[nfbwatlk] Competing On Terms of Equality

[Mike Freeman]

2All those speeches used to be available in audio form. Check out the 
literature at http://www.nfb.org to see what's available now.

Dr. Jernigan may have sounded a bit preachy but remember that he was in 
his pedagogical mode, originally giving this lecture to participants in 
a seminar.

Mike

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "PAUL VAN DYCK" <paulvandyck at comcast.net>
To: "NFB of Washington Talk Mailing List" <nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 1:48 PM
Subject: Re: [nfbwatlk] Competing On Terms of Equality


Mike:

I really enjoyed the piece.  He tended to sound a bit preachy to me, but 
his points certainly are well-taken.  I would like to get my hands on 
some of the recorded speaches, if available, for broadcast and 
discussion on air.  Is that possible?

I am planning a program in the spring on the topic "why so many people 
with disabilities unemployed"?  Would you or anyone else on the list be 
interested in participating in a discussion type program?  Roundtable 
type format?



Paul Van Dyck

Sounds of Awareness Radio

www.soundsofawareness.org







----- Original Message -----

From: Mike Freeman

To: nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org

Sent: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:15:52 +0000 (UTC)

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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