0:00:00-0:00:08 Ed Morman: Schooling before going to Swarthmore. You were going in to Patterson from grades K to 3.
0:00:08-0:00:09 Adrienne Asch: No.
0:00:09-0:00:10 Ed Morman: No?
0:00:10-0:00:20 Adrienne Asch: K was in my hometown, in Ramsey. And then I started going to Patterson from first, second, and third grade.
0:00:20-0:00:22 Ed Morman: And how'd you feel about going to Patterson?
0:00:22-0:00:23 Adrienne Asch: I hated it.
0:00:23-0:00:26 Ed Morman: Oh, okay. That's why you got out in fourth grade.
0:00:26-0:02:08 Adrienne Asch: Right. Now, well, when I say I hated it, I mean, my parents had moved to New Jersey, as opposed to Long Island or Connecticut, because Josephine Taylor had talked to them when I was about 9 or 10 months old about the fact that New Jersey was really working to keep kids who were blind in their neighborhood school. So, they were really committed to that. That's what they wanted.
And when we moved to New Jersey, that's what we expected. And then we found out that the Commission, as I always refer to it, the New Jersey Commission for the Blind, didn't have an itinerant teacher to come to Ramsey at that point. So, for the first three years, I did go to Patterson. And they, you know, the understanding was I would go to my neighborhood school as soon as possible. I liked Patterson in the sense that Miss Campbell, Helen Campbell, the homeroom…kind of resource room teacher for blind kids, was quite a good teacher.
And I learned reading and writing very well and learned arithmetic and that sort of stuff. But, um, I really hated the segregation, the sense that you would go to the first grade class and the second grade class for science and social studies. But people didn't think of you as an ordinary first grader. They thought of you as this person from the Braille class. And I hated the, you know, the Lions Club would come and give you little stupid parties and be obnoxious. I mean, I'm not saying this from the vantage point of being a grown-up. I hated it.
0:02:08-0:02:09 Ed Morman: You felt it then, yes.
0:02:09-0:02:10 Adrienne Asch: I hated it.
0:02:10-0:02:22 Ed Morman: Um. Yeah. But you did gain some blindness skills early on from concentrated, uh, attention there.
0:02:22-0:02:23 Adrienne Asch: Yeah.
0:02:23-0:02:26 Ed Morman: Do you think you would have learned Braille as easily with an itinerant teacher?
0:02:26- 0:02:32 Adrienne Asch: I have no idea. I mean, I was determined to read, and my parents were determined to read. I mean, that's what they did, was read.
0:02:32-0:02:33 Ed Morman: Yeah.
0:02:33-0:02:49 Adrienne Asch: Um. So, you know, I was learning. I was looking at the print letters on refrigerators and stoves and washing machines and learning how to read capital print letters when I was five and six.
0:02:49-0:02:53 Ed Morman: And so, but it was in the first grade that you learned Braille.
0:02:53-0:02:54 Adrienne Asch: Right.
0:02:54-0:02:59 Ed Morman: Okay. Did your parents attempt to learn Braille, or Braille things for you, or?
0:02:59-0:03:27 Adrienne Asch: Not very much. They did a little. [laughs] My father got a slate and stylus and learned some Braille and tried to write me a letter, but he realized that the plane trips were not long enough. [laughs] Um. I never felt…I mean, it was interesting. I would go to camp, and there would be kids whose parents would write Braille letters to them. And my parents didn't. They, you know, either they wrote letters, or they didn't. But, I mean, they didn’t—
0:03:27-0:03:30 Ed Morman: So, you didn't feel that, that you were deprived because your parents—
0:03:30-0:03:31 Adrienne Asch: No, I mean—
0:03:31-0:03:34 Ed Morman: —weren’t interested in Braille. They encouraged you, in any case. Yeah.
0:03:34-0:03:39 Adrienne Asch: Well. It's not a matter of that they weren't interested in Braille. I mean, I didn't think they needed to learn Braille for me to learn it.
0:03:39-0:03:40 Ed Morman: Yeah.
0:03:40-0:04:32 Adrienne Asch: I mean, they certainly did lots of things to make sure….I mean, I don't know. My father would go to the New York Public Library for the Blind and get me Braille books every week, even though we lived in New Jersey. I don't know how he made that deal, but he would, you know, he would, we would, he would come up with things. We went to Philadelphia once and he showed me the Liberty Bell or, you know, why, he had, he was very interested in showing me stuff and doing stuff. Um. My mother loved Scrabble. So, she persuaded the Scrabble people to make a Braille Scrabble game.
0:04:32-0:04:33- Ed Morman: Huh!
0:04:33-0:04:47 Adrienne Asch: And, uh… You know, I never felt that they needed to learn Braille to show me that they cared about me. I mean, Braille was what I needed to read. They read print.