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The Ohio State School For The Blind

Creator: Edward M. Van Cleve (author)
Date: October 1908
Publication: Outlook for the Blind
Source: Available at selected libraries


Introduction

At this time, much of the public—and even parents of blind children—did not expect blind people to earn a living or even care for themselves. In this speech to the main social work and charities conference in Ohio, the Superintendent of the Ohio State School for the Blind argues that, with proper training and expectations, blind people could become independent, self-supporting citizens.


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Read at the Ohio Conference of Charities and Correction, Sandusky, October 9, 1908.

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A VISITOR in Columbus who takes the "Seeing Columbus" automobile is almost sure to have pointed out to him, as he turns from Parsons Avenue down Rich Street, the "Blind Asylum," as the "barker" calls it; but let him alight from the vehicle and approach the entrance of the house and he will see over the portico, in letters of gold, "Ohio State School for the Blind."

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I wish some flaming, burning words could be uttered that would sear themselves into the understanding and memory of all, that we have a school in Columbus for the blind of the state -- "School" in capital letters, if you please.

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I gladly accept this opportunity afforded by Secretary Shirer to tell a small portion, but an intelligent and an interested portion, of our public what the State School for the Blind is and what it does.

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Perhaps it were best to say first what it is not. As already intimated, it is not an asylum. Possibly there are infirmary directors or superintendents here who have in their care a feeble-minded person who is blind, or an aged or infirm person afflicted with blindness. For such, no provision has been made other than the infirmary. They have no place in the State School for the Blind. In this audience there may be several who know of blind men and women alone in the world, and possibly destitute. For such a home is needed, and because these persons are blind you may have thought of a place in Columbus to which blind folk are sent, and you may have addressed the superintendent of the Home for the Blind. There is no such place.

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One winter evening I was called into my office from some other part of our house to see a sightless man who had just arrived from the train, a cabman having brought him to our door. He applied for admission to the "hospital," and was greatly surprised to learn that I was not a doctor, and that my business is to teach rather than to heal. Not a hospital, not a home, not an asylum, but a school.

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I must make one more positive negation. Mr. Shirer has headed this morning's program, "Juvenile Charities." For two of the institutions represented on the program of the morning -- the State School for the Deaf and the State School for the Blind -- this is a misleading caption. We are simply a part of the educational system of the state, the great public schools. I fear the classification as benevolent institutions is unfortunate, because it gives rise to the impressions we desire to combat, namely, that ours are asylums, homes, hospitals.

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Founded in 1837, the school has been until recent years the only organized institution doing special work for the blind. Nearly three thousand different persons have been enrolled, and of this number a large proportion have continued through the course and have gone out to useful work in the world. It was reported to this conference that a very large percentage of applicants for relief under the Harper (pension) law in one of our counties were former pupils of the State School for the Blind, having been taught there trades which they were unable to follow successfully. Without disparagement to the care and thoughtful accuracy of Dr. Stricker's inquiry, I may be permitted to call attention to the undoubted fact that he has studied the seamy side of our cloth, and in his position as member of the Blind Relief Commission he would never come to know the successful men and women who are blind, and their number is not a disproportionate per cent of the whole number, I dare say, when compared with the per cent of the successful among the sighted. Though not fortunate enough to have inherited a register of our former pupils whose achievements are thus recorded, and having been only a year in this work, I can yet name many who have a standing here and there over the state as distinctly successful. At Logan, a graduate is a tuner and a proprietor of a piano store. At Mt. Vernon is a skillful piano salesman. At Greenville is a State School man who has become owner of a fine broom-making plant, has lived comfortably, and educated three children. Scores might be named whom I know to be making their way as teachers, tuners, and small tradesmen. Mr. Kaiser, of Marietta, a member of our Ohio Commission for the Blind, told me of the business sagacity of one of our boys who at fair time, with the investment of a capital of five dollars, cleared twenty-three dollars in two days' effort selling watermelons. As Mr. Campbell says, however, the blind sighted people have been expecting the impossible of even the most intelligent and capable blind folk when they wonder that a broom maker does not make it go, having to secure his materials at a high rate for his necessarily small purchases, manufacture his product, and then himself turn salesman. A good buyer is not often a good salesman, and the man who makes the goods, the mechanic, is in these days of piecework not even thought of in either the buying or the selling process. To the new State Commission is committed a great movement, that of opening avenues of reasonably profitable employment for those whom we at the State School shall properly equip.

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