LrrERACY FOR THE BLIND AT SCHOOL AND WORK: A PANEL DISCUSSION

LrrERACY FOR THE BLIND AT SCHOOL AND WORK: A PANEL DISCUSSION

The Braille Monitor

June, 1989

(back)

(next) (contents)

LITERACY

FOR THE BLIND AT SCHOOL AND WORK:

A PANEL DISCUSSION

Braille literacy is undoubtedly one

of the most important and pressing issues facing blind citizens today. Whether

blind adults of the coming decades will take their rightful place as fully-productive

members of their communities will depend in large measure on their ability to

use the alternative techniques of blindness. Winning for blind children the

fundamental tight to read and write with ease and efficiency is looming large

on the horizon as a crisis facing the organized blind that will not wait.

During the Thursday morning session

of the 1988 convention of the National Federation of the Blind in Chicago, a

panel of experts (moderated by President Maurer) discussed the issues and sought

to find some common ground Here is the text of the discussion:

Shown here

are the officers of the Parents of Blind Children Division of the National

Federation of the Blind. They are (back row, left to right): Ruby Ryles,

Washington State;Debbie Hamm, Oregon; Beverley Helmboldt, Michigan; (front

row, left to right) Delores Scearce, Michigan; Barbara Cheadle,Maryland;

Betty Shandrow, Arizona

President Maurer:

The next item on the agenda is appropriately entitled "Literacy for

the Blind at School and Work." We have three people to make presentations

on this panel this morning. The first of them is the President of the Parents

of Blind Children Division of the National Federation of the Blind. Here is

the President of that Division, Barbara Cheadle.

Mrs. Cheadle: Today,

I am taking all of you on a trip, a trip back in time. We're no longer in the

convention hall; we are in a time machine. I am setting the dials now. Are

you ready? We are each going back in time to our childhood, and specifically

our school days. Stay with me now; we don't have much time. We're going back

through high school, eighth grade, seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth, stop! I want

you, as we relive a typical day in the fourth grade, to compare your experiences

with mine.

We have just finished

reading a play out loud in class and the teacher is handing out some papers.

Oh no, another English drill! Twenty-five unrelated, mostly meaningless sentences,

and we have to go through every one making corrections. Does Louisiana have

one 'n' or two? I know you capitalize the months of the year, but what about

the days of the week? Do I need to put a comma here or a semicolon? Of course

I capitalize "Roosevelt," but what about "high" and "school"?

English drill over, time for history. Good, we're going to do an outline. I

love those. We've already read and discussed the chapter and now we are going

to go through it again and outline it. The teacher says it helps us to learn

how to pick out important facts and organize them. She says it will help us

when we start taking notes in class in the higher grades. Speaking of notes,

did I remember to bring mine for science? Good, I did. Today, we have to get

up and explain our science projects to the class. We get extra points if we

use notes for our speeches. Uh-oh, the dials on the time machine tell me that

our time is up. We must return to the present.

Now that we have examined

a little bit of the process of becoming literate, for of course that was what

the little excursion in the time machine was all about, let us take a look

at the outcome. What role did that hard- earned literacy play in our lives

on the job?

Let's suppose you are

a receptionist for a rather large office. One of your major responsibilities

is the operation of a switchboard. You are seated at the board, and it buzzes.

It's a call for Mr. Smith. "He's not in," you say. "May I take

a message?" You take a message and another call comes in.

It's for Miss Roberts. "She isn't in," you say, "but she asked

me to give you this message." You grab the note and read it.

Then again, maybe

you are a teacher, and this is the first day of school. All of your

students have arrived, and you begin reading the roll. After the roll call,

you distribute the school handbook, and opening your copy, you begin reviewing

it point by point with your students.

On the other hand,

perhaps you are a homemaker. You have just finished reading some of the recipes

in your new cookbook and have decided that it is time to sit down and make

some notes about the vacation Bible school class you have volunteered to teach

this summer.

I am sighted; you are

blind. I read print; you read Braille. With that in mind, tell me -

didn't you become literate in the same way I did? And isn't literacy as important

to you in your job and in your daily life as it is in mine? There is no difference

between the blind and the sighted in either the process or the outcome of literacy.

Our methods differ. I use print, and you use Braille, but we both enjoy the

advantages of literacy - the advantages of personal independence, better jobs,

and fuller participation in our

neighborhoods and communities-speaking of which, the examples in employment

that I just gave you were all based upon blind people I know who are in this

room. But we are not here today to talk about me or to talk about you.

Those of my generation,

both blind and sighted, were given a good (or at the very least an adequate)

foundation in literacy skills. We are here to talk about the blind children

of today-children like my ten- year-old blind son who is here in the audience.

As you heard earlier this week, because our son has some vision, our school

district has flatly refused to teach him Braille. Never mind that his eyelashes

brush the page and that the words (as he describes it) begin to jump and wiggle

after just thirty minutes of reading print. Never mind the eye fatigue, the

strain, and the frustration he suffers. And let's not think about what will

happen next year, and the next, and the next, when the reading load gets heavier,

and the print gets smaller, and the vision deteriorates. We have been told

that we are limiting our son when we call him blind and ask that he be taught

Braille. We have been told that it is a sighted world (have you heard that

one?), and that it is not normal to read Braille. I ask you, what is so normal

about being illiterate?

Our situation is not

unique. Tragic as it is, it is the norm. In my capacity as the president of

the NFB Parents of Blind Children Division and as the editor of Future Reflections,

the NFB magazine for parents of blind children, I have heard from hundreds

of parents from throughout the country. It doesn't matter where you live; in

Minnesota, Alaska, Florida, Wisconsin, California, Massachusetts, Louisiana,

New York, and Maine teachers in schools are telling parents of blind children

the same thing. No Braille! But don't take my word for it, ask the parents

who are here at this convention. We have parents who have learned to teach

their children Braille because

the teacher either could not or would not teach it. If you're still not convinced,

consider some of these statistics from the American Printing House for the

Blind. As most of you know, the American Printing House for the Blind (APH)

receives federal funds so that it may provide free educational materials and

equipment to legally blind students in the United States. Tlese are distributed

to the states strictly according to the number of legally blind children they

have registered with APH, and I think these statistics have clear validity.

In 1963, 9,000 children (52% of all legally blind students registered in this

country) read Braille. In 1973, 5,200 children (18%) read Braille. I understand

that this trend has not changed significantly through the eighties. I have

been hearing for a few years now, and I must admit that I have said it too,

that blind children are in danger of becoming illiterate. My friends, my colleagues,

blind children are not in danger of becoming illiterate; they are illiterate.

We cannot and we must not let this continue to happen to our children.

We come now to the

inevitable question, why? Let's examine what the professionals, the educators,

say about Braille and why they don't teach it. You've heard these things, I've

heard them, and parents have heard them.

Number one, "But

there are so few books in Braille." So what! How many Braille books were

there twenty-five years ago? A whole lot fewer than there are today. Did that

stop your teachers from teaching you Braille? You see, the importance of literacy

is not measured by the availability of books to read. Just think of the number

of sighted people you know who seldom have ever read a book. Is literacy irrelevant

to them just because they don't read books? Of course not.

Number two, "But

other technological advancements have replaced Braille." Now isn't it

funny that every time you hear this argument, you never hear about the advancements

in Braille technology? So what technology do they mean? Let me comment on the

two most frequently cited technological advancements that allegedly replace

Braille -the tape recorder and the closed circuit television magnifying aid.

Both of these are nice devices, don't get me wrong. But let's take the tape

recorder. If it were such a magnificent note taking device, why don't sighted

students use them? You know why, and so do I. Two hours of lecture on tape

are two hours of lecture that you still have to review and condense. Why not

learn Braille and take real notes with a slate and stylus - notes you can review

and use just as the sighted students use and review their print notes? The

closed-circuit television set: As most of you know, this is a magnifying device

which is a large, heavy, and bulky piece of equipment, hardly portable. Tell

me, how many people in this room today take notes with closed-circuit television

systems? When was the last time you saw someone lug one up to a podium, plug

it in, and give a speech? No, technology has no more replaced Braille than

technology has replaced print.

Number three, "We'll

teach her Braille when she loses the rest of her sight and really needs it."

What a wonderful educational philosophy! Think of the money we could save.

After all, children really don't need to read until they are ready to vote

or get a job. We could close down all of the elementary schools.

And finally, my favorite,

"Braille is tedious and slow." To that I say, hogwash. I'm a firm

believer in learning from experts, real experts, and it seems to me the real

experts are right here in this room-blind people who use Braille every day

of their lives. You tell me, is Braille slow and tedious? (Audience responds,

"No!")

So much for what the

professionals tell us. What is really behind it? Here are some of the things

I have said, and I have heard others say them, and I think they all have some

validity. Teachers are too lazy to learn it. Teacher training programs don't

teach it. It's easier to stick a tape recorder in a student's hand or a closed

circuit television system in a classroom, and it's convenient to do that. Teachers

don't have to take the time to teach Braille. But more than anything else,

teachers don't teach it because they don't really believe that blind children

can make much of their lives.

What do we do about

it? First and foremost, we must continue to educate the public and especially

the educational establishment from the federal government on down. They need

to know and affirm as policy that literacy is the birthright of all children

in this country, including blind children, and that Braille is the foundation

of literacy for the blind.

One more thing. My

husband and I have been told that our son cannot get Braille instruction because

he would have to be taken out of the classroom for four to five hours a week.

This would be, so we were told, a more "restricted environment" placement.

Can you believe such insanity? Are we to believe that illiteracy is the price

our blind children must pay for integration into society and into the classroom?

We, the parents of blind children and the blind adults of this nation, will

not let our dreams and hopes for our blind youngsters be shattered by a rigid,

uncaring, and ignorant educational estab- lishment. Working together, we will

find a way for our blind children to get a quality education. Thank you.

President Maurer:

You can understand why Mrs. Cheadle is President of that Division. The

next person on this morning's panel is a parent and an educator of blind children

from Washington State. She has had experience both in the classroom and with

her own family. Here is Ruby Ryles.

Ruby Ryles: I've

been told to speak quickly, and as you know, it is not very natural for someone

with a southern accent to speak quickly, so I hope it doesn't sound too foreign.

I'm addressing a shameful disgrace. It is the actual premeditated programming

of our blind children for illiteracy. I am speaking specifically about the

concerns of the education of the child with partial sight. Partially sighted

children and their parents are often told now more than ever the age-old fallacies

that "Braille will make you more handicapped" and such nonsense as

"Braille readers, by the nature of their reading medium, are going to

be poor spellers." This devastating garbage has mushroomed in the last

decade or so for many reasons.

One reason, as Barbara

said, is technology. We are a society in love with its high tech. Special education

teachers have the erroneous belief that technology will somehow eradicate the

need for basic literacy skills for blind children. A special education director

friend of mine was once bemoaning the extra cost of educating partially sighted

children. I laughed, and I said, "Jim, you can educate a partially sighted

child for a lifetime with twenty dollars and twenty- five cents worth of equipment:

a ten dollar slate, a twenty- five cent stylus, and a ten-dollar long white

cane."

Unfortunately, that

pathetically humorous comment is a great deal less over-simplified than most

V.I. teachers would like to believe. False statements about specialized field

training are perpetuated by special education teachers because, as Barbara

said, they neither understand the need for nor know how to teach specialized

skills such as Braille. It's woefully apparent that teachers who teach our

children often have worse attitudes about blindness than the general public.

The average V.I. teacher has had little or no contact with competent blind

adults and therefore does not imagine, cannot im- agine, the tragic results

of the omission of basic skill training. I am not maliciously attacking teachers

of the blind because, as the joke goes, I are one. But I do know from experience

that V.I. teachers are not required to be proficient in Braille before leaving

a teacher-training program. Ironically, teachers of Braille are taught that

sight is a key component of literacy and travel, that blind techniques for

a child with residual vision are taboo. Ridiculous programs called "vision

stimulation programs" are supposed to develop more sight in young partially

sighted children, when in fact, they leave emotional wounds that may never

heal. And, by the way, if your child is getting vision stimulation on his or

her IEP, I'd really like to talk to you before this convention is over.

There is another important

reason that teachers of the blind will not teach Braille to partially sighted

children. They are often not trained in the teaching of reading, and they do

not fully understand how a child becomes a fully literate adult. As an old

first grade teacher and a reading specialist, I would like to share some insights

with you.

You know, for example,

how to spell "Chicago." Did you ever have it on a fifth-grade spelling

test? No, probably not. Did you make a conscious effort to learn how to spell

it last week when you knew you were coming here? Most likely not. Is it phonetic

so that you can spell it sound by sound? Most assuredly not. You spell "Chicago"

accurately because it looks right to you. You have developed the "it looks

right" ability because you have read the word "Chicago" many

times. Standardized achievement tests used in schools normally test spelling

in the same way. The child has four spellings of a word from which to choose.

If he has not read enough to have developed the "it looks right"

ability, he cannot give a correct response, and he will score poorly on the

spelling subtest.

The partially sighted

child will normally read only what is required of him. He does not read for

pleasure because reading is not pleasurable. It is not fun for him. It is slow,

tedious, and often painful for him to read print. Children with partial sight

cannot sustain reading for long enough periods of time to read for pleasure

or to complete normal reading assignments without a break. He never develops

that "it looks right" ability because he doesn't read. By the intermediate

grades in elementary school the partially sighted child is a slower and less

competent reader than is his classmate. The standard remedies are often extended

time limits for him, magnification which slows him down even further, and of

course taped books. Giving the child an efficient reading medium, namely Braille,

is never seriously considered. A partially sighted child can't read because

he doesn't read, nor can he express himself in writing, nor spell, nor

punctuate, nor paragraph, nor capitalize, nor develop a vocabulary equal to

his ability. Succinctly put, he is well on his way to illiteracy.

I want to tell you

a story that will speak for itself. I had an eighth-grade partially sighted

student whom I had supplied with large print and taped books since he was in

elementary school. Anchorage, as most school districts do, requires annual

standardized achievement testing. Taking the test in print, even with all the

adaptations possible, his subtest scores were well below normal. The following

year, a very dynamic and skilled blind man and his wife, who are Federationists,

moved to Anchorage. I did a lot of talking with him and a lot of thinking about

skills and the way I was teaching them to kids. It was pretty different from

my professional training. In December I began Braille with my student. The

next school year, his tenth-grade year, he did his school work in Braille.

At the end of the school year, he again took the ITBS Achievement test for

his grade level. All of his scores on the test improved greatly, but one particular

subtest sums up this story. His eighth-grade year he took it as a print reader

with magnification and extended time limit, and he scored in the seventeenth

percentile. His tenth-grade year, he took that test for the first time as a

Braille reader with no extended time limits and scored in the ninety-third

percentile. That year he read his first book for pleasure since the third grade,

he told me. I did not keep up too much with what he read after that first book,

but I do know that his first one was Jack London's White Fang, and he

said it was fun.

Dr. Bellamy, I fully

realize that literacy is a nationwide problem in education in general, but

it is now the standard, it's the norm, it's the expected, that our visually

impaired kids will be virtual nonreaders, with all the accompanying problems.

They cannot help being nonreaders; they're programmed for it. Sir, this organization

is fifty thousand strong, and many of us are parents of blind children. We

are the consumers of services of the special education system. The current

education of visually impaired children in all placements is neither adequate

nor appropriate. I sincerely believe that we are seeing only the tip of the

iceberg. The effects of this no-skills training philosophy on this generation

have yet to be measured. Dr. Bellamy, I would ask you to use the power your

title implies to insist that teachers teach Braille, slate and stylus, typing,

and cane travel to our children and not the time-wasting gobbledy-gook that's

coming from the standard V.I. teacher-training programs now.

In closing, I would

like to thank Rami Rabby publicly for introducing a resolution that reminds

all of us in the Parents of Blind Children Division just how deeply committed

the blind adults in this organization are to resolving this problem. Parents,

we do have hope. With the largest organization of blind people behind us, we

can't fail. We will make changes.

President Maurer:

Thank you. We will argue the merits of the resolution tomorrow, so those

of you who have questions about it, tomorrow would be a good time. The third

person to come to us on this panel is the Director of Special Education Programs,

Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services, the United States

Department of Education. He has served as a professor of special education

programs and rehabilitation at the University of Oregon, where he worked as

a researcher and a teacher. He has also had experience as a public school teacher

of students with severe handicaps. He has written a number of works, several

books on school and adult services for people with disabilities, which have

con- tributed to the research literature in special education. I introduce

to you now Dr. G. Thomas Bellamy of the Office of Education.

Dr. Bellamy: Thank

you, President Maurer. I am very happy to be at what is my first conference

of the National Federation of the Blind. Tle literature that Jim Gashel sent

along with his invitation billed this as the world's largest gathering of people

with disabilities who advocate for themselves. If that's the case, I am particularly

honored to be here. I was either forewarned or informed, one or the other,

that I would be speaking with the most determined and persistent group of advocates

that exists.

I've not been in Washington

in the Bureaucracy very long, but I have been there long enough to understand

that I was brought here not because you wanted to listen to me but because

you wanted me to listen to you, and I appreciate that. I'll be fairly brief,

but I do want to share two or three things that I think are very important

about special education for all people with disabilities. I do that in part

because one of the few things that the federal goverrunent really does have

the power to do in education is to talk. Most of the decision making power

about what really goes on in special education is at the state and local levels

where, I guess, we would all agree that it belongs. But there is an important

role, it seems to me, in setting a course for what special education should

be about, and being very clear on what our values are about in this country,

that we expect special education to achieve.

We are just entering

the second decade of Public Law 94-142, which guarantees an appropriate public

education in the least restrictive environment, and establishes procedural

safeguards to insure that decisions are made in certain ways. Now in that ten

years, we have accomplished an awful lot, but I know better than to dwell too

much on those accomplishments with this group. I believe that we have established

a national expectation of public acceptance that everyone with a disability

belongs in school, and largely we have put in place the administrative structure

and the child find mechanisms to accomplish that. As we read the public policy

literature right now, Public Law 94-142 is often cited as one of those federal

social service programs that actually work. But one of the things I have been

saying over and over since I arrived in Washington is that while all of our

problems of access to education might not yet be solved, it is clearly time

to turn our attention to quality, to what people with disabilities get when

they go to school.

We send a report to

Congress every year that details the cost of special education, that describes

the number of children served, what their categorical labels are, and several

things about the process of providing special education. But up to now, we

have never told the Congress what the people with disabilities get as a result

of all this effort. It seems to me that it is time that everyone involved with

special education (the professionals, the parents, the establishment, and everyone)

adopt improving the quality of what we do as our primary mission. That's not

saying a lot new, of course. We're talking about quality in all aspects of

education today. But in special education, I think, it raises some very specific

issues that we need to discuss. I believe they relate pretty directly to the

issue of literacy that's been discussed quite a bit here this morning.

Quality in special

education requires us to be direct and public about our values, about what

we believe about ourselves and people with disabilities. We can't talk about

improving schools until we can talk clearly about the kind of lives that we're

willing to say we believe are the birthright of people with disabilities. And

I propose that the law itself, much of what I know of this group's positions,

and my own personal feelings can be summarized in three broad values that I

believe can guide us in the development of quality special education programs

in the country.

The first one of those

values: In the law we talk about appropriate education. To me it makes more

sense to talk about outcome effectiveness. I think it is time for special education

to take responsibility for its products. It is time for us to ask, "what

happens to people when they leave school?" We don't need too much professional

jargon, I don't think, to say what we think should happen. Of course, education

isn't the only responsible part of society, but I think we can all agree pretty

quickly that if people leave schools and have a job and the skills to perform

that job (either by themselves or with support that we can afford), if they

have a place to live and the skills to live there (either independently or

with support we can afford), if they have a set of friends that provide the

kind of opportunities and rewards that the rest of us get from our social networks,

and if they have choices about the first three, I think we would all agree

that we have done a pretty good job. And I believe that we would all agree

that there is something wrong when we don't see those things happening for

people who leave special education. Tle fact is, those things aren't happening

for a large number of people who are

leaving special education today, and it is time that we do something about

it.

What we have started

since I have been in Washington are some fairly major incentives for local

districts and states to keep track of their graduates to find out what happened

to people when they left school, on the assumption that the best decision making

can be made within the district and within the state when people who are caring

and responsible have good information about what results of the efforts have

been. I'm convinced that when we do that, when we systematically look across

the country at what's happening to people who grew up in special education,

we'll begin to question a lot of conventional wisdom about our cur- riculum,

about our instructional methods, and so forth and that we will look more and

more to successful adults with disabilities to ask what it is that we should

be doing. If I un- derstand the concern about instruction in Braille, I think

that's very similar to what I believe the field will be addressing on many

fronts over the next few years when we begin to seriously look at what's happening

to adults with disabilities.

The next value that

is in the law is that there is an expectation that people with disabilities

should be educated with children without disabilities unless there is an awfully

good reason not to and that we would remove people with disabilities from the

regular educational setting only when we can justify that removal for some

important educational reason. One way to think about the research and development

of the last ten years is that we have been gradually taking away good reasons

for removal as we develop better curricula, better training materials, and

so forth. One of the things we have done in this area -there's a study we have

just begun disseminating. I asked our staff to give me a legitimate comparison

of states in terms of the extent to which people with disabilities were served

in regular school settings versus

being removed to separate public or private schools or separate public or private

residential facilities. The results were astounding. Our question was really:

for every million children in the school age census of a state, how many were

removed outside the regular school to one of these segregated settings?

I was amazed to find

that one state removed about six hundred pupils per rnillion from the regular

school, and another state removed about fifteen thousand per million from the

regular school. In other words, the family that moved from one state to another,

from the state that removed the fewest to the state that removed the most,

would have a twenty-five times greater chance of having their son or daughter

educated outside the regular school building. If we take the average of what

the five states that served the most children in the regular environment (if

we take the average of those states as a reasonable estimate of potential),

the average state segregates five times as many children as do those five.

Six states segregate more than ten times as many children as do those five.

What I think we have to conclude from that is that states have been differentially

successful in creating the kind of special education services in local schools

that parents and other members of the IEP team have confidence in. Because

when we don't have confidence in the program in the local school, of course

we're going to advocate quality where we can find it.

One of the things that

concerns me a great deal is that with all of the newspaper reports about reform

in education, we almost never see mention of special education at all. As we

read the news reports, we finally get down to the last paragraph searching

in vain for something about people with disabilities, and if anything, what

we find is that they were excluded from taking the test that the news story

was based on. Well, I'd like to propose an alternative idea of what a good

school is. It seems to me that the first characteristic of a good school is

that it can do a good job of serving all of the kids. Inclusion is the first

criterion, and then we will address the kinds of questions we read about in

the newspaper articles. If attitudes, as I have heard several times this morning,

are in fact one of the most important handicaps experienced by people with

disabilities, it seems to me that it is awfully short-sighted to design a public

school system that allows people to grow up as I did, surrounded primarily

by people with no obvious disability. It's clearly time to change that.

The third value that's

in the law that I think is very important is that special education is unique

in that we make decisions about curriculum and instructional procedures, one

child at a time with parent involvement (in many states with student involvement)

by a team of individuals. It is by law illegal in special education to prescribe

a curriculum for everyone who has a particular disability label. Those decisions

have to be made one person at a time through the IEP process. This provides

a balance of power between families and schools that really doesn't exist anywhere

else in education. Unfortunately, it often creates the kind of conflicts that

we hear about-battles over curriculum: Braille over print—but it also

empowers parents and families in a way that I think many other families would

want to be involved in education outside of special education and don't have

the legal basis to be. One of the things we have done in our monitoring of

states over the last few years is to focus on the administration of special

education programs and the processes that are used to resolve disputes, to

make decisions about individual children, to make sure the parents do have

benefit of the full due-process guarantees of the law.

I'd like to conclude

by saying that for the people

this group represents, and I believe for everyone else with a disability, special

education will improve in quality over the next decade if we are smart enough

to have a balanced progress in all three of these areas that we value -outcome

effectiveness, the capacity of regular environments to serve all children,

and individual decision-making. We cannot afford to sacrifice any one of these

for the others. We can't afford to ignore one while we concentrate on the others.

It's easy for us to find situations where these three values can be in conflict,

but it is important for us to find those areas where they overlap and to build

on them. I believe that a focus on quality, an emphasis on what happens to

students after they leave special education, and an open honest effort to build

a consensus across all parts of the special education community will lead us

to the focus on literacy and to the focus on quality that I've been hearing

as I have talked to people here. I appreciate the opportunity to be here, and

I ask for your help in making special education work. Thank you.

President Maurer

Dr. Bellamy, I want to thank you very much for coming and joining us here.

We think that there are many problems with the education of blind children,

but we think that an openness, a dialogue, an anxiousness to work with us who

know about the problems first-hand are bound to make them better. Therefore,

we welcome you to this convention, and we are pleased that you came. We have

time for only a few questions. If those of you who were serving on the panel

will take microphones at the table, we'll take a couple of questions and see

how it goes. Mr. Cheadle.

Mr. Cheadle: Dr.

Bellamy, I'm John Cheadle, father of Charles Cheadle, whom you heard about

in Mrs. Cheadle's address. He does have some vision. He has been denied Braille.

We've been involved in negotiations and the due process for better than an

academic year. We will continue the due process, and I believe that we will

prevail. But all of this raises a question. The things that we have been through,

and the things that Charles has been through, the losses he has had that are

not regainable... they raise the question of what the policy of the Department

of Education is or will be with regard to the availability of high- quality

instruction of Braille for blind and visually impaired students. I want to

underscore the fact that people with some vision often need to be taught Braille

and also that Braille must be taught in a high-quality way. I would like to

ask you directly as the Director of the Department of Education: What steps

you will take to insure that policies in this direction are made?

Dr. Bellamy: I'm

afraid that the honest answer sounds bureaucratic, but I have to give it anyway.

It seems to me that while the things that I have heard here are personally

quite convincing, it's important to emphasize that the U.S. Department of Education

really does not set curriculum policy in any way. There are some things that

we do do, and I want to point them out, but it would be inconsistent with our

mandate for us to say that a particular curriculum element should be included

on a nationwide level. What we do do, though, and what we should be held accountable

for is that, while special education is delivered at the state and local level,

and the curriculum responsibility rests there, we have an annual budget of

$170 million in twelve different discretionary programs that we are expected

to use to improve the quality of services, either by funding research grants

or demonstration programs or personnel preparation programs and so forth. As

I listened to comments today, it seemed to me that the area that I would encourage

your attention to and that I will certainly took at is what it is that is happening

in the personnel preparation programs themselves. Once again, we don't set

the curriculum for the teachers in training,

but we clearly are in a position to disseminate information about what works

to those teacher training programs.

Dr. Jemigan: Dr.

Bellamy, you say you don't set curriculum, and I don't quarrel with that, but

if you found that throughout the country there was a practice systematically

being followed that sighted children in special education classes were not

only not being taught how to read print, but when their parents went and truly

pleaded that the schools were systematically refusing to allow them to read

print, they were being ignored, you'd get up on your hind legs and yell and

go to the press and all kinds of things, and you know you would. It seems to

me that it is reasonable to ask you, when you are dealing with blind kids,

and Braille is the only way for people who don't have enough sight to read

print to read, isn't there anything that the department can do except make

a demonstration project or write a paper or something of that sort? Isn't there

anything you can do? You could if they were sighted kids who weren't being

taught print, and it wasn't just an individual instance.

Dr. Bellamy: What

we can do is something similar to what I am doing here today, and that's talk

about the values, the issues, and the objectives. But again, by law, curriculum

decisions are made one person at a time; they are not made on the basis

of prescriptions from Washington.

Dr. Jemigan: But

that isn't really curriculum. Reading crosses the lines of curriculum. Unless

a child can read, the child is not literate. You know that the Education Department

at the federal level, if it found a systematic policy throughout the country

of not permitting -not only not teaching, but not permitting -children in special

education to learn how to read print, the department would be making news releases

and all kinds of things, wouldn't they?

Dr. Bellamy: I

believe that what you are raising is something that is a timely issue - we

have reauthorization coming up in a couple of years. What you have presented

is a set of circumstances. I don't know how nationwide they are; the description

is that they are very much so. It appears to me that I have a responsibility

as do you to find out the extent of the practice, the effects of the practice

in terms of what is really happening to children with disabilities, and to

make that information known, and to use the discretionary programs in ways

that we can to try to solve the problem once we have established the effects.

President Maurer:

I just don't think that we are going to be able to do much more

by way of questions. I'm sorry that this has been the case all morning, but

we're running out of time.

Doug Trimble: Mr.

Bellamy, I want to thank you for coming. I am one of those students who was

programmed to read print instead of Braille all the way through school. I graduated

from high school in 1983, not really being able to read print at a competitive

level. I believe this is wrong. I went to college and actually flunked out

because of this. I want to thank the National Federation of the Blind for taking

time and energy to instill in me that it is respectable to be blind. I know

what is happening to those blind kids in school. They're not being allowed

to learn to read Braille. If a child has some sight and can read some print,

he should be permitted to read Braille also.

Dr. Bellamy: I'd

like just to say one thing in closing. It seems to me that we have a responsibility

to promote whatever practices exist, and all of the practices that exist, that

prepare kids in schools for an integrated adult life. If Braille instruction

is one of those, we need to be promoting it.

President Maurer:

Dr. Bellamy, we are glad that you have come here, and we know that you

are not thin-skinned. We're glad that you have come to have, as you have so

very much said yourself, an opportunity to listen

to what we have to say. As we have sometimes said to certain other officials

in certain other instances, surely it's reasonable for us to say to you that

we would like to work with you to get something done and something changed.

And either it's reasonable to say that you are in a position to do that, to

work with us, to see that changes take place which will be beneficial, or

else there is no great point in having you in the office. Because

either the goverrment works for the people who have established it, or it doesn't.

We are glad you have come, and we would like to be friends, but either we will

make some progress, or we won't. If we do, that will be great, but if we don't,

although we would personally wish you the best, it doesn't matter greatly to

us if you are in that office. The purpose

for saying that to you is this: are you in a position to get together with

us (we know that some of the things you have heard today may be new to you),

are you in a position to get together with us to work on the problems, to try

to bring genuine change in the possibilities of the education of blind children

in the United States?

Dr. Bellamy: I'm

very interested in meeting with you to make sure that I understand the problem

and in working on solving whatever it takes to make sure that all people with

disabilities get the best special education they can.

President Maurer:

Thank you very much, Dr. Bellamy, Mrs. Ryles, and Mrs. Cheadle. We need

to work on the problem of literacy of our children.

(back)

(next) (contents)