Dr. Kenneth Jernigan:
When we think of the next generation, we think of children, always of children. Today a crisis faces every American child who is either blind or has such poor eyesight that reading is a problem. You'll observe that I'm reading these words in Braille. I learned to read and write Braille when I was a child. It wasn't any harder than it is for a sighted child to learn to read print. As you can see, Braille reading can be just as efficient as any other kind of reading. We not only read Braille, we make speeches about it.
Speaker 2:
Several years ago we initiated a nationwide Braille literacy campaign, which continues today. We drafted model legislation which declares that blind students have the right to learn Braille and that the school systems everywhere in the country must provide both Braille textbooks and instruction in Braille. Whenever this is warranted, we continue to fight for the introduction and passage of these bills and we will not rest until every state has a adopted our model law.
Dr. Kenneth Jernigan:
In recent years, Braille has become extremely controversial, but it was not always so until after the second World War, almost all blind children who were to be educated as well as a great many of the partially cited went to residential schools For the blind. Braille was a given. Everybody learned it and the students with partial sight made a practice of reading it with their eyes. When I'm reading silently, I go at three or 400 words a minute.
I can read faster than I can talk, and I know lots of other blind people who can, but I'm in my sixties. I learned Braille at a time when all children who were blind or who had very poor eyesight and who had the capacity to learn to read were taught Braille. As a matter of course, they were taught by teachers, some sighted, some blind who knew Braille as well as the ordinary teacher knows print. Today the story is painfully different and it's getting worse. In 19 68, 40 4% of blind children could read Braille. In 1993, just 25 years later, fewer than 9% could read Braille and 40% couldn't read either print or Braille. A little bit of eyesight can sometimes be a hindrance, not a help, and the price increases as the years go by.
Speaker 3:
When I was seven years old, I became legally blind. I still had a good bit of remaining vision, and at that time my mother was told that I didn't need Braille, that I had too much vision to require Braille, and that Braille was basically antiquated. She was told that if I had a tape recorder that that would be a much more effective way for me to get information than using Braille.
At the same time, I really didn't see well enough to use print effectively, and so beginning in the middle of second grade, I quit reading and I didn't read at all until when I was 16 and became totally blind, and at that time I taught myself to read and write Braille. That was the first time in my life from the age of seven that I had read it all. So as a result, certainly my knowledge of the English language was diminished.
Speaker:
I was unable to spell even very basic words. If you had given me a spelling proficiency test at the age of 16, I think you'd have found I probably spelled at about the second or maybe the third grade level, and so it was a tremendous disadvantage for me as I went on and completed high school and then eventually competed in college. When I went into my first job, I found it was also a terrible disadvantage because even though at that point I had taught myself Braille, I was so slow and inefficient at using Braille that I was was not able to work with material in the classroom. I was a teacher.
I wasn't able to work with material in the classroom unless I had reviewed it many times and become quite familiar with it. When our children were little, my wife was able to read to them out of their books because she could read fluently in Braille. Whereas with me, since I was never taught to read Braille properly, I wasn't able to do this, I would have to take a book and look at a few paragraphs and read and reread them before I was able to read to my children, and that's a loss in your life that is immeasurable.
Dr. Kenneth Jernigan:
When a dad reads to his children, it brings a special closeness
Speaker 4:
How sorry they were that he must be chained. He laughed their hands a little bit, but he was very sad and angry. His head was on Laura's knee and she was talking to him when suddenly he stood up and growled a fierce deep growl.
Dr. Kenneth Jernigan:
It goes without saying that those hired to teach sighted children to read are expected to know the alphabet and how to write words and simple sentences. It's also true that when children complain and say they don't want to learn to read, we ignore their protests and insist that they settle down to the job. But many of the teachers charged with instructing blind and visually impaired children don't know Braille themselves.
For the most part, they have sight and their only acquaintance with Braille was one or two college courses. Recently, 30 of these cited teachers and teacher trainees took a Braille competency test developed by the Library of Congress and all 30 of them failed it. It isn't surprising that their students know what to learn, Braille and can't use it. It's also understandable that these teachers and others like them hunt every excuse they can to convince themselves and others that a student with any eyesight at all should be required to use print and not be permitted to learn Braille. Sometimes the child waits and hopes and never finds a competent teacher.
Speaker 5:
I was very excited. I was given my first vision specialist. That's what my teacher was referred to, and I was very excited. I thought this was the chance to learn Braille and learn other skills that I needed. This was not to be the case because my teacher did not know Braille, and I thought being young, I thought, well, this is fine. I will have a chance still to learn Braille. There's got to be someone who will teach me.
Well, five teachers later, elementary school, junior high school, senior high school, six teachers total, and not one of them could teach me Braille. I stand here before you. I'm 28 years old. I do not know Braille. I'm in school to become a teacher and I can't read all the time. I can read. I read about this close when I read, I get tired very easy, and when you are in not one reading intensive course, but several reading intensive courses, it becomes quite difficult.
I am now teaching myself Braille and I don't feel it should have to be that way. I'm not just frustrated. I am angry because I was not given a chance to do something that I should have had a right to do.
Dr. Kenneth Jernigan:
The snowballing illiteracy of today's blind children is a problem for all of society, but it's nothing short of a personal tragedy for those who are personally involved, the blind and visually impaired children who are being denied the chance to learn an effective method of reading and writing something most Americans take for granted.
Speaker 6:
I'd like to tell you a little bit about some of the frustrations we've had as parents. My daughter was born with glaucoma and she has had multiple eye surgeries in excess of maybe 40, 45, 50 eye surgeries in her lifetime. We have dealt with a medical condition that was totally frustrating and has kept our life on an emotional roller coaster.
We ride up and down as our eye pressure rides up and down with glaucoma, but compared to the medical condition, her education has been even more so of a rollercoaster ride. We constantly battle the education system in our state to give her the Braille literacy skills that we feel she deserves. Just like the rest of the kids she goes to school with.
Speaker 7:
My mom realized that I needed Braille and she started teaching me and at the same time she started fighting with the school and finally after a good long while, they decided yes, it's about time we teach a Braille. After several assessments and a lot of pushing and legal fighting and everybody getting mad at everybody else, lemme tell you, I need Braille. If I tried to do my homework in large print, it takes me six seconds to read a six letter word, which is way too long and I'm not going to put up with that and nobody else should have to.
Dr. Kenneth Jernigan:
What would happen to a sighted child, any sighted child, if every day the parents and all of the teachers made fun of reading and said it wouldn't work, that it was slow and clumsy and inefficient.
Speaker 8:
I remember when I was in kindergarten, I started to learn Braille and I got as far as learning the alphabet, but that's where it stopped because I was using the residual vision that I have to look at the Braille dots. My teachers never thought that it might be useful to simply cover up that vision so I could learn Braille, nevermind the fact that I was sticking the paper up to my face in an attempt to read what was on the page. They simply said that obviously I had vision and I just didn't need to learn Braille, and that was fine.
So I learned to read print and I spent the next 12 years of my education reading print most of the time ending up with ink right here on my nose where I would stick my nose up to the page to read When I was in seventh grade or so, we took the reading proficiency test that most children take to see at what grade level their reading, and I was reading about 15 words a minute in print, and I was made to feel that that was really the best I could do as a blind child.
Speaker:
I was reading print and that was wonderful, and 15 words a minute was simply the best that was going to happen. When I got to high school, I decided I needed to start to learn Braille because I wanted to go to college and I knew I simply wouldn't succeed reading 15 words a minute, my teachers were very reluctant to teach me Braille because they said, well, Braille is very slow and it's going to take you a long time to learn and you're never going to read fast anyway, and 15 words a minute, pretty good.
And I believed them because to me it just seemed to make sense. I didn't know line people could read 300, 400 words a minute in Braille if I would've known that I would've wanted to learn Braille a long time ago, but I thought that I was doing the best I could anyway.
Speaker:
I started learning Braille because I wanted to, and I took the time out of my foreign language class to do so because it was the only time the teacher could come to teach me. So I learned the Braille code, but I never really got fast because no one really encouraged me to read. No one said, sit down and read a novel, and that's how you'll get really fast in Braille. They simply said, well, you'll read maybe 20, 30, 40 words a minute, and that'll be good.
It'll be faster than you're reading now. So I graduated from high school not being a fast Braille reader and not being a fast print reader and not having a foreign language under my belt. I went to college and I completed it, but I knew as a professional I need to be able to read. And so at the age of 22, I took time out to be rehabilitated and I went to a center to learn Braille, but it makes me angry.
My friends who were sighted didn't need to take time out of their lives at that age to become literate. They'd been literate for years. They were going off to get their first job, and I was learning how to read, but I hope in the future that our blind children don't have to go through what I've gone through wasting 23 years of my life trying to become literate. It shouldn't be that way.
Dr. Kenneth Jernigan:
When this woman was nine, she lost most of her sight, but she was lucky. Why? Was it because she had a little bit of sight left? No, it was because her parents recognized that recorded material and the print she could barely see wouldn't be enough. She was encouraged to learn Braille
Speaker 9:
Until I was nine years old. I was fully cited. Then I developed juvenile macular degeneration, which left me with some usable sight. I could still read large print, but I was lucky my parents and teachers recognized that tapes and large print wouldn't be enough to help me reach my full potential. I was taught Braille. Today as a full-time teacher of visually impaired children, I use a combination of Braille tape, enlarged print and speech synthesizers to perform the various planning and organizational tasks that are necessary in my job. Without Braille, I would not be able to perform my job adequately
Dr. Kenneth Jernigan:
And day after day there are the negatives, always the negatives.
Betsy Zaborowski :
I'm a clinical psychologist and a person who's been blind all of my life, although I had significant residual vision when I was a child. I read normal print pretty well, although, and I think back, there were a lot of books that I never read. There was a lot of extra fun reading that I never did because I always had a limited amount of strength of my eyes. I'd get tired very easy. I always had lots of headaches. I did fairly well in school.
I was a B student, went on to college and then started working. But in my thirties, I went back to graduate school to get a doctorate in clinical psychology. And at that time, I was gradually losing more vision, particularly at night. And then I had an exacerbation and lost another big chunk of vision, which made it extremely difficult for me to read any print at all.
Speaker:
And at that time, I had no Braille. I had not been introduced to it. My only exposure to Braille was a negative belief that if you use Braille, it's the last resort and you've got to be totally blind to use it. And I always grew up thinking of myself as legally blind, but never really blind because there was such negative talk about that. So I never had the opportunity of Braille. And here I was. Here I was halfway through my doctoral program.
I had finished all the coursework, I lost some additional vision. I was ready to go on my internship, and I had to do case reports and file a lot of papers and do a lot of reading, and I couldn't read a snitch, a print anymore. It's just a real disservice to me and people like me. If I would've had at least the introductions of Braille when I was younger, had practiced it, had learned the full code, it would've been so much easier for me to pick up.
At this point, reading print is extremely difficult. I have to hold it this close to my face in order to read, print. My eyes get extremely tired. I can't do it for very long periods of time. It's an extremely cumbersome process to read print for me.
Dr. Kenneth Jernigan:
And when the blind person learns to read Braille, it's a liberating experience.
Speaker 11:
I thought that I was unique until a couple of years ago. I thought I was maybe the only blind child in the world who had not been taught Braille. When I finally did gain some skill in Braille reading as an adult, I found it to be perhaps, maybe definitely, maybe, definitely. I found it to be the most liberating experience in learning of my adult life. The fact that I could sit in a room with my head held high and read. I didn't have to have a neck ache. My eyes didn't have to hurt and burn. It felt good.
Dr. Kenneth Jernigan:
Some people who don't see whale are lucky. Others aren't. They have a little sight, and so when their children, they're not taught to read Braille, they pay for it the rest of their lives. In a very real sense, they're denied the rights of citizenship.
Speaker 12:
When I was beginning school, I could still see enough to read the first grade primer, and so no one even mentioned the word Braille to my family. No one mentioned the word Braille all the way through elementary school, even though my vision was getting worse and worse, and for the last two years I didn't read a word of print. I am now an editor and I must learn to read. I am in my forties, my forties, and every night I fall asleep reading Braille.
It's the only way I know to learn to read. People's children do that when they are six and seven and eight, and I am still doing it. And if I'm to do my job well, I will have to learn to read faster than I can now. But I will never learn to read as rapidly as I could have learned to read.
Speaker:
If someone had thought to teach me Braille when I was a child, this situation has to change. We cannot do this to today's children, and we cannot leave it to happen to tomorrow's children. Every American, as far as I know, has been promised an education. As far as I know, an education includes reading and writing. If you deny blind children the chance to learn to read and write, then you have denied them the right of citizenship. Are we such poor citizens? Do we have so little to offer that you would refuse to teach us to read and write? Surely that is unjust.
Dr. Kenneth Jernigan:
The child wants to be normal, to feel normal, to look normal, to be like the other children, and the parents want the child to be normal too. They desperately want it and they're afraid. So the child and the parents are quick to agree when the teachers and the others at the school say Braille isn't needed, that it's slow and clumsy, but the tragedy comes later and it isn't the teacher and those at the school who pay. The little girl grows up. She has a career and she has children of her own.
Carla McQuillan:
I lost my vision almost overnight when I was nine years old, and it's a form of a very rare recessive gene, a form of macular degeneration that I have a blind spot in the center of my vision and I have peripheral vision. So I travel. My mobility skills are okay, but in terms of reading print, I cannot read standard print at all without some sort of magnification. And because I didn't look very blind, I suppose the schools decided that I didn't need to learn Braille.
In fact, my parents were never informed that this was even an option for me or anything that they should consider for part of my education. And I did okay in school. I listened very well. I could not read the textbooks, but I was really good at faking it, learned how to look like a sighted person really well. And when I got to college, it became more and more difficult.
Speaker:
In fact, I remember one night coming home I had an interpretation of literature class, and my assignment was to read in advance all the short stories that were going to be performed by the other students in the classroom, that coming class session. But the students didn't have to let us know which stories they were doing until one week in advance. And I remember having an anthology of classic short stories, and the print in it was very small.
I don't know if it was 10 point or smaller than that. And I had a magnifier and I had 170 pages to read in a week. And I came home and I timed it. It took me 20 minutes to read one page in the book. And I remember sitting in my bed and just crying and having my husband sit down next to me and reading to me.
Speaker:
And I went into the Disabled Student Services office the next day and I said, I want to learn Braille. There's got to be a class here somewhere. I said, I know I could have gotten this book in Braille without even waiting, because they were all classic stories. And the woman at Disabled Student Services proceeded to tell me that I didn't want to learn Braille, that it was too difficult. It would take me two years to learn it, and I would be so inefficient at it that I would never use it in my life. And I listened to her, and that was probably one of my biggest mistakes at that point in time.
Speaker:
I now have two children, and I am the president of the National Federation of the Blind of Oregon, which takes up most of my copious free time. I also now own my own business. I run a Montessori preschool. And I will tell you that going from a classroom teacher to an administrator makes a really big difference in terms of what you have to be able to read.
And the only way that I can pull files from the filing cabinet and know that I've gotten the right file is to go through and pull files individually and use a magnifier to read what is on every file in there or have somebody pull it for me. I cannot read the emergency cards for each of the children so that if there's an accident or some way that I need to get some reason, that I need to get in touch with the parents.
The only way that I can do this is by racing upstairs to my closed circuit TV in my office and putting it under there, which is not efficient or to ask somebody else to do it. But I guess that the thing that probably disturbs me the most is that I have a four-year-old son, and at night when I talk him into bed, I can't read him a story.
Speaker:
And if I had learned Braille when I was a kid, none of this would've been a problem. I know that if I had learned Braille when I was a child, I would've been able to acquire the speed and the accuracy that even if I try to take the time now, which I have done, and there isn't a lot of time when you own a business and you're very active in a volunteer organization and you have a family.
I've tried to take the time to learn Braille, but no, I always start it and I never seem to find the time that it takes to develop the speed and the skills that I need. And I could go to an orientation center like we run, but then it would take me six to nine months to really develop the skills that I need.
And I can't take that time away from my business, and I can't take it away from my family. So at this point, I'm kind of stuck and I feel sometimes like I owe my family better than that, and I owe myself better than that. And I wish that I had had the opportunity, even if I'd never chose to use Braille in my life, I wish I had the opportunity to make that decision instead of having someone make it for me.
Dr. Kenneth Jernigan:
These children are the lucky ones. Their parents often over the opposition of the teachers and school officials insisted that they have a chance to learn Braille. Nobody knows what the future holds for them, but we do know that it will be brighter because they're among the 9% of blind and partially sighted children today who can read Braille? Blind people struggle with an unemployment rate of more than 70%, but most of those who work can read Braille.
Is there a crisis in the education of blind children? You bet there is. We need your help to reverse the trend towards illiteracy among this generation of blind children. Strong Braille legislation is needed now. Laws requiring that every blind and partially sighted child be given the chance to learn Braille if the parents request it, and let the teachers be competent In Braille reading and writing, we're counting on you. So are the children,
Speaker 4:
National Federation of the Blind. Live the life you want.