[Ohio-Talk] The Characteristics of an NFB Orientation Center

[Richard Payne]

	The Braille Monitor
April 2005 
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The Characteristics of an NFB Orientation Center
by James H. Omvig
 	
James Omvig	
>From the Editor: For some time now we have needed a fairly concise statement
of what constitutes an NFB training center and why it does the most
effective job of rehabilitating blind people. Dr. Jernigan addressed this
question from time to time, and Peggy Elliott described the NFB approach to
training blind adults in a speech she delivered in Milan, Italy, in October
of 2002 (see the December 2002 issue of the Braille Monitor for the full
text of this speech). But in the article that follows, James Omvig, a
recognized authority on effective rehabilitation and author of Freedom for
the Blind: The Secret Is Empowerment, distills his thinking into a few pages
of explanation. Here it is:
The National Federation of the Blind's concept of what a cutting-edge
residential orientation and adjustment center for the blind can and should
be is an idea whose time has come round at last. The concept is sweeping
across America, and more and more centers--both public and private--are
capturing the vision of the NFB's civil rights-based programs. This, of
course, is a very good thing since our NFB centers offer real hope and
inspiration for rank-and-file blind people, freedom and true empowerment for
the blind students who choose to attend them and are willing to work hard
enough to take advantage of what is offered.
However, some confusion is creeping into this otherwise encouraging
movement: Some say, "We want to do what you do, but we'll just call it
something else." Or they say something like, "The results you achieve are
undeniably terrific, and we want to do exactly the same thing and get the
same successful outcomes you do, so we'll use your model, but we'll just
leave the NFB--its philosophy, its literature, its people, and its
meetings--out." This is delusional and wrong-headed thinking, and it is pure
nonsense. Precisely because the NFB--in all its aspects--is at the very
heart of our centers, we achieve the dramatic results we do. There can be no
substitute.
Let me offer a word about the kind of success a high-quality residential
center should have. It is not at all difficult to make a fair and valid
assessment about whether any program is a success. Just look at the
graduates of the program in question. Are they content with their blindness?
Are they empowered? Are they free? Are they happy and fully integrated into
their communities? Are they performing the kind of work and family and
community activities for which they are suited? In other words, are they the
best they can be? If they are, then the program is successful, no matter who
is running it or whose model is being used.
Because our NFB training model is becoming so popular across the country, I
have decided to comment briefly upon the issue to set the record straight on
what an NFB orientation and adjustment center really is and of course what
it is not. First, however, let me offer a bit of history. By the mid 1950's
the NFB had developed its basic philosophy about blindness, and we had also
become critical of the traditional, medically-based training systems and
methods. Our criticism was not nihilistic but constructive--we did not wish
to destroy, but to reform and to offer viable alternatives. The medical
model was not working, and we believed that, if we were to introduce the
truth about blindness into the adjustment-to-blindness process, our
alternative might make a real difference.
The first attempt at infusing NFB philosophy into an orientation center
occurred in California in 1951 when the new California Orientation Center
for the Adult Blind was established and several NFB members became part of
the staff. Our own Kenneth Jernigan taught in that California center from
1953 to 1958.
However, the first true NFB center was established in Iowa when Dr. Jernigan
moved to that state from California in the spring of 1958 to become
administrator of Iowa's failed Commission for the Blind. He had gone to Iowa
with the express intention of proving the soundness of the NFB's philosophy
by integrating it into every aspect of the programs of the Iowa Commission
for the Blind. He inaugurated an adjustment-to-blindness program with five
students on 
November 2, 1959, even though the Commission was still operating out of the
shabby basement rooms of a condemned high school building it had been
occupying when he arrived in Iowa. He moved the Commission's programs into
the seven-story building many of us know in downtown Des Moines on February
1, 1960. He knew that the traditional medical model didn't work, and his new
program was based upon an understanding that blindness is a social problem
and a civil rights issue. The success of this program is world-renowned, and
it has served as the model for countless others. The program was, of course,
state-operated.
The first program actually to be designated publicly as an NFB Center was
established in Ruston, Louisiana, by Joanne Wilson in 1985 when Joanne and
the NFB of Louisiana created a private program called the Louisiana Center
for the Blind. Before long Diane McGeorge and the NFB of Colorado
established the Colorado Center for the Blind in Denver, and in Minneota
Joyce Scanlan and the NFB started Blindness: Learning in New Dimensions in
Minneapolis. Each of these centers has built an enviable track record, and
countless blind people have been the fortunate beneficiaries of their
innovative work. Through the years other public and private agencies have
moved toward the NFB model.
So what are NFB centers? How will you know one when you see it? Before we
turn to the five specific NFB center characteristics, some general
statements about blindness are in order. We in the NFB understand that blind
people are told in one way or another from infancy that they are
inferior--blindness means inferiority. In other words, we are a minority
group in every negative sense of that term. Therefore the problems
associated with blindness are not unlike those experienced by members of
other minorities. Our problems are social and attitudinal, and they are
wrapped up in civil rights issues.
We recognize clearly that services for the blind--no matter what they
are--must teach the blind students a new and constructive set of attitudes
about blindness based upon an awareness that prevailing views are wrong and
harmful. The rank-and-file blind person has involuntarily assimilated
society's mistaken attitudes and assumptions about blindness and will set
expectations for himself or herself at extremely low levels based on this
incorrect information. The rehabilitation system--if it is to be of real
benefit--must do what it can to replace these myths and superstitions with
the truth. As Dr. Jernigan has put it, "A high-quality orientation and
adjustment center must be an attitude factory."
Just what is this truth about blindness? It is quite straightforward too.
Blind people are nothing more than normal people who cannot see, and
blindness is a normal human characteristic like all of the others which,
taken together, mold each of us into a unique person. We are a cross-section
of humankind with the same strengths and weaknesses, the same hopes and
desires, and the same human frailties as everyone else. As Dr. tenBroek was
fond of saying, "We are normal human beings, or, at least, as normal as
human beings are." The quality service program for the blind must get the
customer or student to embrace and internalize these truths. The real
problem of blindness is not our blindness at all; it is to be found in the
misunderstandings, myths, misconceptions, and superstitions that exist about
it.
Two more general observations must be made. First, NFB centers are primarily
intended to be prevocational. That is, their principal purpose is to teach
people how to be blind. We believe that--after satisfactory acceptance and
adjustment have occurred--blind people generally should pursue their
vocational or professional training where sighted people get theirs. In fact
blind people should be integrated into programs with sighted when it comes
to preparation for work as a precursor to ultimate, complete integration
into the broader society.
Second, NFB centers teach their students or customers that they have the
right to take control of their lives and to make choices. Far too many of us
have been taught that our role is to let others do for us or even speak for
us. We have generally been taught that we don't have the right even to ask
for things that we might find interesting or valuable.
Having made these general observations, let me turn specifically to those
five characteristics of any cutting-edge program and the backbone of our
centers:
(1) The NFB center helps the student to come emotionally, not just
intellectually, to understand that he or she truly can be independent and
self-sufficient and can compete with others on terms of complete equality;
(2) The NFB center helps the student master, not merely be introduced to,
the blindness skills essential for him or her truly to be independent and
self-sufficient;
(3) The NFB center teaches the student to learn to cope comfortably with
public attitudes about blindness, that is, to cope unemotionally with the
strange, unusual, or demeaning things other people will do or say because of
their lack of accurate information on the topic;
(4) The NFB center helps the student learn to give back by becoming an
active and contributing member of the organized blind movement; and
(5) The NFB center helps the student learn to blend in to the broader
society by becoming acceptable to those around him or her--particularly to
employers.
I will not take the time or space in this article to elaborate on each of
these essential ingredients, but a brief explanation of each may be helpful
to those unfamiliar with the civil rights-based empowerment-model of
orientation and adjustment center developed and honed by the NFB.
1. Emotional adjustment to blindness: Helping the student come to understand
and feel at the gut level, not just intellectually, that true freedom,
independence, and normality are possible for him or her is the most
difficult and time-consuming part of the entire adjustment-to-blindness
process. It is achieved at the NFB center over a six-to-nine-month period by
seeing that the student learns to accept the fact that he or she is blind
and to learn that the word "blind" is respectable by meeting difficult
challenges in woodworking shop; on travel lessons; by rock climbing, water
skiing, and the like; by using sleepshades during training when appropriate;
by facing routine life experiences; by consistently using the long white
cane (which cannot be folded up and hidden); by engaging in frank
discussions about blindness; by being exposed to good blind role models; and
by being willing to invest the time it takes to get it.
2. Mastering the alternative techniques: The civil rights-based NFB center
does not merely introduce students to the skills of blindness but helps them
strive to master those skills in order to achieve competence and
competitiveness. The student (using sleepshades to prevent use of residual
vision) must master Braille reading and writing; hone long white cane use to
reflex perfection; develop effective keyboard and computer skills; and
acquire usable homemaking and personal grooming habits. In addition the
student must learn to devise alternative techniques to use life-long in
situations in which center training cannot foresee the need. Finally, the
student must master life-coping skills and respond effectively to the
ubiquitous how--how can a blind person do this?
3. Coping with blindness: As a routine part of empowerment training at the
NFB center, the student must learn unemotionally to handle the strange and
unusual things other people do or say because of their misunderstandings and
lack of accurate information about blindness. The student must learn to
handle routine putdowns, treatment that goes beyond the bounds, and
discrimination. He or she must also learn how to become a role model that
conveys a positive image of blindness to improve conditions for other blind
people.
4. Paying back: NFB centers argue that, unless the student learns to pay
back by becoming actively involved in the organized blind movement, he or
she is missing out on a key part of effective rehabilitation. Students need
to join together with other blind people for many reasons. First, students
need an authentic way of gaining perspective on blindness and valuable
services for the blind rather than bad ones. They must spend time with
effectively trained and successful blind people, who can provide accurate
information about what training is and is not needed. The student must learn
to experience the satisfaction of making a valuable contribution and of
giving back, which necessarily develops feelings of worthiness. Finally,
when the student leaves the orientation center, experience shows that
significant backsliding can occur if the graduate doesn't have ready access
to a support group, and the local NFB chapter offers the logical venue. In
my book on empowerment, Freedom for the Blind, I argued that the contact
achieved through participation in the organized blind movement completes the
process of personal empowerment, which serves to close the loop on the
empowerment circle.
5. Blending in: As a final, routine part of training for personal
empowerment, the NFB center helps students learn to blend in and to be
acceptable to those around them. Students master such things as punctuality
and reliability, common courtesy, and appropriate dress for all occasions.
They learn what things look like and how to deal with so-called blindisms.
They also learn that, since the blind are a minority group, we are often
judged by one another, which has much to do with the way individuals conduct
themselves in the broader society.
NFB center staff members too must come to know and emotionally accept the
truth about blindness. Only by knowing the truth can they set appropriate
expectations for their students. If they do not understand this simple fact,
their expectations will be far too low, and the blind students will suffer
accordingly.
Staff members must also be passionate about what they do, and they must be
willing to give and give and then give some more. Such staff members also
must have the capacity to love their students even when their activities or
behavior is not particularly lovable.
In summary, a quality orientation and adjustment center is the heart of any
good vocational rehabilitation program, and every VR counselor should work
to make each new customer aware of the enormous benefits to be gained
through enrollment and participation in such a program. The VR customer who
has received personal empowerment from a cutting edge NFB center has a
markedly higher chance for vocational success than the norm. He or she has
the knowledge necessary to make sound life choices and the power to make
those choices stick. Given proper training, the average blind person--not
merely those some observers mistakenly perceive as the superblind--can
compete on terms of complete equality with his or her sighted peers and can
become a tax-payer rather than a tax user. Far from wanting meekly to
whimper, "I wonder what it would feel like to be free," the empowered blind
person can climb the highest mountain and shout, "I am free! I know what it
feels like to be free!"
These then are the principal characteristics of what have come to be called
NFB centers. We invite all blindness professionals who truly have the best
interests of the blind at heart--that is, those who operate from the
empowerment motive--to join with us in the revolution of personal
empowerment. But I encourage you to go all the way if you wish to
revolutionize your program and adopt the NFB model. Don't try to adopt the
model and then cut the very heart out of it. Don't try to bypass the
National Federation of the Blind. It won't work, and your blind customers
will be the worse for it!


Richard Payne,  President
National Federation of the Blind of Ohio
937/829/3368
Rchpay7 at gmail.com
The National Federation of the Blind knows that blindness is not the
characteristic that defines you or your future. Every day we raise the
expectations of blind people, because low expectations create obstacles
between blind people and our dreams. You can live the life you want;
blindness is not what holds you back


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