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History of the blind, the experience of persons affected by blindness and the
development of blind education and organization through time.
Brian R. Miller
The Parable of the Blind - Martin van Cleve,
16th c.
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The history of the blind is difficult to chart. There are few examples before
the 19th century of sustained organized efforts by the blind to act in concert
to achieve collective goals, and prior to the 18th century the history of the
blind is atomistic, consisting of stories of protagonists in religious and
secular stories who weave in and out of popular consciousness, serve as object
lessons, or provide inspiration to the sighted. What is left to the historian is
a collection of biographies of “extraordinary” individuals, from Homer to Helen
Keller, Louis Braille to Jorge Luis Borges, which provides little in the way of
a narrative thread that one can pull together to create a tapestry of blind
history. The negative historical assumption is of the blind as objects of
charity rather than active agents in history. Occasionally, the blind could be
found clustered in certain state- or church-sanctioned professions or guilds,
but in large part blindness was assumed to be a ticket to misery, a curse, or a
sentence to second-class status.
Helen Keller, c. 1902.
The blind, in truth, occupy no greater or lesser a place in history commensurate
to their numbers in the general population. There are historical examples of
blind teachers, soldiers, religious and secular leaders, scientists,
philosophers, mathematicians, historians, and a variety of other professionals.
There are, as with the sighted, countless blind who lived out their lives in
quiet obscurity. Thus, it can be said that while history offers a pantheon of
blind individuals, there exists nothing unique to blind people that is unknown
to the sighted. Even so, since the 19th century the blind have made concerted
efforts to come together to improve their situation, to share strategies of
success, and to have a voice in society, rather than to be objects of curiosity
and speculation.
The blind in the ancient world
It has long been assumed that in the ancient world the blind enjoyed few
opportunities and lived out their days in penury as beggars or as wards of their
families in the absence of any systematic state or government assistance.
Historical knowledge of the lives of blind people in the premodern Western world
is extremely limited, and it is strongly influenced by literary or religious
texts. Traditional interpretations of classical literary representations hold
that blindness is a punishment for social or religious transgressions or,
alternatively, is the price one pays to gain spiritual vision and insight.
Oedipus is often cited as an example of the former, while Tiresias may be seen
as an example of the latter.
References to blind persons in Classical Greek literature describe blindness as
occurring through accident, through warfare, or as punishment for social or
religious transgressions. Today it is known, however, that only a very small
number of cases of blindness result from accidents, and there is no evidence to
support the idea that accidents would have been a major cause of blindness for
those living in ancient Greece or Rome. With so few examples to draw on, most of
which falsely portray blindness as occurring from accident, literary sources do
not provide adequate evidence on which to base broad assumptions about either
how the blind lived or how the blind were popularly perceived as a class by
their contemporaries.
Religious texts of the Jewish and Christian traditions similarly provide little
knowledge of actual blind people during the centuries on either side of Jesus’
birth. Biblical scholars debate whether blindness is to be interpreted in either
spiritual or corporeal terms. Some New Testament scholars believe, for example,
that depictions of Jesus healing the blind are meant to be seen as curing
spiritual blindness, not physical blindness. Nonetheless, ancient and medieval
depictions of the blind as either sinners or saints persisted into the modern
era in the West and continued to be the subjects of religious and philosophical
inquiry.
Although the Greek poet Homer is often assumed to be blind, there is no evidence
of whether or not he could see. Homer’s epic poem Odyssey does, however, feature
the blind poet Demodocus, who is sometimes considered a Homeric self-portrait.
The names of a handful of other blind storytellers survive in Western
literature, such as Ossian (Oisín), a Celtic warrior and son of Fingal, the
3rd-century-CE king of Morven; and Turlough O’Carolan (1670–1738), a
harpist-composer who was considered the last of Ireland’s bards. Well-known
blind scholars of the early Christian era include Didymus the Blind (c.
313–398), a theologian in Alexandria. Didymus invented a means of reading that
used carved wooden letters, and he taught St. Jerome, who was widely known for
the Vulgate, his Latin translation of the Bible. In the 6th century St. Hervé
(Harvey) established a monastery in Brittany, which later became a shrine for
blind musicians. Born in what is today Syria, al-Maʿarrī (973–1057) became a
preeminent poet after experiencing a childhood disease that damaged his vision.
His poetry transcended the topics of love and war and reflected a skeptical view
of the world. Other important blind figures include Prospero Fagnani, an
influential 17th-century Italian canonical scholar, and the English poet,
pamphleteer, and historian John Milton (1608–74), best known for the epic poem
Paradise Lost (originally issued in 1667), which he wrote after having lost his
sight.
John Milton, the
English poet John Milton's most-famous work, his epic Paradise Lost, was published in 1667, some 15 years after he had become totally blind.
The blind during the Enlightenment
During the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe, philosophers
introduced new questions about blindness and the nature of the blind, moving the
conversation away from strictly spiritual questions toward rational
interpretations of understanding and knowledge. Scholars debated whether or not
the blind were more likely to be atheists as a result of their presumed
bitterness against God over their condition. Others argued that the blind were
closer to God, as they were spared the burden of earthly distractions because of
their blindness. English philosopher John Locke, in An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (1689), considered the question of whether a person born blind who
became sighted would be able to recognize objects previously known only by
touch. Locke asserted that newly sighted people would not be able to understand
the world using their new vision. Anglican bishop, philosopher, and scientist
George Berkeley disagreed with Locke, arguing in An Essay Towards a New Theory
of Vision (1709) that what one saw with the eye was merely the inference, not
the essence, of a thing. The question was a favourite among philosophers long
after Locke, as the rhetorical scenario allowed speculation as to the nature of
learning and understanding.
The debate was not merely rhetorical to the blind, however, as there were direct
implications as to whether or not the blind could or should be educated in
reading and writing and the classics. If sight was required to understand the
essence of a thing, as Locke argued, then educating the blind was a futile
enterprise. If understanding was generated from within, as Berkeley argued, then
there was no reason a blind person could not learn as well as the sighted.
English mathematician Nicholas Saunderson (1682–1739) was someone who lived that
debate. Having lost his sight at the age of one from smallpox, Saunderson went
to the University of Cambridge to study mathematics, although he did not attend
the university as a student. Rather, he used the library and tutored others in
mathematics and Newtonian physics. In 1711 Saunderson became the Lucasian Chair
of Mathematics at Cambridge, despite his lack of formal credentials. Saunderson
inherited the chair from Anglican priest and mathematician William Whiston,
himself having followed Sir Isaac Newton. Newton was acquainted with Saunderson
and felt that Saunderson was one of few scholars who truly understood the ideas
expressed in his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687).
Education and the blind
French philosopher Denis Diderot penned one of the first treatises to include
significant discussion of the blind and education with his “Letter on the Blind
for the Use of Those Who Can See” (1749). The essay suggested that the sense of
touch could be honed for reading in blind persons, foreshadowing the
19th-century invention of the Braille writing system. Diderot included a section
on Saunderson and emphasized the role of sensory experience in human
accomplishment, espousing the idea that the ability to see was not central to
the ability to understand and reason. Another influence on Diderot’s philosophy
of the blind was Parisian music sensation Melanie de Salignac, who had devised a
tactile form of print to both read music and correspond with friends. Diderot
saw de Salignac as an example of what was possible, and he argued that the blind
could be educated so long as the educator focused on what skills the blind
person possessed and not on the lack of sight. As one of the most-influential
philosophers of the French Enlightenment, Diderot provided a philosophical
foundation for the education of the blind.
In 1784 French calligraphy professor Valentin Haüy opened the first school for
the blind in Paris. Haüy had been influenced by Charles-Michel, abbé de l’Épée,
who had opened the first public school for the deaf in the 1770s. Haüy was
inspired by a talented blind Austrian pianist, Maria Theresia von Paradis. Von
Paradis showed Haüy the tactile alphabet she had developed, which she used to
read and write. Von Paradis had been corresponding with a blind German man,
Johann-Ludwig Weissenburg, who in turn had taught other blind students the
finger alphabet that the two had used to write to one another. Haüy appreciated
that the blind could learn by reading with their fingers, and he developed a
raised alphabet system to teach his students. Haüy’s methods would become the
model adopted by educators of the blind for the next half century. Raised Roman
letters were very inefficient to read, however, and Haüy wanted a system that
looked attractive to the sighted as much as he was interested in what actually
worked for the blind.
The conflict between what the sighted educators asserted the blind needed and
what the blind themselves insisted really worked became the central organizing
force of blind people in the two centuries that followed. By the early 19th
century, several schools had appeared in Britain, including in Liverpool (1791),
Edinburgh (1793), and Bristol (1793). Those schools were developed along English
trade-school models, where students were taught a trade rather than to read and
write. Johann Wilhelm Klein founded a school for the blind in Vienna in 1804.
Klein believed that blind students should be integrated into the classroom with
their sighted peers. Those three models—Haüy, English trade schools, and Klein
in Vienna—drove the debate for the next century about what blind children should
learn. Some educators believed that it was better to teach a trade so that the
blind could support themselves as adults, while others asserted that a classical
education would propel the blind into more-esteemed professions as well as
provide examples of the potential of the human capacity for learning.
Just as the blind sparked a debate among Enlightenment philosophers over the
nature of understanding in the 17th and 18th centuries, social reformers of the
19th century argued over the degree to which the blind could be “rehabilitated”
or trained to take their place in the broader community as contributing
citizens. American educator Samuel Gridley Howe, who in Boston in 1831 opened
the New England Institution for the Education of the Blind (later known as the
Perkins School for the Blind)—the second school of its kind in the United
States—argued that the blind could be educated and trained to become independent
members of society, earning their own way in the world.
Howe’s school became a model for schools all around the United States. In part,
Howe’s success derived from his famous pupils. Laura Bridgman, a deaf and blind
girl, entered Howe’s school in 1837. Howe wanted to prove that anyone could
learn to read and write, and he set out to teach Bridgman language through
finger spelling and raised type. Bridgman eventually gained fame nationally and
internationally for her mastery of communication with finger spelling and the
written word.
Most schools for the blind that were subsequently established in the United
States were state funded, marking a change from the education of the blind as a
charitable enterprise to an entitlement paid for with tax dollars. Blind
children continued to be educated at residential schools, apart from sighted
children, until well into the 20th century. By the 1920s educators and blind
advocates had begun to argue forcibly that the blind ought to attend school with
their sighted peers. By 1970 that idea formed the basis for a movement known as
mainstreaming. With the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children
Act in 1975 (the forerunner of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
[IDEA] of 1990), the mainstreaming of blind children became a right. Schools for
the blind diminished in importance in favour of integration of the blind with
the sighted.
The blind organize
Much of the debate about the abilities of the blind in the years from Diderot to
Howe occurred among the sighted. The actual voices of the blind were not part of
that debate. However, the advent of schools and institutes for the blind
afforded the blind an opportunity to organize as a group for their own
interests. The blind were able to talk to one another and learn strategies of
success for living as a blind person. Schools and institutes served as hothouses
for the development of and experimentation with new devices and systems of
writing.
The development of Braille
Louis Braille, a student at the Royal Institute for the Blind (National
Institute for Blind Children) in Paris in the 1820s, took a raised-dot system of
code brought to the school in 1821 and turned it into the most-important
advancement in blind education. Charles Barbier, a sighted French military
officer, had invented a raised-dot system that was intended to allow officers to
communicate with one another in the dark. The French army never adopted the
system, nor did the Paris school for the blind, at first. However, Louis Braille
reduced the system proposed by Barbier to six dots, making it relatively simple
to read with the fingertips, and created a system of abbreviations and shorthand
symbols that would allow the blind to read at a much faster rate. The dots
looked nothing like the Roman letters they replaced, but the system was much
easier for the blind to read. The school rejected Braille’s system, in part
because school administrators were reluctant to replace all the raised-alphabet
volumes created at great expense under Haüy and his successors. Braille was a
teacher at the school, however, and taught his system to his blind students. By
the time of Braille’s death in 1852, the school had finally accepted the
superior Braille method of transcription.
Louis Braille
Braille’s system also made it possible for the blind to be teachers of the
blind, further strengthening resistance to the raised-dot system by sighted
teachers. The introduction of Braille not only revolutionized education for the
blind, it allowed the blind to communicate with one another without sighted
intervention. A community of blind alumni developed, and the blind began to
publish their own stories in the form of memoirs intended to capture the
interest of a sighted readership. Such narratives were a combination of
religious inspiration and captivating details about the lives of blind people.
The organization of the blind in the United States
By the beginning of the 20th century in the United States, the blind were
organizing into professional associations, such as the American Association of
Workers for the Blind (AAWB; established in 1905), and began to agitate for more
overtly political objectives in such publications as The Problem (1900–03) and
Outlook for the Blind (1907; retitled New Outlook for the Blind in 1951, renamed
Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness in 1977). Advocacy groups organized
by blind activists emerged in the 1920s and ’30s in a number of U.S. states.
Blind activists in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and California were
successful in agitating for pensions for the blind and public awareness efforts
to inform their communities about the needs and interests of the blind. Those
state affiliates came together in 1940 to charter the National Federation of the
Blind (NFB). The NFB organized affiliates across the United States to become the
largest advocacy group of blind people. The NFB began publishing the Braille
Monitor in 1957 and produced a number of leaders in the “blind movement” who
advanced the objectives of the NFB and its supporters. Jacobus tenBroek,
president of the NFB from 1940 to 1960, and Kenneth Jernigan, president of the
NFB from 1968 to 1986, were galvanizing figures in the blind movement. TenBroek
was a constitutional law professor who agitated on behalf of a blind pension
divorced from the social security system, and Jernigan was a teacher who
transformed rehabilitation services for the blind as the director of the Iowa
Commission for the Blind from 1958 to 1978. In 1961 the American Council of the
Blind (ACB) was established by former members of the NFB who disagreed with the
direction and leadership of that organization. The ACB publishes the Braille
Forum.
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17.Mai.2023
Publicado por
MJA
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