by Marilyn Vaughan
(Reprinted, with permission, from the Boone News- Republican September 24th, 1986.)
Seven-year-old Chris Hinds is blind, but he doesn't consider that a problem, nor does anybody else he knows.
As the first blind child in the Boone school system, it might be expected that Chris's handicap would set him apart from the rest of the second graders at Lowell Elementary School.
It just isn't so. Chris's mother Cindy, says he does the same things all children do--rides a bicycle, plays outside, and ties his shoes, "when he wants to."
"Whatever he wants to do, he can try," she says, adding that she hates to say that he can't do something. From the day Chris was born, Hinds had no doubts that her son would attend public school, and she has the same expectations for his sister, Regan, 4, who is also blind.
Both Ronald and Cindy Hinds's two children were born with glaucoma, a hereditary condition in which the drains that feed the cornea with fluid from a gland in the eye were missing. Chris has had about 11 operations to make artificial drains in his eyes, but these have been difficult to keep open and now with the scar tissue, the doctors cannot construct more new drains, she explains.
Doris Willoughby, a certified teacher from Heartland Education Agency who supervises Chris' curriculum, echos Cindy Hinds. He is blind and he fits in, she says. "Blind children do fit in." Willoughby and a second Heartland teacher work with 14 blind children who attend public schools in 11 counties, excluding Des Moines, which has its own Braille teachers.
Willoughby's own background is impressive: She has written several books on teaching the blind, and though she is fully sighted, her husband, Curtis, is a blind electrical engineer.
More than half of Iowa's blind children--and virtually all of those who don't have other handicaps-attend their local schools. Willoughby says two events helped forward the placement of blind children in the public school system.
One was the large number of retrolental fibroplasia children who became blind when they were given oxygen at birth, primarily in the 1940s and 50s before doctors knew that administering oxygen to infants damaged their eyes. Their numbers put pressure on society to accommodate the handicapped. The second was "part of a larger trend to include disabled people as part of regular life."
"Blindness is an easy disability to integrate. It doesn't interfere with mental ability or communication," she says.
Their integration followed the passage in 1975 of the education of the Handicapped Act, which requires that disabled children be placed in the least restrictive situation. Schools now have to state their reason for why a handicapped child cannot be educated in a regular classroom.
Before 1975, schools could be "very arbitrary" about excluding disabled children, she says.
Ronald Greene, of Boone, president of the Central Iowa chapter of the National Federation of the Blind and secretary of the state chapter, attended the Iowa Braille and Sightsaving School in Vinton when he was young. He says it's much better for blind children to remain at home and be educated in their local schools where they can have the affection of the natural parents. He wishes that had been posible for him.
Lowell principal Les Mclntyre says Chris has not created any difficulties for the school. "Really it's been a challenge for Chris," Mclntyre says, explaining that he has to do more work than the average child as he is learning Braille, too.
Although Chris has limited vision--the legal definition of being blind is anyone who has less than 10 percent of normal sight--his teachers say that the Braille is much faster for him in most cases. Teacher's aide JoAnn Hanson, who sits beside Chris in class while second- grade teacher Jeff Gard gives the lessons, is there to assist him on a daily basis with Braille, and not, she says, to supply the answers.
During a typical math lesson, Gard writes the equations on the board while Hanson supervises Chris while he follows in Braille, keeping his place with a hamburger-shaped magnet. He then goes to the Braille writer--located on his desk-- and types out the answers.
Hanson, who translates the answers from Braille to print for Gard, says it doesn't always take him longer to complete the lessons than the other children.
Again, Willoughby stresses what doesn't set him apart. She says every child has weaknesses and strengths, just like Chris. He has the same books as the other children with one exception-- reading.
"Chris is reading a different book because it shows beginning Braille in the right order, it's not an easier book."
In a year or so, she expects him to be in the same reading curriculum as the rest of the class.
"In the future-probably third or fourth grade Chris will learn to type on a regular typewriter. Then he'll be able to turn in the work to the classroom teacher directly in print. This is one of the reasons why he'll need less individual attention as time passes.
For now, Chris is mastering the skills that he will need as an adult, including finding his way around with a white cane, which Greene describes as "a tool, not a toy." His mother says he's had a few problems picking up the technique. "He liked to use it as a stick at first."
Each blind person uses a different length of cane, depending on their height. Chris has a straight cane that rests alongside the entrance to the classroom when he is not using it, while Greene carries a folding one.
The white cane is one of the few outward signs of his disability, but it doesn't single him out from the rest of the crowd. He stands in school lunch line chatting with the other children and tapping his cane on the floor--like a kid swinging a baseball bat.
Chris's mother describes her son as a "very social" child who asks question after question, which throws some people who first meet him. "They don't expect him to be outgoing," she said. "He's very outgoing.
"I've never seen a child that asks so many questions. He loves people and likes to go places and do things." Strangers don't realize that Chris and his little sister are blind, and that suits her just fine 'cause she wants others to get to know the children first before forming any impressions.
Greene says Chris, who sat on the National Federation of the Blind float during Boone's Pufferbilly Days Parade, never stopped asking questions about how the float was made and what made it run.
But Cindy Hinds, whose descriptions of Chris (his favorite subject is art, and he can't carry a tune) destroy common sterotypes, doesn't think that trait is connected with not being able to see, since Regan has an altogether different personality. And Chris' limited vision doesn't influence what his feelings about himself, or other children's acceptance of him, as one of her anecdotes illustrates. She says they read a question together in a children's magazine that asked, "If you wanted to change one thing about yourself, what would that be?" His reply was that he wished his legs could run a little faster.
If she could give one piece of advice to others raising visually handicapped children, it would be, "Don't panic. Treat them normally." For her, motherhood has been a process of learning what her children can do.
"He's opened my eyes more than anything. To a whole new world, you might say."