I was away attending the APH annual meetings, and met (ftf) Chuck, Shawn, Loana, Julie, and Kay. Blogging and IM are fun, but nothing (IMHO) beats a smile and a hug. It was neat to see what you guys look like!
I said I would reprint the “tying up the cat” story that I share with my university grads. I ask them to respond to the following:
Read this article. Then use the information in the article and mix will with your newly gained knowledge. Sprinkle liberally with your previous experiences, and then respond to:
Do we do things a certain way because it’s always been done that way? Share an observation or a personal anecdote of a time when YOU have tied up a cat, OR have watched as a colleague tied up a cat. What was the issue then? How would you react to the same issue now? And, how does this issue of tying up cats relate to your participation in VI 535 this semester?
“Remembering Why We Tied Up The Cat”
This paper was presented in a slightly different form at the
General Session I of the 1999 CTEVH Conference
by Stuart Wittenstein, Ed.D.
Our conference theme is “Looking Forward, Looking Back.” When we talk about the “Looking Back,” we can quickly see what a young field this is. It’s really not that long ago that there was no Braille Code, that there was no movement toward educating persons who are blind.
But, why look back? What do we hope to discover?
There’s a story that comes to us from Asia of an ashram where meditation was taught by the Master. However, the Master found that his students were distracted from the study of meditation by the ashram’s cat. So, he ordered the cat to be tied up during meditation lesson time. And so it was done. And the cat no longer distracted the students. And so it went for some time. Every day as the meditation lesson began, the cat was tied up. More time passed. The Master died and was replaced by a new Master. The new Master maintained the practice of tying up the cat during meditation lessons. Time passed. The cat died. The ashram obtained a new cat so that it too could be tied up during meditation lessons. And so on. Three hundred years later scholars continued to study the symbolic meaning of the ritual of tying up a cat when teaching meditation.
So we look back. To understand how we got here and why we might be tying up certain cats.
I’d like to take us further back than the 40 years history of this organization — let’s go back 200 years and more. Let’s go back to before there was a Braille Code, before there was any education for individuals who were blind . . . . How did blind persons access information?
Throughout history there have been remarkable and talented blind people who managed to educate themselves. Ever since blind individuals took part in the intellectual life of their society, they also wanted to share in the common ways of communication — whether it be language or the printed word. This desire became particularly strong after the invention of printing with movable type by Gutenberg in the first half of the 15th century. There was practically no limitation for blind people in the sharing of oral language but the printed or written word remained a closed book for most blind individuals until Louis Braille gave us his system of reading and writing.
As society moved from an oral tradition into print and literacy, many blind persons attempted to solve the problem of accessibility to print. Since there was no organized attempt by society to educate these blind people, Lowenfeld call them the “self-emancipators.” (An aside here, most of the information contained in this presentation come through two sources — Lowenfeld’s 1975 “The Changing Status of the Blind” and French’s 1932 “From Homer to Helen Keller.” Coincidentally, both of these scholars also served as superintendent of the California School for the Blind.)
An early example of the self-emancipators, in the fourth century in fact, was Didymus of Alexandria who used carved letters made of wood as a literacy mode. However, the true era of the self-emancipators occurred in the 18th century. By the mid to late 1700s there are many reports of blind persons creating adaptations to allow them to access their world. Lowenfeld points to the reasons for the blossoming of the self-emancipators: 1) the invention of printing in 1436; 2) literacy becoming more common and almost a necessity for commerce and exchange of thought; 3) the religious reformation putting renewed stress on the biblical value of work; 4) and as the Renaissance ideals of the arts and sciences became more popular, the individual became more important. This recognition of individual rights and obligations, values and contributions, also had a profound affect on societal views of blind people. They were no longer unidentified parts of a mass of beggars but became recognized as individuals whose ambitions, aptitudes and achievements must be considered. Individuals have their own right to happiness, fulfillment, and self-determination.
So, there came the blind self-emancipators inventing and stretching and growing in ways previously thought to be impossible. The most noticeable creativity came in their self-made adaptations of literacy media. Some of the tactile reading techniques created by self-emancipators included reading by carved wooden letters, stylus on wax coated tablets, pinpricked letters, knots in string, pins in pin cushions, cut paper letters on threads, movable letters cast in tin or lead, or cut out of cardboard, embossed print letters on paper. One of my favorite adaptations comes from the story of Blind Jacob of Netra, a town in Germany. In the mid-1700s, Jacob devised a system of notches that he cut with his knife into sticks. The sticks were less than an inch in thickness and a few inches long. The notches were all over the sticks and only he was able to read them. During his lifetime he accumulated a library of bundles of these sticks. After he died, his sticks were used by his heirs as firewood.
I get this image in my head that if Jacob’s system had been widely adopted, the library at the California School for the Blind would be filled with big baskets of bundles of sticks. How many bundles of sticks would make up a history textbook? Who would come up with a mathematic system for the Jacobian sticks? I think I would be very concerned about all of our CSB students walking around with knives used for writing (instead of a slate and stylus) — our school has a zero tolerance policy for weapons after all — and how about the thousands of blind students in local school programs. Don’t even want to go there! And thanks to Louis Braille, we don’t have to.
Anyway, all these self-emancipators, combined with the change in modern philosophy regarding the rights and obligations of the individual led up to: Denis Diderot (1713-1784) perhaps the greatest philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, in 1749 wrote “Letter on the Blind for the Use of Those Who See” and in 1760 “Addition to the Letter on the Blind.” His letters are considered a milestone in the history of the blind because it brought to the attention of his contemporaries the fact that blind persons can be highly competent, intellectually as well as physically; that they can lead normal lives and need not be beggars, and of particular importance — that in order to know more about them they can be asked themselves for answers.
And then the ground breaking idea of Valentin Hauy that blind children could and should be educated. He founded of the first school for the blind in Paris in 1784 — not very long ago.
In 1771 a group of blind men from an institution were exhibited at St. Ovid’s Fair. They had been given eyeglasses to wear and attired in ridiculous costumes. Valentin Hauy witnessed this ridicule and was seized by a far different emotion. He dedicated his book “An Essay on the Education of the Blind” to the King of France.
Hauy educated a blind youngster that he found on the streets. He taught the child to recite and to calculate and presented him at court. Hauy’s message was, “Give me the resources and I can do more of this.” Thus started the first school for the blind, The Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris. The French Revolution followed shortly renaming the school, The National Institute for Blind Youth — Hauy did have connection to the aristocracy and was almost caught up in the Reign of Terror, but managed to evade punishment and continued to run the school. It is still in operation in Paris — in what was once a rural setting — the city has grown up around it and in fact, there is a Metro stop right in front of the school — as well as a statue of Hauy and his first pupil.
Hauy understood that in order to have a systematic education for blind children, he needed a literacy system. He developed one based on the wet printing process of the time that used raised versions of regular print letters. However, there was no efficient way of writing using this system and reading was very slow.
Then of course comes Louis Braille who changed everything about literacy and blindness. Louis was a student at the Paris school and later a teacher there. He came in contact with a system developed by Charles Barbier for the army so that coded messages could be read “under cover of darkness” and not be understood if intercepted by the enemy. Braille grasped the importance of this raised dot system immediately but recognized that its 12 dot cell (2 x 6) was too large for a fingertip. He intuitively understood that to read tactually, the reader must be able to move his fingers in a steady left to right motion and not be interrupted by the need to move up and down as well. So he cut the cell in half to today’s 2 x 3 and developed an alphabet– and the rest, as they say is history — or should have been.
We all have heard about the “War of the Dots,” but did you know that Braille’s own school did not adopt his code as a literacy system until after his death in 1852? The educators stated that a dot system was too different from what sighted readers used and would set blind persons apart. However, the blind students used Braille’s dot code to communicate among themselves because it worked for them — and was a natural reading medium for them. Eventually, the code’s use became so pervasive among blind students and staff that it could no longer be denied. Back to Diderot — in order to know more about blind persons they can be asked themselves for the answers — and even develop the answers.
So what can we learn from our history — and what cats have we tied up? Our field needs to take note of its history to remember important lessons. From Diderot — that sighted persons need to listen to blind persons — they know what works for them and what doesn’t. Blind people need to know this history — and take pride in the creativity, advocacy, and perseverance of the self-emancipators. And always remember to ask WHY. Do we do things a certain way because it’s always been done that way? Let’s make sure we understand why we tied up the cat.
2 responses so far ↓
1
Loana Mason
// Oct 18, 2005 at 2:57 pm
Shelia,
It was great seeing you at APH (American Printing House for the Blind). By the way, what does ftf mean? Apparently, I’m not up-to-date on all my alphabet soup acronyms.
I’ve read the cat analogy. Whenever I read this, I always think about the issue of inclusion versus residential schools. It is easy for me to see why the field of severe disabilities cut the cat loose because of the way this population was treated in institutions. However, schools for the blind were the first advocates for people who are blind and visually impaired. I just hope we don’t keep tying up the cat because of this rich history. I know the education system is not perfect (both public schools and residential schools), but if we keep giving public schools an escape, the chance is that they will never take proper accountability for addressing the needs of learners with visual impairments (IMHO).
2
Well Known Asshole Ringtone
// Jul 13, 2006 at 4:17 am
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