> pleasure considerably.
> The students never knew whether they had been caught-or when the ax would 
> fall. A lot of times teachers forget that they were once students 
> themselves, and they don't put any ingenuity into the psychological 
> warfare which some students take joy in waging and always win.
> We had a rule in my class. If anybody brought anything in and left it 
> there and I found it, that individual had to sit down and punch out a 
> whole sheet of full Braille cells, using a dull stylus and an old slate 
> that wasn't in good alignment. The work had to be done in my presence so 
> that I knew the individual had done it. That was also the rule if a person 
> didn't bring whatever was supposed to be brought to class-book, paper, or 
> whatever.
> Once when I was keeping library, the president of the senior class brought 
> me a written book report. I got called away from the library desk. When I 
> left at the end of the period, I forgot to take the report with me. The 
> next day when he came to my English class, the student walked up to my 
> desk and handed the report to me. He said not a word. He just stood there. 
> He had obviously primed all of his fellow students. Everybody simply sat 
> and waited.
> "You've got me dead to rights," I said. "Furthermore, you have done 
> something else. You have stripped away all of the things that might have 
> muddied the water. You didn't come and demand that I do anything. You 
> didn't make me a speech. You just brought the evidence and laid it out. 
> Therefore, today in library I will bring the slate and stylus and come and 
> sit at your table. In your presence I will punch each and every dot and 
> present you with the completed page."
> I would like to be able to say that I deliberately planned that piece of 
> drama-that I knowingly planted the book report and calculatedly forgot it 
> in the hope that he would do what he did. But I didn't. I wasn't sharp 
> enough. However, I hope I learned enough from the experience that I would 
> do it next time-assuming, of course, there ever is a next time. It worked 
> wonders. It made the students feel that I was willing to be flexible, that 
> I wasn't stuffy, that I took seriously the rules which I made, and that I 
> was not above the law. It did a lot of positive things, and if I had had 
> the wisdom to think, I would certainly have staged it, just the way it 
> happened. But I didn't. I simply saw the possibilities in the situation 
> and took advantage of them. Somebody has wisely said that luck is where 
> opportunity and preparation meet.
> Many of us who are blind could get jobs that we don't get, and we don't 
> simply because we have been told by others that we can't perform, and we 
> have believed it. We have been told that we're geniuses for doing the 
> simplest of routine tasks, and we have taken pride in the so-called 
> "compliment."
> Too often we have sold our potential equality for a trifle: If, for 
> instance, it is raining and luggage is to be loaded into a car, which is 
> right in front of a door and easily accessible, almost nobody would think 
> anything of it if a perfectly healthy blind person waited under shelter 
> while a sighted person said, "Just stand here. I'll load the car." It 
> isn't pleasant to get wet, especially if you have on freshly pressed 
> clothes. I know. I've been there. And there is a temptation, if nobody 
> expects you to do whatever it is, to take advantage of it.
> It is a matter of having sense enough to know how to behave to get on in 
> the world. If my motive in standing in that doorway is that since only one 
> person is needed to load the car and that there is no point in everybody 
> getting wet, that's fine. But if my motive is to stand and wait because 
> I'm blind, let me not complain the next time I don't get equal treatment 
> when the goodies are being passed out.
> I believe that I am capable of competing on terms of real equality with 
> others in jobs. When I have had a problem I don't believe it's because 
> anyone has wanted to be vicious or unkind or mean to me. It has been 
> because people have taken for granted that I can't be expected to do this 
> or that kind of thing. And sometimes I haven't believed I could do things.
> I know that before I can convince anybody else, I must convince myself. I 
> must really believe that I can get along as well as others. Unless I 
> believe that, how can I expect other people to believe it? To a great 
> extent, the sighted public will treat me and other blind people like what 
> we believe in our hearts we are.
>
>
> For discussion
>
> How can we make our resources work for us?
> How do we feel about ourselves?  Our abilities?
> Have you ever felt as though your self-confidence is being challenged?
> How do we deal with situations where society says we cannot do something 
> because we are blind?
> Are we tolerant with those around us.  Those we live with?  Our friends? 
> Total strangers?
>
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