Nurture the Ability, Sustain the Confidence

Nurture the Ability, Sustain the Confidence

Braille MonitorNovember 2016

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Nurture the Ability, Sustain the Confidence
by Fredric K. Schroeder
From the Editor: Many presentations that make it into this magazine are crafted for delivery and represent hours of preparation, but one hallmark of a good leader is to think on his feet and to be able to articulate the things he believes in when called on. Combining the head and the heart and sending their messages to others is a talent Fred Schroeder has in abundance, and his ability served all of those attending the meeting of the WBU when the absence of a previously-scheduled speaker due to illness meant the assembly needed significant and moving remarks. Dr. Schroeder was unexpectedly called upon to do this, and here is how his impromptu presentation was introduced by President Arnt Holte:
You’ll see in the program that our last speaker is Bryan Bashin from Lighthouse for the Blind in San Francisco. Unfortunately Bryan is unable to be with us, so at no notice I’ve invited someone else to take his place, and that’s our incoming president, Fred Schroeder. Fred has also a lifetime of leadership in very different roles, and I’m sure much to share with us. Thank you, Fred, for taking up this spot so willingly—or unwillingly.
Fred Schroeder: Good afternoon. It is a real pleasure to be here with you this afternoon. Many of the remarks that you have heard resonate with my own story. I want to begin by saying that, when we look at the challenges facing blind people, it is very easy to catalog the challenges in terms of the mechanics. In other words, difficulty getting access to a good education, difficulty in getting access to employment, even at very entry levels. But those lack of opportunities in many respects are symptomatic of the greater problem that we face, and that is low expectations. Society views us as broken people. They don’t harbor ill-will toward us, but they see us as very damaged, as broken people—people who are very limited in the ability to carry out even the most basic day-to-day activities. And so with that as the underlying assumptions, opportunities are limited.

I lost most of my vision when I was seven years old, and I went through public school in the United States without any special education support, but more tragically, no blind role models. And all I remember about my childhood as a blind person was being told what I could not do. Since I didn’t see well enough to read print, I was excused from all reading, writing, and math in the curriculum. Now, if you think about your education, if you take reading, writing, and math out of the education, there is precious little left. So I had a terrible education, a very incomplete education. However, one thing I did learn: I learned to feel inferior.

When I was in tenth grade, I had to take a biology class. Part of that biology class involved a lab experiment: dissecting a frog. The way the exercise was structured is that the class was divided into groups of two. And the dissection was divided up into two parts, and so when the dissection would begin, one student would do the first half of the dissection while the other student recorded what was being discovered, and midway through they would switch roles so that both students got the opportunity to participate in the dissection. Well in my class we were divided into groups of two except there was a group that had three people in it, that was my group. And that meant that I sat behind the other two students while they did the experiment. So I did not learn anything about dissecting a frog. Now you might think, so what? How important is it to dissect a frog? But what I did learn is a feeling of inferiority. I assumed that I could not do what others were able to do, and that I could not do it because of blindness.

I lost all of my vision when I was sixteen, and I was very fortunate because I went to an adult rehabilitation center in California, and there I learned the techniques that I would need to be able to function as a blind person. Karen Keninger spoke about these skills, the blindness skills, the ability to read and write Braille, the ability to travel independently using a white cane, the ability to cook and to clean your house and take care of your day-to-day needs. But the most fortunate part was I met other blind people. As many of you know, for all of my adult life I have been actively involved in a consumer organization in the United States, the host organization for this general assembly, the National Federation of the Blind. And it was through the Federation that I began to recognize that the limitations that I thought were because of blindness were socially-constructed limitations. In other words they were limitations that came from low expectations, and I had internalized those low expectations.

A friend of mine—well, the day I met him, he was involved in some legislative work, and he wanted me to contact him the next week, so he said, “Let me give you my telephone number, I want you to call me next week.” And I said, “I have no way of writing down your telephone number.” And he said, “Don’t you know how to read Braille?” I had learned Braille, I said yes. He said, “Do you know how to use a slate and stylus?” I said, “Yes, but I don’t have one with me.” He said, “If you’re sighted, you don’t need to carry a pen, because there are sighted people everywhere, and somebody will have a pen. But if you’re blind, you have to carry a slate and stylus because if you don’t, the odds that all the sighted people around you will have slates and styluses are pretty low.” So, by the way, to this day I carry a slate and stylus in my bag. What was he doing? What he was doing, in a gentle way, was saying quit acting helpless. Quit assuming that you cannot do things because of blindness.

That support system was absolutely critical in shaping my career goals. I wanted to be a teacher of blind children, so I went through my university training and did well. I began to see that what was limiting so many of us was the consequence of stereotypes or misunderstanding about blindness, more so than the functional aspect of blindness. I graduated with my master’s degree in 1978—some of you weren’t born in 1978. At that time in the US blind children were being educated in integrated schools, not all blind children, but the move was very strong toward integrated education. And many of the school systems were looking for teachers who could teach the academic subjects, but who also could teach orientation and mobility. In other words, a school system might only have three or four blind children, and they didn’t want to hire a teacher to teach academics and then hire an orientation and mobility specialist. So many of the students in my graduate program were getting certified to teach orientation and mobility along with their regular teacher certification. Well, I wanted a job, and I thought that would prepare me best for a job. But at that time in the United States the university training programs did not accept blind people to learn to be orientation and mobility instructors. Well, it’s a very long story, but the key part that I want to bring up this afternoon is that what allowed me—or gave the confidence, the resolve—to continue on and to earn my degree in orientation and mobility when by and large the profession was very much against me was the faith that other blind people had in me. Blind people believed in me. Blind people encouraged me. They told me that what I was doing was reasonable, that we needed to expand the kinds of jobs that blind people could do, and that sustained me. I was young, I was twenty-one years old; I had an entire profession thinking that I was some sort of troublemaker, that I was being unrealistic, that I would be putting my students in danger. I don’t say this to criticize or condemn any of the people who opposed my training. But what allowed me to sustain was the support of other blind people. As we look at leadership, we need to find opportunities to help sustain other blind people, to help encourage other blind people. Sometimes it’s through money, but it’s not all about resources. It’s about encouragement and belief.

I went on into special education. I faced discrimination, as do most blind people in trying to find employment. At the time I applied for teaching jobs, there was a huge nationwide shortage of qualified teachers of blind children. School districts would come to the university and try to recruit people before they had graduated so that they would have contracts and be committed to going to work at that particular school system upon graduation. Every single student—they were sighted—every student in my program had multiple job offers. I had no job offers. I applied for over thirty teaching jobs and received not a single job offer. Not because I wasn’t qualified, but simply because of low expectations.

My career began with a blind person who ran an agency for the blind, a long-term leader in our National Federation of the Blind, and he hired me. Well subsequent to that, I’ve had other jobs. But when I moved to Washington in 1994, I moved to work for President Bill Clinton. My job was to head up an agency called the Rehabilitation Services Administration, the agency that provides the bulk of the funding for employment training for adults with disabilities, not just blind people, but adults with disabilities throughout the country. While I was there we were in the process of trying to recruit someone for a job, and there was a blind woman who came to my attention. She had a law degree, had done very well in law school, but, like so many other blind people, when she finished law school, she could not find a job. At the time that I was recruiting for this position, she had been out of work at least six or eight years, maybe ten years since graduating from law school. So was she the most qualified candidate? No. There were other candidates who were applying who had very long resumés, lots of work experience, work experience directly related to the function of the job. But I hired her anyway. Now did I do that because I felt sorry for her? No. She had the skill, she had shown that she could compete and do the kind of work that I needed to have her do; it was analytical work, and she had a law degree with very good grades. Part of expanding leadership is helping others—other blind people—take that step into employment.

Since the time I left the government, this young woman has been promoted twice. The federal government has a system that goes from what they call GS1 to GS15, with fifteen being the highest. She is now at the GS15 level, and one of the most respected, competent people in that agency. She had the ability, but she did not have the opportunity. We have to help one another gain access to jobs that will develop blind people’s leadership potential.

So in closing, I would say again: if blind people are willing to go into leadership positions, you have to be prepared, you need those good blindness skills that Karen spoke about. You need to have the right kind of preparation, training in whatever skill area, or if it’s academic qualifications, you need to have those credentials. But also you need to have in your own mind, heart, and spirit the belief that you are just as worthy and just as capable as anyone else. And what sustains that, what nourishes that, is the support of other blind people. This is something each of us in this room can do, whether we have resources or no resources; we can find and encourage blind people, help support them, to unlock not only their own potential, but by so doing to expand opportunities for blind people everywhere. That is a quick summary of my story, and of course there are so many pieces that are left out—and I don’t really mean to end on a negative note, but I will tell you this: when I was working for President Clinton, this was a position appointed by the president, and it required confirmation by the Senate of the United States. I was on an airplane one time, and I was talking to a stranger in the seat next to me, and he asked, “What do you do?”

I said, “Well, I run a federal agency.” He was absolutely astounded.

He said, “What does the agency do?”

I said, “We provide funds for job training for people with disabilities.”
He said, “Oh, I understand.” He didn’t say it, but I’m sure what went through his mind is, “Oh, not a real job, a disabled job, oh I see how a blind person could do that, yes.” We get marginalized. I don’t say that with bitterness or with anger, but I think it is a reality, and it is a big part of our challenge around the world: To help nurture the ability in blind people; to sustain their confidence and encourage them; and, to the degree that we control hiring opportunities, to actively look for blind people—not as tokens, not just putting some unqualified person in just to have filled the slot with a blind person, but looking for people who may not have the long resumé because of the discrimination they have faced, but they have the skills, and they have the drive, and they have the ability. Thank you, Madame Chair.

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