[Arizona-students] Interesting Keynote Speech

Tue Jan 10 00:22:01 CST 2006

Hi guys,
    Below is the keynote address from the 1992 NABS mid-winter meeting. It is full of practical examples and questions that are very relevant to blind students, and should inspire thought and discussionabout a number of issues.

Arielle

INTEGRITY, INDEPENDENCE, AND
THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
by Barbara Pierce

From:
The Braille Monitor
Vol. 35, No. 4
April 1992

[PHOTO/CAPTION: At 8:30 Saturday morning, February 1,
students were beginning to gather for registration at
the 1992 Mid-Winter Conference of the National
Association of Blind Students.]

[PHOTO: Room full of students seated while Barbara
Pierce speaks from podium microphone. CAPTION: The
Conference opened at 9:00 a.m. with a keynote address
delivered by Barbara Pierce, Associate Editor of the
BRAILLE MONITOR.]

[PHOTO: Seven students seated together for small group
discussion. CAPTION: During the afternoon session
conferees divided into small groups for discussion of
the issues raised during the day.]

>From the Associate Editor: This speech was the keynote
address at the mid-winter conference of the National
Association of Blind Students, conducted February 1,
1992, immediately preceding the National Federation of
the Blind's Washington Seminar:

When I was first invited to deliver this keynote
address, I began thinking about the most valuable gifts
I have received from the Federation; or, to put it
another way, if I had the capacity to wave a magic wand
over you this morning, what are the Federation gifts I
would bestow upon you right now? After reading over
what I prepared to say, I now realize that perhaps I
have left out two of the most important ones.
Therefore, I would like to take a moment at the
beginning to say that fun of the kind that you had last
evening getting to know all these wonderful, witty
people here is certainly a valuable gift. You have
discovered that already. The other gift is love--the
kind of love that springs up among us here is something
that is almost unique in organizations like this one.
Just because I'm not talking about either of these two
gifts, I don't intend to discount their importance.

I found the Federation long after my student days, but
I have been aware, since the first days of my exposure
to Federation ideas and thinking, how valuable it would
have been for me and, yes, how much different my life
would have been, had I been exposed to the Federation
when I was in college. That is true even though I went
to school long before the siren song of the disabled
students' office and the all-pervasive temptation to
let the experts do it.

Open-minded consideration and adoption of Federation
principles develop one's intellectual integrity and
moral toughness, for it is a fact that every world
view, every decision that we make have both advantages
and disadvantages--that is, they do if they have any
significance at all. It behooves us all to get used to
analyzing those advantages and disadvantages in order
to understand the consequences of our decisions and
actions.

For example, escort services: these have sprung up in
recent years for all students who happen to be
traveling alone late at night and who feel
uncomfortable and would like company. That's a fine
thing. As the mother of two female college students,
I'm very happy that there are escort services. I know
of some disabled students' offices, however, that have
begun piggy- backing an especially insidious
disabled-student service (particularly for blind
students) onto the general escort service program. The
idea is that escorts will be available to accompany a
blind student wherever and whenever he or she wishes to
go. Now this is a vastly convenient thing. It means
that you don't have to learn the campus; you can crook
your little finger--if you're lucky enough to find
someone on duty--and an escort will take you where you
want to go. All you lose is your independence, your
autonomy, and, most destructive of all, the chance to
have other people think of you and treat you as an
adult.

Or how about note-takers? Note-takers have become more
and more fashionable, it seems to me, in disabled
students' offices. There are appropriate times and
situations for them. I remember a deaf student who was
in one of my husband's classes at Oberlin. She was a
pretty good lip-reader, but sometimes the other
students forgot to face her when they spoke. It made
sense for her to glance over at what her note-taker was
writing in order to keep up with the discussion. The
alternative would have been an interpreter, which would
have been more expensive and more intrusive.

It is understandable why more and more blind students
are being encouraged to use note-takers as the solution
to the problem of getting class notes. If you do not
have handwriting that is legible and if you do not wish
to invest twice or three times the amount of time the
lecture took to listen repeatedly to a recording, you
have a problem. Even though I am married to a
professor, I assure you that they are like the rest of
us--most of what they say is a waste of time. There are
pearls to be found--ideas and arguments that are
important; but it is better if you can write down the
pearls for yourself. The problem with note-takers is,
of course, that they write down what they think are
pearls, which may not be at all what you need to
remember. You end up with notes that don't provide the
information you need for the exam. But if you are one
of the increasing number of students who are being
denied Braille instruction and are not taught to use
Braille note-writing equipment like the slate and
stylus or the Braille 'n Speak, you have a real
problem. What are you going to do? The obvious answer,
learn Braille, seems hard and too time-consuming.

I don't know how to break this news to you gently, but
the ultimate disadvantage of using human note-takers is
that out in the real world, where employers are hiring
and paying people to do jobs, they don't supply
note-takers. If you have a family business and can
enter as a senior executive, you might begin with a
secretary, who will follow you around, writing things
down for you, but most of us begin at the bottom of the
employment ladder, and we are expected to write down
what we need to know and read it for ourselves. This is
not a skill that is cultivated by the use of student
note-takers.

How about managing readers? There are many disabled
students' offices that insist upon hiring, supervising,
paying, and passing out the assignments to all readers
for blind students. Again, this way of handling readers
is convenient for the blind student. You don't have to
cope with all the paper work; you don't have to
organize people; you don't have to worry about
recruiting readers or arrange to be in designated
places at certain times to hand out or collect
cassettes--all very convenient. The only problem is
that you are assigned Russian readers who can't read
Russian, economics readers who can't describe graphs,
math readers who don't know a parenthesis from a
bracket. The disabled students' office is closed when
you need to pick up the tapes. Practically illiterate
people with work study grants record your poetry
assignments. And the worst of it is that you don't
acquire the managerial and supervisory experience that
would enhance your employability, and without assuming
the responsibility of paying and supervising your
readers directly, you have no control over them and
have difficulty exerting the authority to have them
follow your directions.

In short, applying the experience and the wisdom of the
National Federation of the Blind in the cases I have
just been talking about (learning to travel, to use
Braille, and to take control of one's academic and
personal life) cultivates self-confidence and
tough-mindedness. The Federation's philosophy breeds
courage and builds the strength of purpose to become
anything you have the capacity to and also the honesty
to face hard truths about yourself.

When I was in college, there was philosophy. I simply
had to learn that I do not have a philosophical turn of
mind. It is all silliness and mud to me, and my poor
performance in the course had nothing to do with the
large reading list. I found those books and articles
crashingly dull. It was very easy at the time to tell
myself that I was not doing well in philosophy because
I was blind, but the truth was that I was not a
philosopher. Actually, that was a distressing but
necessary thing for me to learn.

Acquiring and cultivating all of these fine
characteristics is not like taking a pill every
morning; you can't just swallow it and be done for the
day. In meetings such as this one and, if I'm doing my
job correctly, in the pages of the Braille Monitor,
Federationists grapple with the hard issues and the
temptations that face us all as blind people. It is
this struggle that forges character. Observing and
assisting those whom one respects as they work their
way toward healthy solutions to their problems makes it
easier to choose and achieve one's personal goals. The
capacity to weigh options and consciously to reach for
the more valuable is one important measure of maturity.

The danger for each one of us is that, when we go back
home, when we are alone, we will let the low
expectations of other people compromise our own
integrity, independence, and growing self-respect.
Despite what people say about how much they respect
blind people and admire what we do, it is true that
most of them do not believe we have very much capacity.
That is why it is vitally important for each of us to
come to meetings such as this one, to attend chapter
meetings, to attend state and national conventions, and
to read the Braille Monitor faithfully, because being
in contact with other Federationists who are struggling
with the same issues and coming to healthy conclusions
will inspire and encourage each one of us as we walk
through the individual complications of our own days.
We do serve as role models for one another, and it is
not that those of us who are senior to you college
students parade around ready to inspire and to guide
you along the way.

When I first came into the Federation, I remember being
staggered to realize that there were people throughout
this movement (a lot of them younger than I was) who
thought nothing of being dropped off at an airport,
checking luggage, finding out what gate they needed and
then going to it, and beating off the wheelchair
jockeys. At the other end they reversed the process,
finding the right luggage carousel and, most amazing of
all, identifying their own suitcases. Just thinking
about going to the airport, even with my husband, made
me feel weak. But I looked around and thought: if they
can do it, there is no reason why I can't. If anybody
had told me then that I would spend my life on
airplanes, I probably would have fainted dead away. But
luckily we don't know what the future holds, and
therefore we take one step at a time.

I think of Michael Baillif. Who would have thought that
a blind student could apply for and get a Watson
Fellowship, which is strictly for travel and research
in Europe, and then could hie himself off to England
and Scandinavia, to look at services for blind people
and analyze them independently? What a wonderful
example for all of us Michael is.

It's important for us to know about those students who
are out there, not only surviving Chem Lab 101, but
majoring in chemistry, linguistics, economics--all the
disciplines that people believe we can't master. It's
important for us to know that others have blazed the
trail and to draw from them the inspiration that
knowledge gives to us.

Contrary to what a lot of people would have you
believe, the National Federation of the Blind does not
impose off-the-rack solutions to problems and
situations. Rather it teaches a way of looking at
blindness and the world that strips away preconceptions
and enables us to look in a clear-eyed way at our
actual choices. The Federation does not so much provide
answers as equip us with the tools to reach the answers
that we need.

Should blind students use the services of disabled
students' offices? It depends. It depends on how
paternalistic or open-minded the office staff are. It
depends on how bureaucratic the institution is--can you
get things done without using the office, or do faculty
members listen only to the experts? If that is the
case, you will probably have to convert the staff into
seeing the world from your point of view. Do they
intend from first to last to spoon-feed disabled
students, or is the driving force in the office the
conviction that disabled students should be encouraged
to do as much as possible for themselves? All of these
considerations will determine how much you work with
the disabled students' office or how insistent you have
to be that you will do things independently.

Should blind students do all the work assigned in a
particular course? The simple, and I hope obvious,
answer is of course they should. But I remember an East
Asian history course I took when I was in college in
which the professor was perturbed because people did
not have a clear grasp of the geography of Southeast
Asia. One day he handed out blank outline maps of the
region and said, "Your assignment is to draw the
national boundaries, color and label the countries, and
indicate and label the major rivers and cities that
appear on this map. You will learn the geography of
Southeast Asia, and you will be responsible for this
information on the next exam."

I went to him after class and said, "I can hire a
reader to color the map, but I wonder if that is the
most constructive use of my reader funds. Perhaps we
can work out some other way for me to master the
information."

He said, "I certainly didn't intend for this assignment
to apply to you. There is no reason why you should
learn the geography of Southeast Asia."

I said, "If that's the way you feel about it, I will
turn in the map because I insist on being held
responsible for the information. If you have geographic
material on the examination, I assume we'll figure out
some way for me to communicate to you that I know the
locations of the cities, rivers, and national
boundaries of Southeast Asia. But the question is,
should I physically turn in the colored map if there is
no way for me personally to create the thing?" We
agreed that there wasn't any reason for me to turn in
the map but that I would answer the question on the
exam, which is in fact what happened.

I cannot say that I exhibited the same Federation
attitudes in that philosophy course I mentioned to you
earlier. First of all, it was my sophomore year, and I
still didn't know which end was up. I really thought
that my inability to get through the reading was that
there was so much of it. It was really that I just
didn't understand philosophy, and I didn't care whether
a tree falling in an empty forest made a noise. But I
allowed the professor to let me off the hook on some of
the reading. It didn't help me, it eroded his respect
for me and all blind students, and I certainly didn't
do any better in the course; I still got a C-plus. But
we all make some mistakes.

What can you do when you find yourself in a situation
in which you physically cannot do some of the work? I
think about biology laboratories. My lab partner and I
worked out an arrangement whereby she looked through
the microscope, and my job was to know what she was
supposed to see. Then we kept working at the lab until
she actually saw and understood what she was looking at
and could describe it to me and draw it. It seemed to
be a fine system. She ultimately saw what she was
supposed to, which gave her an advantage over a number
of the other students in the class. It was a system
that worked fine for me while helping my partner, and I
was able to do well on the biology lab exams. There was
no way that I physically could see the things I was
supposed to through the microscope; I had to devise a
fair and workable alternative.

Here is another example, and a tough one--should those
with residual sight use it or the alternative
techniques of blindness? Again, it depends. Is the eye
condition stable? Are you likely to lose vision from
other causes later on? Can you read for hours together
at several hundred words per minute without fatigue,
and in varying amounts of light? Can you honestly say
to yourself that you can travel anywhere day or night
in safety, or do you have to say, as long as there
aren't steps, or as long as I've been there before? The
decision depends on what your skills really are. It
behooves us all to have as broad a set of tools to work
with as we can, and the problem with the alternative
techniques of blindness is that you cannot learn them
and then tidily put them away in the toolbox until you
need them. You have to keep using them from time to
time and sometimes fairly steadily if you're going to
be confident enough to depend on them. Finally, you
have to know when to use each of your tools.

I have one last example for your consideration. When
should we as blind people fight for equal treatment,
and when should we fight for equality? Equal treatment
occurs, for example, when all students are assigned
right-handed desks for taking exams. Left-handed
students would be expected to use those right-handed
desks. Everybody has received exactly the same
treatment. Equality, on the other hand, demands that
you provide some left- handed desks for those members
of the class who are left-handed.

In the Federation's ongoing debates with bus companies
about front-row seating for blind passengers, what we
want (because it is appropriate) is equal treatment.
There is nothing about blindness that prevents one from
standing in a crowded bus or walking back to an empty
seat in the rear. If one has no complicating condition
such as old age or arthritis, which may make movement
difficult, it is appropriate to insist on equal
treatment from the bus company. But there are other
times when equal treatment, such as handing a Braille
reader a print examination, would not be appropriate or
fair. In this case equality demands that there be
reasonable accommodation. All of these are situations
in which there is no clear, crisp answer that can be
applied like a band-aid. You must analyze the problem
accurately and open-mindedly.

Integrity, independence, self-respect, discipline, and
toughness: these are all among the most valuable gifts
of the Federation. If you dare, they are yours for the
cultivating. Welcome to the 1992 mid-winter conference
of the National Association of Blind Students.

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-------------- next part --------------
Hi guys,
    Below is the keynote address from the 1992 NABS mid-winter meeting. It is full of practical examples and questions that are very relevant to blind students, and should inspire thought and discussionabout a number of issues.

Arielle

INTEGRITY, INDEPENDENCE, AND
THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
by Barbara Pierce

From:
The Braille Monitor
Vol. 35, No. 4
April 1992

[PHOTO/CAPTION: At 8:30 Saturday morning, February 1,
students were beginning to gather for registration at
the 1992 Mid-Winter Conference of the National
Association of Blind Students.]

[PHOTO: Room full of students seated while Barbara
Pierce speaks from podium microphone. CAPTION: The
Conference opened at 9:00 a.m. with a keynote address
delivered by Barbara Pierce, Associate Editor of the
BRAILLE MONITOR.]

[PHOTO: Seven students seated together for small group
discussion. CAPTION: During the afternoon session
conferees divided into small groups for discussion of
the issues raised during the day.]

>From the Associate Editor: This speech was the keynote
address at the mid-winter conference of the National
Association of Blind Students, conducted February 1,
1992, immediately preceding the National Federation of
the Blind's Washington Seminar: