Braille or Print: Why the Debate

Braille or Print: Why the Debate

Future Reflections Winter 1996, Vol. 15 No. 1
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BRAILLE OR PRINT: WHY THE DEBATE?
by Jody W. Ianuzzi
Editor's note: Let us begin by conceding that there really are
some legally blind children who are appropriately being taught to read
print. If the child can truly engage in sustained reading of normal
print in most light with comfort, and if the strong likelihood is that
the youngster's vision will remain stable, there is no sensible argument
for insisting that Braille be taught unless the child or parents wish to
have it done. But there are thousands of blind adults today (and our
numbers are growing) who deeply regret that no one required us to learn
Braille at a period in our lives when mastering it would have been
relatively easy.
Many parents and children, wrestling with the denial that is an
inevitable part of coming to terms with significant vision loss, cling
to the presence of whatever tiny amount of residual sight there may be
as an indication that their worst fears at least have not come to pass.
To the public mind blindness is synonymous with helplessness,
hopelessness, and incompetence. Facing their children's blindness for
the first time, parents, who are after all members of the general
public, can be forgiven for reacting out of ignorance and on incorrect
information.
The betrayal of blind children that is harder for knowledgeable
blind adults to forgive is that of many special education teachers who
should know better. But even here we must remember that they too are the
product of their past inadequate education and their current
environment. These educators are not the first professionals to confuse
correlation with causation: given a choice between learning print and
Braille, children with residual sight will usually choose print. The
conclusion to which virtually every teacher incompletely trained in
Braille is eager to jump is that the cause of this behavior is the
difficulty and complexity of Braille. Or again, offered the chance to be
excused from doing assignments in Braille, blind children will almost
always opt for less work. The conclusion is that Braille is slow and
inefficient. The actual cause in both these examples is that blind
youngsters are normal kids, who like to be a part of the gang and who
are delighted to get out of homework whenever possible.
A little honest reflection about this situation suggests that the
real culprit here is the inadequate and inappropriate education of the
special education teachers, most of whom are not competent or confident
themselves in using Braille and who also believe that their students
should not be expected to compete successfully in school or in life.
We of the National Federation of the Blind know just how damning
and demeaning such a wholesale dismissal of blind students really is.
There are too many studies of children's conforming exactly to their
teachers' expectations for us to observe this phenomenon with unconcern.
Recognition of what is happening to today's blind students fuels the
Federation's state-by-state effort to require teacher competence in
Braille reading and writing for those educators devoting their careers
to teaching blind and visually impaired students. We must take every
opportunity to educate and encourage good teachers about what they can
do to assist and support their blind students, and we must confront
those who would dismiss our efforts to improve the educational
possibilities for these youngsters.
Jody Ianuzzi is the President of the Monadnock Chapter of the
National Federation of the Blind of New Hampshire. She knows first-hand
about limited opportunities and disappointed expectations. She is
articulate and outspoken, and her message is compelling. Here is what
she has to say about teaching Braille to children with a little residual
vision:
Literacy has become a fashionable issue in the United States
today. So many people have slipped through the educational system unable
to read that it has become an embarrassment to their educators. Most of
these people hid their illiteracy from their teachers or simply dropped
out of school at an early age. This situation exists all across the
country, but what about the one student population illiterate due to the
decisions and actions of their teachers? These students are the blind
children of America.
I would like to address the resource and itinerant teachers with
the adult voice of their students:
I consider myself to have been functionally illiterate for most of
my life! When I was growing up as a blind child in the public school
system in Connecticut, I didn't have to learn Braille; I could read
print. I was a high partial, and with my nose in the book I could read
my first grade primer. It was work, but I could make out the letters. By
the fourth grade the print began to get smaller, so I had to try even
harder. In the seventh grade I was assigned to remedial reading classes
because my reading speed was still at the third grade level. In high
school I got all my work done; it just took me four times as long as my
classmates. I loved learning, and I wove wonderful dreams for myself of
academic success after high school.
I went off to college, but instead of succeeding, I fell flat on
my face! There was no way I could keep up with the work load using the
reading skills I had been taught. My totally blind friends had little
trouble taking notes, reading, organizing their readers, etc. I told
myself that I should have done better than they; after all I had some
vision. But the fact was that I couldn't study as a sighted student, and
I didn't have the skills to study as a blind one.
When I was a child, I had an itinerant teacher. She came to visit
once or twice a week to help me with my class work and to evaluate my
progress. I remember that she spent the majority of her time tutoring me
when I fell behind. My mother was upset because the totally blind
students always had priority over the partials. We got the teacher's
left-over time. We weren't really blind, but we weren't really sighted
either.
I am thirty-eight years old, and I am now learning Braille. It
isn't a difficult task; memory is reinforced by using the signs. I love
Braille! My reading time and speed are not limited as they are in print.
I find Braille to be a refreshing experience with endless possibilities.
Reading print has always been like trying to listen to music on a
distant radio station: the sound is so faint and there is so much static
that it is hard to appreciate the music itself because listening is so
much work. Reading Braille is more like sitting in a symphony hall. The
music fills you without your even having to work. My well-meaning
teachers thought they had made the right decision for me. Oh how I wish
I had learned Braille as a child.
My story is not unique or exceptional. Hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of blind adults now recognize that they missed out on a
proper education. Perhaps this is because the retrolental fibroplasia
generation (people born prematurely after World War II and exposed to
too much oxygen in incubators) was the first to attend public school in
numbers, and the methods of educating blind children who did not attend
residential schools had not been established. Itinerant teachers of
blind children were pursuing a brand new specialty. Now the next
generation of blind students is attending public school, but the methods
of teaching them haven't improved over the years. Instead, some of the
misguided attitudes and ideas that were born in the infancy of this new
profession have been institutionalized as established methods. When I
was a student, fifty-two percent of blind students were learning
Braille; now less than ten percent of blind children are doing so.
Clearly illiteracy is increasing.
I was recently a speaker at a conference for itinerant teachers of
blind children, where I attended a seminar on the subject, Braille or
print for low vision students. I left this seminar feeling bitter, not
for my own experience (I am changing that), but for the blind children
of today. There are blind children with less vision than I have who are
being taught print only. Their teachers believe that they are making the
right decision. These children will be able to get by using their
vision, but they will never be able to compete successfully with their
peers.
The impression I got from listening to these teachers of blind
children is that they perceive Braille to be a difficult system to
learn. Imagine what would happen if music teachers decided not to teach
their students to read music because they had come to believe that
musical notation was too difficult to learn, much less to teach. How
much music would students learn to play if their music teachers couldn't
read the notes? Unfortunately, not very many teachers of blind children
are fluent in reading and writing Braille themselves. No wonder so few
blind youngsters are mastering the code.
Blind children are like all others; they don't want to appear
different. If they are given a choice, they prefer print because their
friends read print. But a low-vision child already looks different while
struggling to read with his or her nose inching across the page,
collecting printer's ink. Wouldn't teachers do better helping to instill
confidence in their blind students as competent Braille readers instead
of insisting that they become poor print ones? Sighted children are
delighted to learn about Braille, but they have little understanding or
compassion for the poor print reader, who can't keep up with them. The
sooner the blind child realizes that it is no big deal to be different,
the easier his or her life will be.
At this conference I was also told that the low-vision child might
not want to learn Braille and that it is impossible to teach these kids
what they don't want to learn. Suppose a sighted child didn't want to
learn print, or the music student didn't want to learn musical notation;
what would the teacher's response be? how much can any children be
expected to learn if they are permitted to impose their own preferences
on their early instruction in the fundamentals?
I believe that unconsciously teachers of blind students give
children a choice posed like this: which will it be? the easy,
acceptable, right way to learn, using print, or the difficult,
different, old-fashioned way of reading, using Braille. Given any choice
in the matter at all, which would any child select? Why can't teachers
make Braille special in a positive way? Braille was originally based on
a system devised by the French army to send secret messages at night.
The night writing was later perfected by Louis Braille for use by the
blind. Why not give children the feeling that they are learning a secret
code? The blind child can read in many places where his or her sighted
friends can't: under the covers without the use of a flashlight, in the
car traveling at night. You can read Braille books without people
reading over your shoulder. You can even read your Braille book in your
desk without your teacher knowing it. Why not make Braille fun!
The debate at this conference included discussion of the question
whether or not a blind child could learn print and Braille at the same
time. Wouldn't the child become confused? But the two systems don't
compete for the same space in the brain. Can a child learn to use a
calculator and a touch telephone at the same time? The two keyboards are
reversed, but children don't find this confusing. The child knows that
one is a phone, the other a calculator. I know a two-year-old who is
learning English and German from her bilingual parents. She is having no
difficulty learning the differences. If children can learn these things
simultaneously, why should educators draw the line at learning Braille
and print at the same time?
Many teachers believe that there are so many new high-tech aids
available for blind children that it is no longer necessary to teach
them the out-dated system of Braille. But how practical are some of
these expensive, bulky devices like the closed circuit television when
a child has to use it in a very limited and special environment? Will
such devices be useful for obtaining all the information the child
needs? Braille is portable, lightweight, and versatile.
The slate and stylus and the Brailler are simple, low-tech
devices, but if you want to consider high-tech, portable equipment, the
Braille 'n Speak and the Braille Mate are excellent note-taking and
computer interface devices. These aids were never mentioned at this
conference. The only aids discussed were those that depended on some
limited sight.
There are many tools available for use by blind people, and none
should be relied on exclusively or ignored. Each has its own place. Just
as a carpenter needs many tools to build a house, a blind person can use
many tools to acquire information. The Optacon, for example, is a slow
but useful device for reading mail, and there are many other technical
aids to assist a child who cannot use print efficiently and comfortably.
But just as a carpenter can't be expected to build a house using only a
hammer, no one tool should be used as the single device to help a blind
child.
Conducting an evaluation to determine the reading method for a
child is usually done under ideal reading conditions and in short
periods of time. Is it reasonable to expect that a child will always
have ideal lighting for reading and writing? How long can the child read
before headaches or eye strain make it impossible to continue? Does the
eye strain of reading contribute to increased eye problems? For example,
when I was growing up, we didn't realize that my straining to read was
inducing acute glaucoma attacks which have further decreased my vision.
First and foremost a reading method should be comfortable and enjoyable
to the reader. How much would you read if it always hurt or was always
work?
When selecting a reading method, it is natural to think of the
primary use to which we put it, reading books. But there are many other
applications for reading and writing that have to be considered in
choosing the most efficient method. Taking notes in class, doing
research, labeling, maintaining recipes, filing addresses: these are all
examples of the way we use reading. Thus, someone who can read print to
a limited degree might not use print for note taking because of the
amount of time it takes to write legibly or to decipher the notes later.
In this example Braille would be faster. Labeling in Braille is more
practical in many cases simply because it is impossible to get close to
the labeled items to see them or to shine enough light on the print to
read itþthe back of an appliance or an array of canned goods on a
storage shelf, for example. Blind children may not be dealing with these
problems now, but they will as adults. The very purpose of education is
to prepare youngsters for what they will face in the future!
One can reasonably ask whether today's older blind students are
being taught how to order their own books from Recording for the Blind
and whether they are learning to hire, supervise, and use readers for
study and research in preparation for college. Blind students must know
how to balance their schedules to accommodate their special study needs,
whatever they happen to be. If blind students are to compete
successfully in college and in life, all these are necessary skills.
I told conference participants about my experience as a low-vision
student and about how I was learning Braille as an adult. Without
thinking of the implications of her statement, one itinerant teacher
turned to me and said, "If you're learning Braille, then good luck!"
Too many teachers of the visually impaired are limited by their own
visual perception of the world. If they woke up tomorrow with low
vision, many would try to funnel all the information they need through
woefully inefficient eyes rather than learning to maximize their
unimpaired senses. It is past time for them to think blind and not be
limited by their vision.
If I could speak directly to open-minded teachers, I would say to
them: when you evaluate your students, don't just think of how they are
coping at the present; think ahead. What will happen to your students in
college and as adults? Are you giving them all the skills they need to
prosper in life, or will they have to be content with just getting by?
Remember, if that is their fate, it will not have been because of their
blindness but because they lacked the skills they needed to conduct
their lives effectively as blind people. Ask yourselves this question:
in twenty years will your students be grateful to you for teaching them
the skills they needed, or will they be learning them on their own and
trying to make up for lost time?
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