BLINDNESS 



771 



BLINDNESS 



This, the oldest as well as the most famous 

 institution of the kind in the United States, 

 was established in Boston in 1829 and incorpo- 

 rated as the New England Asylum for the Blind. 

 From the start it received help from the state, 

 and the other New England states took advan- 

 tage of the opportunities it offered by sending 

 their blind to it at state expense, as they con- 

 tinue to do. In honor of a generous benefactor 

 the institution was renamed the Perkins Insti- 

 tution and Massachusetts Asylum (later, 

 School) for the Blind, and under the direction 

 or Dr. Samuel G. Howe it rapidly attained the 

 high rank which it still holds. The exhibitions 

 which its pupils gave before different state 

 legislatures led to the founding of like institu- 

 tions in many parts of the country, and in 1910 

 there were forty-eight schools for the blind 

 (all except five of them state schools). After 

 the Perkins Institution the most noted of such 

 schools is the Pennsylvania Institution at 

 Philadelphia, which ranks among the foremost 

 in the world. Only the residential schools in 

 Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Balti- 

 more and Pittsburgh are incorporated. 



A very special triumph for Dr. Howe and 

 the Perkins Institution was the education of 

 Laura Bridgman, a blind deaf-mute who was 

 brought to the school in 1837, at the age of 

 seven. Despite very general predictions of fail- 

 ure, Dr. Howe and his assistants succeeded in 

 opening up the world to the child, hitherto so 

 entirely shut in, and in making of her a busy, 

 useful woman. Authorities the world over took 

 an intense interest in her and in other cases, 

 and in the published reports of the methods 

 used in dealing with them. 



A comparatively new development has been 

 the attempt to educate the adult blind in 

 their homes. In several states teachers are 

 provided at government expense, who give 

 instructions not only in reading but in certain 

 of the crafts. All of the institutions gladly 

 permit the use of the embossed books in their 

 libraries by the adult blind. What is partic- 

 ularly needed is the creation of more state 

 commissions to deal with the adult blind, 

 those who have lost their sight when over 

 school age, for about three-fourths of the blind 

 population is adult. 



In Canada. The training of the blind has 

 received careful attention in the Dominion, 

 there being five residential schools, two of 

 which are supported by the government. The 

 new developments outlined above have been 

 studied and in some cases adopted, but some 



of the Canadian schools for the blind are 

 organized on the European principle and are 

 looked upon as charitable institutions rather 

 than as a part of the educational system. 



Books and Apparatus. Naturally, oral read- 

 ing is made use of even more in institutions 

 for the blind than in ordinary schools, but 

 much must be done through the sense of 

 touch, and special books and apparatus are 

 therefore necessary. The first attempts at 

 teaching the blind to read were made by means 

 of raised letters, in form similar to the ordinary 

 letters of the alphabet, which most of the 

 pupils learned to recognize by running their 

 fingers over them. 



The effort to improve this method to the 

 end that every pupil might be able really to 

 read led to the devising of various arbitrary 

 systems, of which by far the best known are the* 

 different modifications of groups of dots or 

 "points." By all means the most widely used 

 of these modifications is the braille, which takes 

 as its basis six points, or dots, arranged in two 

 vertical parallel columns, and shifts them into 

 different combinations to stand for the letters. 

 Those who have advocated the Roman-letter 

 system based their arguments on the convic- 

 tion that the education of the blind should be 

 as nearly as possible like that of people with 

 good eyesight, and that everything which tends 

 to make differences between the two helps to 

 deprive the blind of a normal view of life. 



Adherents of a point system, on the other 

 hand, assert as its chief advantage the fact 

 that it enables the blind to write as well as 

 read. By means of a grooved board, a per- 

 forated metal rule and a stiletto, any blind 

 person may indeed learn to write, with a fair 

 degree of rapidity, notes in words, figures or 

 music, the writing being done from right to left, 

 and the paper reversed for reading. Most 

 schools for the blind now use only one of these 

 methods, but a few still make use of both, 

 combining their advantages. 



Geography is taught by the aid of relief 

 maps, in which the towns are indicated by 

 metallic points, the boundaries by raised lines, 

 and the mountains, valleys and rivers in the 

 ordinary manner of relief maps. Dissected 

 maps, cut along state and county boundary 

 lines, such as those which are given to children 

 as puzzles, are a help in teaching outlines. A 

 person who has his sight can with difficulty 

 appreciate the delicacy of the trained touch of 

 the blind, and the ease with which they can 

 master details through their fingers. 



