Library Collections: Document: Full Text

Since 1900, when the Pennsylvania institution moved to the suburbs of Philadelphia and laid out its play grounds and covered cloisters to invite open-air activities, increased attention to directed play and even to athletics by blind boys has been noticeable all over the country. Most institutions now have a good gymnasium and several have swimming pools.

Prior to 1900 the only systematic schooling given the blind was in residential institutions. Since then for various reasons, chiefly the supposed demands of the times, a number of cities have opened day classes for blind children in connection with the public schools. In such cases the blind pupils living in several school districts are united in one convenient centre or home-room under a teacher who coaches them for recitation in the grade rooms with the other children. The plan is feasible enough and is found to be successful in proportion as the teachers and those responsible for it are alive to the needs of the individual child and do not try to make him conform to the usual hours and the limitations of the common school system. Keeping handicapped children all the time in the community where they live and not even a part of the time off in special residential schools, as used to be deemed necessary, is doubtless a move in the right direction. But it must not be forgotten that children handicapped by lack of sight not only deserve but require enlarged and enriched opportunities of development; for it takes them longer to do things than it does children who see, and moreover they are far more dependent for balance and poise upon whatever training they get at school. In some cities having such centres private associations for the blind have tried to provide the needed supplementary training. Teaching the adult blind at home called "home teaching" is carried on in 13 States. Two States now (1917) conduct summer schools for a limited number of adults, using their institution plants for this purpose.

Books. -- The American schools for the blind were founded upon embossed books. Dr. Howe states somewhere that the simple reading from embossed print did more to establish the schools in the country than any other one thing. Extraordinary pains were taken by Dr. Howe and his assistants to perfect a system which should be at once readily tangible to the fingers of the blind and legible to the eyes of their friends. The result was the small lower-case letter of Dr. Howe, the Boston line print, as it is often called. To this the jury gave preference before all other embossed systems exhibited at the great exhibition of the industry of all nations, in London, in 1851. Backed by such endorsement and all the authority of Dr. Howe, the system was rapidly adopted into the American schools. It was then the theory that the blind would be further isolated from their friends if their alphabets were dissimilar. The blind of themselves had devised a writable system -- arbitrary and composed of dots or points -- one which they could both read and write. But the early superintendents would not countenance it. However, many of the blind failed to read the line-letter system; because to read it requires extreme nicety of touch, which all the blind by no means have. Characters composed of points, not of lines, are scientifically adapted to touch reading. In the 33d report of the New York institution, Supt. William B. Wait wrote: "Now, which is the more important, that all the young blind should be able to read, thus being made, in fact, like the seeing, or that they should be taught an alphabet which in some sort resembles that used by the seeing, but by doing which only 34 per cent of them will ever be able to read with any pleasure or profit?" This attitude of the New York school was the outcome of statistics gathered from seven institutions, in which 664 pupils were involved, and of experiments made by Mr. Wait with his own pupils, using a system scientifically devised by him, composed of points in arbitrary combination. This was in 1868. At the next convention of the American instructors of the blind, it was resolved "That the New York horizontal point alphabet as arranged by Mr. Wait should be taught in all institutions for the education of the blind." Europe was a long time accepting a writable point system. That of Louis Braille, devised in 1829, though much used by individuals, was not officially adopted into the Paris school where it originated until 1854. In contrast, America devised, printed, spread and resolved to accept its writable system in less than one-half the time. The benefits of a tangible writable system are vast. It puts the blind more nearly on a par with the seeing, particularly as pupils in school. Its adoption here, next to that of tangible printing, makes obtainable the ideal of American schools for the blind. Every tangible system has its defects. French "braille" as adopted into England has antiquated abbreviations and contractions for the use of adults; and is involved with rules allowing much bad use, like the omission of all capitals. The New York point as printed also laid itself open to much criticism as to "good use." The American braille, the latest system, combining the best features of French braille and of New York point, was devised by a blind teacher of the Perkins institution. It takes full account of "good use," and those who use the system deem it very satisfactory. In 1892, when the American braille system was adopted into several schools, a typewriter for writing braille was invented, and this was followed by the invention of another machine for embossing braille directly on plates of thin brass from which any number of duplicates could be struck off on paper. Here was a means of creating a new library at once. But the chief value of the invention lay in the fact that as the machine was simple and inexpensive and could be operated if necessary by a blind man, any institution could have a printing office of its own. And several schools immediately established such offices, from which they issued at once whatever their school classes demanded. By co-operating in the selection of the books to be embossed these schools have created in a comparatively few years a library of books in American braille than which there is no superior in any system in any country, and they have added an immense amount of music in the braille music notation, which is the same all over the world. A typewriter and a machine for embossing brass plates in the New York point system promptly appeared also, and a great library of both books and music has rapidly been issued in this system, especially from the American Printing House for the Blind at Louisville, Ky.; so that in America we have the condition of two competing point systems when but one would obviously be enough. More than one system means duplication and therefore lessening both the book production and the reading done by the blind themselves. Seeking a way out of this dilemma, a group of especially competent blind people was created a "uniform type committee." For several years it conducted tests in many States and in several countries, the funds being subscribed by private individuals, by themselves, by other blind people and their friends and by school printing plants. To-day the country seems to be on the eve of uniformity.