FREEDOM FOR THE BLIND THE SECRET IS EMPOWERMENT By James H Omvig - Документ

He was old enough to possess maturity, vast knowledge and experience, but he was also young enough to possess boundless energy, fearless determination and tireless dedication to the cause. Since this is so--since the vacuum has been filled--we must direct and focus the customer's thinking upon new, positive, accurate information with enough intensity and volume to override and replace the negative information which the mind has already processed and stored up. We need to make certain that what is stored from now on is both positive and accurate. Put another way, each of us has a small part of the brain set aside which stores information about blindness, and what has already been stored is bad. Even though all of this is true, I sometimes meet people who try to convince me that, ";I have no pre-conceived notions about blindness; no, I really don't!"; To which I say, ";Don't you believe it!"; Everyone (either customer or service provider) has learned negative attitudes, and everyone concerned in one way or another with issues of blindness needs a positive attitudinal adjustment! For a few, it takes several explanations before they really get it, but through persistence they will get it.


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For a typical example, I know only too well that the philosophy about blindness of the Iowa School for the Blind when I attended it (I assume that it is better now) was quite simple and direct, but damning: ";The blinder you are, the more helpless and useless you are."; The concept of the ";hierarchy of sight"; was rampant. Properly trained blind people now have a home and a family and have assumed the duties and privileges of first-class citizenship. The ";Iowa experiment"; worked! The NFB was correct in its belief that properly trained blind people could live wonderful, xjdbwz.com normal, successful, meaningful and rewarding lives. At the time the NFB decided to support passage of the ADA, it did so only upon the inclusion of a Federation-sponsored provision which specifies that an individual disabled person may not be forced to accept some unwanted accommodation. He arrived in Iowa during some of his best years, the very prime of life, when experience, energy and intellect mingle in their most favorable proportions. To this day, most young blind people graduate from the public schools totally unprepared for adult life. Or, ponder this one: Since I have actively worked for many years along with others in the organized blind movement to improve public attitudes about blindness, friends and acquaintances from around the country frequently send me troublesome problems which they run across.


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I always use my long, white cane whether or not I happen to be walking with someone else. B. The Long, White Cane: Extensive training in the use and mastery of the long, white cane is one of the most important services the good school or training center can ever provide. I am aware, for example, of a state where VR, IL and related services for the blind are delivered not through an independent agency, but as a part of a general VR program. In ways both large and small, we are taught from infancy that ";blindness means inferiority."; These negative messages continue for a lifetime through movies, books, newspapers, tv, radio, et cetera. Before you can give this valuable assistance, however, you need to understand completely the concept of proper training yourselves, and you must understand the importance of each of these four ingredients as they relate to true vocational success, empowerment and freedom. Before turning to these specifics, however, we must first resolve the question as to why an agency or school needs to have a ";defined philosophy"; about blindness and to teach it routinely to its customers.



In truth, however, given ";proper training"; and opportunity, the average blind личность can have a great life and compete as an equal with the average sighted личность in all aspects of human endeavor. The odds are that newly blinded people (or people who have been blind for a long time but who have never experienced ";proper training";) won't be able to do this on their own, but rather will need something or someone to intervene. I have observed over the past forty years that the most positive way to approach blindness that I know of is found in the philosophy I learned through my own state agency, the Iowa Commission for the Blind, outlined in the ten points above. While most of the ten philosophical points outlined above are clear, a few of them require elaboration to explain why a particular word or phrase is used. The message was clear, if damning. They must recognize and admit that the конь is dead. All of this brings us back to the question of why agencies and schools must have positive, defined philosophies about blindness if they truly intend to empower.



Here is where the quality service provider and the defined philosophy come in. One final point needs to be made on the subject of a defined school or agency philosophy. As a part of this negative instruction, those of us who are blind also frequently conduct ourselves in such a way as to create the very negative attitudes about which we would then complain. Thus, when we note that between seventy and eighty percent of the blind of working age are presently unemployed, and that of those who are employed, far too many are either seriously underemployed or locked in forever at entry-level positions, we can understand that both society and blind people themselves have created the problem. We who are blind are just as guilty as people who are sighted. Just consider--two years after leaving the Iowa center--and with a lot of personal successes under my belt--I still slid back into that trap of social conditioning and blamed my blindness when the going got tough.