[Arizona-students] Setting High Expectations for the Blind

[Arielle Silverman]

Hello listers,

 

            The following article, written by Jim Omvig, appeared in the
most recent issue of the Braille Monitor. It is geared toward professionals
in the blindness field, but I believe it relates to all of us as consumers
of education, training, and rehabilitation services. It sends a simple but
powerful message about the battles that we and future generations will
continue to fight for empowerment.

Setting High Expectations for the Blind: A Duty for Blindness Professionals

 

by James H. Omvig

 

From the Editor: The following paper is a somewhat expanded version of a
speech that was presented at the spring training conference of the National
Council

of State Agencies for the Blind (NCSAB) in Bethesda, Maryland, on April 26,
2007. James Omvig is a nationally recognized expert on the rehabilitation of

blind people. He is the author of Freedom for the Blind: The Secret Is
Empowerment; The Blindness Revolution, Jernigan in His Own Words; and with
C. Edwin

Vaughan, Education and Rehabilitation for Empowerment for the Blind. This is
what he says:

 

Jim OmvigI am delighted to be here today to speak with you--the leaders of
the state vocational rehabilitation agencies for the blind in America--about

orientation and mobility (O&M) and your theme, "Stepping up to
Independence." While I'm not going to speak directly about O&M in
particular, I am going

to speak at length about real independence and high expectations--the
essential foundation which makes for good blind travelers and empowered
blind people.

I'm also going to touch briefly on duty.

 

On the very day I saw your call for papers for this conference, I had
experienced two distressing incidents concerning low expectations, and it
was these

two incidents that moved me to ask Vito DeSantis if I could have the
opportunity to be one of your presenters. He agreed, so here I am to talk
with you

about the duty blindness professionals, including travel teachers, have to
help their customers learn to set high expectations for themselves.

 

Let me begin by threading six incidents concerning expectations into my
early remarks, and then I'll get into a new concept—the hierarchy of truth.
First

I would like to read you a touching email message I received this spring on
the day your call for papers was circulated. It is from a blind Texas high

school student named Chelsea Muñoz:

 

Dear Mr. Omvig,

 

Thank you for sharing the article with me: I loved it! [I had sent Chelsea
an article of mine concerning low expectations earlier in the spring.] It's
saved

on my computer so that I can share it with others.

 

Speaking of low expectations, I have a story to share with you. (Actually, I
could probably think of quite a few, but I should save some for when we're

talking in person.) Last semester I had to do a PowerPoint presentation for
my economics class. Our dialogue (between the economics teacher and me) went

something like this:

 

Mr. Baxa: Chelsea, instead of doing the Power Point presentation like the
others, you can just write up an outline of your speech, remain in your
seat,

and present it to the class that way.

 

Me: Actually, Mr. Baxa, I can do the presentation just like everyone else.
The only thing I'd need help with is knowing which slide I'm on, but other
than

that, I'm all set. I've got my notes like the rest of my classmates, and
I'll just stand at the front of the room like them too. We're talking about
equal

rights here, and I wanna be treated equally.

 

Mr. Baxa: Ok ma'am, if that's what you'd like, then go for it!

 

[Chelsea's email wraps up by saying], My economics teacher said I had set a
new standard for blind students. I can only hope he sticks to his guns.

 

Now this is a cute story about a blind high school girl, but there's
something terribly wrong with this picture. It should not have been either
the necessity

or the duty of the blind student to teach her teacher--the
professional--about high expectations for the blind. The teacher should have
known and had proper

expectations for the student and should have been able to teach the student
about the subject if indeed she had needed any teaching. In this case of
course

she didn't.

 

"So," you directors and rehabilitation professionals of the National Council
of State Agencies for the Blind may ask, "this cute but troubling story had

to do with education, not rehabilitation, so why are you telling it to us?"

 

Fair enough. So let me tell you another story. This story does have to do
with adult rehabilitation and O&M, and it didn't happen fifty years ago
(when

the instructors in orientation and mobility were beginning to be trained);
it happened less than two months ago--on the very day I saw the call for
papers

for this conference.

 

One of the state agencies for the blind (it shall remain nameless in order
to protect the guilty) sends a group of blind teenagers to the National
Center

for the Blind in Baltimore each spring to introduce them to successful adult
blind role models, to see the latest technology for the blind, and to give

them at least a glimpse of the National Federation of the Blind’s notion of
proper training. Those students who wish may be introduced to a bit of
hands-on

Federation travel training.

 

I was walking down the hall one day this spring during the latest such visit
as one of our outstanding teachers, Amy Phelps, was giving a travel lesson

to a young, blind female visitor. We were introduced, and then Amy said to
the teen, "Tell Mr. Omvig what your mobility instructor said to you the
other

day." The student replied, displaying what can only be described as sheer
defeatism, "My O&M instructor said I can never be independent!"

 

This is wrong, it is outrageous, and it sickens me! And, as I say, this
story does concern the adult VR system. It explains why some of us who are
rocketing

rapidly into the ranks of old timers in this field keep working and writing
and talking and pleading.

 

Very recently I learned of a state agency for the blind that had a kind of
laundry list of items VR counselors were expected to purchase routinely for
new

blind clients. Among other things the list included such items as Crock-Pots
and microwaves so the blind wouldn't run the risk of burning themselves on

stoves; black-and-white cutting boards so that the blind could operate
visually using contrasting colors; knives with special safety guards so the
blind

wouldn't cut themselves; and flashlights blind travelers could use at night.
I suggest strongly that what new blind customers need is proper
adjustment-to-blindness

training, not gadgets and gimmicks.

 

The fact is that the knowledge exists right now--we don't have to wait until
some never-to-be achieved future--as to how properly to train and empower
people

who are blind. The knowledge also exists how properly to establish
appropriate levels of expectations for those blind individuals with whom we
work. It

should not matter one iota where the knowledge has come from. Nor should it
matter whether we as individual workers have come out of the ranks of the
system

which has trained traditional blindness professionals or from the organized
blind movement itself. What does matter is that we come together, study
together,

learn the truth about blindness together, dream together, and then work
together so that we can empower rank-and-file blind people together.

 

As an aside, when people first began offering some kind of help to the
blind, they were volunteers. Then in time paid workers, professionals,
joined the

work of the volunteer helpers. Now of course these professional workers
receive state and federal funds to provide the services to the blind the
public

expects. In these circumstances I believe responsibilities have shifted from
simply being nice to blind people to what should now be characterized as a

duty for blindness professionals.

 

Just for fun I looked up the meaning of "duty" in the latest version of
Dictionary.com, the most convenient tool available at the time. It points
out that

duty means: "Something that one is expected or required to do by moral or
legal obligation."

 

If we accept this definition, and I do, then blindness professionals of
today have a moral if not a legal obligation to learn the truth about
blindness

and then to pass it on routinely to the blind people with whom they are paid
to work. This is the only way expectation levels can be set accurately.

 

One of the most devastating things that can happen to any human being is to
be trapped in the prison of low expectations, but for the vast majority of
blind

people, this condition has been the norm rather than the exception
throughout recorded history. In President Bush's First Inaugural, he
referred to low

expectations as "soft bigotry," and I think he is right. As we begin the
discussion of lowered expectations concerning blind people, just whose
expectations

are we talking about? Is it the blind themselves? How about parents and
other family members? Perhaps we are talking about educators? Or could we
also

be talking about blindness professionals employed in the VR system? Is it
members of the general public, or might it actually be all of the above?

 

The fact is of course that it is all of the above. While there are
exceptions to every rule, it is commonly understood among the well informed
that throughout

history blind people have been regarded as inferiors who are incompetent,
inept, and virtually immaterial, if not irrelevant. We have been thought of
as

wards and as people who need to be taken care of rather than as employable
citizens. We have not been expected to do for ourselves or even care for
ourselves,

and we certainly have not been expected to participate fully in or
contribute markedly to society. This problem is then compounded, because
tragically

most blindness professionals themselves have succumbed to the same social
conditioning--the erroneous myths, the misconceptions, and the
superstitions--about

blindness.

 

Just think about it. We have been educating blind children in America for
nearly 180 years now—the first school for the blind in America, the New
England

Asylum for the Blind, was established in 1829. We have provided employment
for blind adults in the sheltered shop system for more than 150 years—the
first

sheltered workshop was established in 1850 in New York City. And we have
been providing VR services to blind adults in one form or another for
eighty-seven

years—the original VR Act was adopted by Congress in 1920. America has
devised a truly elaborate blindness system.

 

Yet studies show that, even after all of these blindness services, more than
70 percent of all blind people of working age are unemployed. Further, of
those

who are working, far too many are significantly underemployed. Clearly we
have provided training, lots of it, but sadly very little of it has been
effective

training based on the truth about blindness.

 

We can blame employers who are reluctant to hire the blind for a small part
of it, but the fact remains that the blindness system has failed in its
duty.

It has not been operated properly, and traditional blindness professionals
must share much of the blame for the failure.

Recently I was asked to devise some method for measuring expectations--a
daunting task. However, I have thought of at least one possibility: I call
it the

hierarchy of truth. Before turning to a discussion of this hierarchical
approach, however, let's examine two additional cases of low
expectations--of soft

bigotry. Dr. Ronald J. Ferguson was formerly a senior research fellow at
Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana. In his recent book, We Know
Who

We Are,1 Dr. Ferguson tells the following disturbing true story about a
young, totally blind teenager:

 

When Jessica [fictitious name] was in ninth grade, she underwent two weeks
of vocational and academic assessment in conjunction with the writing of her

rehabilitation plan. A number of tests were administered to determine her
vocational interests as well as academic achievement and potential for
college.

The results on all of the academic assessments showed that Jessica, although
only in ninth grade, had scored in the ninetieth percentile or higher on
tests

normed for high school seniors as well as those normed for first-year
college students.

 

Jessica's parents permitted an informal survey to be conducted in several
classrooms at three different universities. Jessica's test scores were shown
to

upper level undergraduates majoring in education or graduate classes of
rehabilitation students. The professor asked the students to give their
impression

of the young woman's academic potential (a fictitious name was used). In
addition, class members were asked to suggest possible careers that this
person

could pursue based on the test results. Overwhelmingly, class members noted
the student had outstanding academic potential. Some of the suggestions for

a career included engineer, medical doctor, scientist, and lawyer.

Jessica's parents had not told the university students who participated in
the informal survey that she was blind. Even so, these university students
were

mystified when they learned that, reviewing these same test results,
Jessica's rehabilitation counselor--the blindness professional assigned to
help her--had

suggested that she consider careers, not as an engineer, but as a secretary,
not as a medical doctor, but as a receptionist, not as a scientist, but as

a customer service representative, and not as a lawyer, but as a computer
operator.

 

Just consider: the blindness professional, who had been trained to serve and
supposedly help the blind, expected about what the average person on the
street

might have expected of this bright blind teenager. Now, no one would suggest
for one minute that this professional intentionally tried to hurt the young

blind woman or do her wrong in any way. Far from it! The motive would have
been the exact opposite--to help. It was the counselor's understanding of
blindness--or

lack of understanding--that led to the grievous error and the soft bigotry.
How could the VR counselor's expectations vary so markedly from those of the

college students who looked at the same test scores? Obviously the counselor
knew nothing whatever of the truth about blindness. He failed in his duty.

 

Consider another case. A student working on a master's degree in orientation
and mobility--an aspiring blindness professional--tells her classmates that

she has just met the best blind traveler she has ever encountered. She is
working with him in the San Francisco area to teach him how to manage the
new

BART (the Bay Area Rapid Transit system). A blind classmate, the young (and
perhaps impertinent) Fred Schroeder, asks innocently, "If your student is
such

a great traveler, why does he need you to help him?" The young O&M student
responds, completely oblivious to the implications concerning lowered
expectations

of her reply, "He needs me because a blind person cannot possibly learn to
manage BART without help." The brash young Fred Schroeder asks, "Who do you

believe taught me to handle the BART?"

 

Again, without thought about the implications, the sighted student replies,
"I don't know. Who did?" This young woman was in a master's class to learn
to

teach blind people, and I am certain she believed she held high expectations
for the capabilities of the blind in general and her students in particular.

But she didn't. The fact is that Schroeder had taught himself. The problem
was that the sighted student did not understand the true nature of blindness

and therefore did not understand the true capabilities of blind people.

 

The question of lowered expectations is complex. Blindness professionals of
today all discuss the need for raising expectations, and they give the
impression

that this is routinely happening. I am sure they believe that the issue has
been addressed and, since it is so prominently discussed, that the historic

problem has been fixed. It hasn't.

 

When we are talking about the problem of lowered expectations, we are not
implying that an intentional wrong has occurred. In work with the blind,
people

universally intend to do right. However, even though we are dealing with
good intentions, expectations remain far too low, and therefore the problem
for

blind people continues to be soft bigotry.

 

Here is a true story concerning a different kind and level of expectations.
The outcome for the blind customer is also completely different. When Joanne

Wilson was directing the Louisiana Center for the Blind, she knew the truth
about blindness and had high expectations--expectations of normality--for
her

students. When one young male student left the center, he went on to college
at a major university. Five or six other blind young men were in his
dormitory.

They had not experienced National Federation of the Blind training and
empowerment. A couple of years later Joanne encountered this young man at a
meeting.

He thanked her profusely for "making me different." Joanne asked him what he
meant, and he recounted the following story:

 

On a Sunday afternoon, when he had some extra cash, he grabbed his cane,
left his dorm room, went to the bus stop, and took a bus to the local
K-Mart, purchased

a TV, rode the bus back home, and connected his new treasure. That evening
he invited his blind friends in to watch his new TV.

 

To a person, they were flabbergasted. "How did you do that?" "You mean you
took a bus and went to the store by yourself?" "How did you know what bus to

take?" "How could you find the store?" "How could you find the TVs and
decide which one to buy?" "How could you hook it up by yourself?"

 

Joanne Wilson knows the truth about blindness, and she believes it. When she
ran the Louisiana Center for the Blind, she set expectation levels in
accordance

with this truth. Then she routinely passed her knowledge on to those around
her. As a result they have normal expectations for themselves and are not
prisoners

of the very system that was intended to set them free.

 

The Interpersonal Expectancy Effect2

 

A Harvard researcher, Robert Rosenthal, showed the remarkable effects of
lowered expectations in a study conducted in 1964 and 1965. Rosenthal was
concerned

that, "one person's expectation for another's behavior could come to serve
as a self-fulfilling prophecy."3 He conducted his study in a California
school

that operated under an ability-tracking system in which each of the school's
six grades was divided into three groups: fast, medium, and slow.

 

After the principal of this California school had read a Rosenthal article
on "investigator expectancy effect," which discussed the fact that the bias
of

the researcher was reflected in the outcome of certain studies, she wondered
if the expectations her teachers had for their students had anything to do

with the level at which they performed and their resulting placement in one
of the three tracks. Because of this concern the principal had invited
Rosenthal

to conduct the study at her school.

 

Rosenthal began his study by administering IQ tests to selected students. He
then lumped students into two groupings--those who were expected to improve

at an average rate and those who would be expected to improve at a superior
rate. He told the teachers who would be working with the youngsters which of

the students were expected to be average and which were likely to be
superior.

 

Rosenthal returned to the school several times over a two-year period,
retesting the students on each visit. His findings confirmed his worst fear:
the

self-fulfilling prophecy had come true. The students the teachers expected
to be average functioned at an average rate, and the so-called superior
students--those

the teachers expected to be superior--improved at a superior rate. In fact
the tests showed that IQ increases actually tracked with teacher
expectations

for each group.

 

After the study was completed, Rosenthal revealed the startling truth--the
dirty little secret. When he split the students into the two groups, he had
done

so randomly. This meant that the average group included superior students,
and the superior group included average students. However, he had led the
teachers

to believe that those in the average group were students who had tested at
an average level and the ones in the superior group had tested superior. The

teachers' expectations for the members of each group correlated precisely
with the students' achievement. No doubt the teachers who were involved in
this

study believed that they held not only fair but also high expectations for
all of their students in both groups--no doubt they were people with good
intentions.

 

Since this problem of soft bigotry could arise so easily and naturally among
teachers who believed they were teaching what they would call normal
children,

just imagine the impact of lowered expectations on an entire group of people
already perceived by society as something less than normal. Among other
things

this study also shows all too clearly that people who believe they have high
expectations for those with whom they are working often really don't and
that

good intentions alone don't cut it.

 

The Hierarchy of Truth

 

My own colleagues in the National Federation of the Blind may express some
skepticism when I introduce a hierarchical approach to the issue of setting
proper

expectations for blind people. We are quite aware that in the past the
hierarchical approach has failed the blind miserably when we examine what
some call

"the hierarchy of sight." Those who adhere to this hierarchical
approach--that includes almost everybody in America--believe that the degree
to which a

blind person can be competent, successful, and happy rises or falls in
direct proportion to the amount of vision he or she has. Great emphasis is
placed

on functioning visually if one has the slightest amount of vision. (By way
of personal confession, I was convinced before I encountered the National
Federation

of the Blind that I absolutely had to have vision in order to be successful
and happy.) Those who hold this view are dead wrong. The fact is that the
amount

of vision—if any—a blind person possesses has nothing whatever to do with
competence, happiness, or success. It has only to do with the kind of
training

the blind person should be provided.

 

But I believe that the hierarchy of truth is another matter altogether: that
is, the level of expectation an individual has concerning maximum
achievement

for the blind as a group--or for a particular blind individual--rises or
falls in direct proportion to the level of emotional understanding and
acceptance

he or she has concerning the truth about blindness. This is true regardless
of whose expectations are being examined--those of the family, society in
general,

the particular blind individual in question, or most especially the
blindness professional involved.

 

And what is this truth about blindness? It has been developed and fine-tuned
by the National Federation of the Blind over the past sixty-seven years and

may be stated quite simply in a few sentences:

 

(1) First (as Dr. Jacobus tenBroek (the founder of the National Federation
of the Blind was fond of saying), blind people are simply normal human
beings

or, at least as normal as human beings are. That is, we are no more or no
less than ordinary people who just happen to be blind.

 

(2) The blind are a cross section of society as a whole, and individually we
are as different as sighted people are. Therefore, contrary to popular myth,

misconception, and stereotype, we are not all alike.

 

(3) The physical condition of blindness is nothing more than a normal human
characteristic. The characteristic of blindness is no different from all of

the others which, taken together, mold each of us into a unique person.
Blindness is not what defines each of us.

 

(4) The trained blind person uses alternative (nonvisual) techniques to
perform efficiently without sight those tasks and functions that would be
performed

visually if he or she had ordinary sight.

 

(5) Given proper training and opportunity, the average blind person--not
those perceived as the super-blind--can participate fully in society and can
compete

on terms of absolute equality with his or her sighted peers. In short, given
proper training, blindness can literally be reduced to the level of a
physical

nuisance or inconvenience.

 

(6) To state it all very neatly--if it won't permanently damage too many
psyches--vision is not a requirement for competence, competitiveness,
success,

and happiness for properly trained blind people, and it is respectable to be
blind.

 

(7) Finally, the real problem of blindness is not the loss of eyesight
itself but is rooted in the public's misunderstandings, misconceptions, and
superstitions

about it. In short, the blind are perceived--and generally perceive
themselves--as inferiors and are a minority group in every negative sense of
that term.

Therefore service providers must come to understand this significant truth;
then they have a duty to focus their blindness services accordingly and
provide

programs aimed at teaching their students or customers a new and
constructive set of attitudes about blindness based upon an understanding
that prevailing

views are wrong and harmful.

 

(8) To sum it all up simply, the blind person must accept rather than deny
the fact that he or she is blind and then learn to become comfortable with
it.

All of the foregoing is the simple truth that should be adopted by schools
and agencies as the defined philosophy they teach regularly and openly to
their

blind customers.

 

From all of the above, it naturally follows that, if a blindness
professional truly understands blindness and believes that blind people are
normal people

who can do what normal people do--that is, if the blindness professional
knows the truth about blindness--then proper (normal) expectations will be
set

for blind customers routinely. Further, the blindness professional, whether
educator or rehabilitator, will arrange for services which will raise the
expectation

bar for the blind customer to the level at which it should be, and the
customer will be empowered as a result. In general the expectation level for
a particular

blind customer should be precisely the same as it would be for that same
individual if he or she were not blind.

 

I pointed out above that the problems of lowered expectations are very
nearly universal. They are shared by members of the general public,
employers, family

members, and friends, and all too often the blind themselves--they have
bought hook, line, and sinker into the myths of the hierarchy of sight and
the

concomitant inferiority of the blind. Ultimately, of course, the general
public will come to understand the truth of the normality of blind people,
but

the blind themselves have the primary responsibility for making this happen.

So too family members and friends will get it, but this will probably happen
only when blind people themselves have come to know the truth and can share

it with others: that is, when their success and happiness have risen to a
level commensurate with their comprehension and internalization of the truth

about blindness.

 

This brings us to the ultimate question: how then can blind people learn the
fundamental truth about blindness and thus become empowered? There can be
but

one answer--the duty rests with blindness professionals. It is their duty to
give their blind students or customers inspiration, optimism, and the golden

gift of hope. It is their duty to teach the truth about blindness and, by so
doing, to raise the level of expectations to that which is normal for each

of their blind customers. Then it is also their duty to learn about proper
training, to learn where to obtain it for their customers, and then to make

certain that they get it.

 

It is not the function of blindness professionals to tell their customers
what cannot be done. The main duty of the genuine professional is to help
his

or her customers raise expectations and do what to those customers, in the
beginning, may have seemed to be impossible. Enough obstacles stand in the
path

of the blind person without having the blindness professional or the
blindness system itself add to them.

 

Nor is it helpful when blindness professionals who are thinking and living
in the past flare and become angry when it is pointed out that their
stereotypical

attitudes and methods are outmoded. It is not all about them! It is about
the people who have been hurt by the failed blindness system, and it is all
about

improvement. It is about making conditions, training methods, and
opportunities better for the blind than they have ever been.

 

The National Federation of the Blind has discovered the truth about
blindness, and this truth is shared routinely with blind students who attend
NFB or

other progressive centers. Similarly this truth is presented as a part of
our master's degree programs at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston. One of
the

most exciting developments to occur in recent years has been the acceptance
of this truth by more and more educators and rehabilitators.

 

There seems to be only one way that people--either blind individuals or
blindness professionals--can internalize this truth universally and raise
the bar:

that is, through immersion into blindness. Full immersion is what happens at
the NFB training centers, and it is also what happens for students of the

Louisiana Tech program. This practice must become the norm across the
nation.

 

Therefore my urgent plea is that blindness professionals everywhere take
advantage of the information that is available for the asking and learn the
truth

about blindness. By so doing, you can do your duty and also be empowered to
raise the level of your own expectations for your customers to what will be

normal levels for each of them. In turn you can guide them to raise their
own expectations accordingly. Give them inspiration. Give them the truth
about

blindness. Give them hope because, where there is no hope for the future,
there is no power for the present.

 

If we as blindness professionals give our customers all of these things,
they will have appropriate expectations for themselves and therefore they
will

be encouraged to do those things which other normal people do. For the
blind, great expectations are nothing more than normal expectations as
measured

against the truth about blindness.

 

Endnotes:

1. Ronald Ferguson, We Know Who We Are: A History of the Blind in
Challenging Educational and Socially Constructed Policies: A Study in Policy
Archaeology

(San Francisco: Caddo Gap Press, 2001), 22.

 

2. Robert Rosenthal and D.B. Rubin, "Interpersonal Expectancy Effect: The
First 345 Studies," The Behavior and Brain Sciences, 3 (1978): 377-386.

 

3. Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, Pygmalion in the Classroom (New
York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968).

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Hello listers,
 
            The following article, written by Jim Omvig, appeared in the most recent issue of the Braille Monitor. It is geared toward professionals in the blindness field, but I believe it relates to all of us as consumers of education, training, and rehabilitation services. It sends a simple but powerful message about the battles that we and future generations will continue to fight for empowerment.
Setting High Expectations for the Blind: A Duty for Blindness Professionals
 
by James H. Omvig
 
>From the Editor: The following paper is a somewhat expanded version of a speech that was presented at the spring training conference of the National Council
of State Agencies for the Blind (NCSAB) in
Bethesda
,
Maryland
, on April 26, 2007. James Omvig is a nationally recognized expert on the rehabilitation of
blind people. He is the author of Freedom for the Blind: The Secret Is Empowerment; The Blindness Revolution, Jernigan in His Own Words; and with C. Edwin
Vaughan
, Education and Rehabilitation for Empowerment for the Blind. This is what he says:
 
Jim OmvigI am delighted to be here today to speak with you--the leaders of the state vocational rehabilitation agencies for the blind in
America
--about
orientation and mobility (O&M) and your theme, "Stepping up to
Independence
." While I'm not going to speak directly about O&M in particular, I am going
to speak at length about real independence and high expectations--the essential foundation which makes for good blind travelers and empowered blind people.
I'm also going to touch briefly on duty.
 
On the very day I saw your call for papers for this conference, I had experienced two distressing incidents concerning low expectations, and it was these
two incidents that moved me to ask Vito DeSantis if I could have the opportunity to be one of your presenters. He agreed, so here I am to talk with you
about the duty blindness professionals, including travel teachers, have to help their customers learn to set high expectations for themselves.
 
Let me begin by threading six incidents concerning expectations into my early remarks, and then I'll get into a new concept&#8212;the hierarchy of truth. First
I would like to read you a touching email message I received this spring on the day your call for papers was circulated. It is from a blind
Texas
high
school student named Chelsea Muñoz:
 
Dear Mr. Omvig,
 
Thank you for sharing the article with me: I loved it! [I had sent
Chelsea
an article of mine concerning low expectations earlier in the spring.] It's saved
on my computer so that I can share it with others.
 
Speaking of low expectations, I have a story to share with you. (Actually, I could probably think of quite a few, but I should save some for when we're
talking in person.) Last semester I had to do a PowerPoint presentation for my economics class. Our dialogue (between the economics teacher and me) went
something like this:
 
Mr. Baxa:
Chelsea
, instead of doing the Power Point presentation like the others, you can just write up an outline of your speech, remain in your seat,
and present it to the class that way.
 
Me: Actually, Mr. Baxa, I can do the presentation just like everyone else. The only thing I'd need help with is knowing which slide I'm on, but other than
that, I'm all set. I've got my notes like the rest of my classmates, and I'll just stand at the front of the room like them too. We're talking about equal
rights here, and I wanna be treated equally.
 
Mr. Baxa: Ok ma'am, if that's what you'd like, then go for it!
 
[
Chelsea
's email wraps up by saying], My economics teacher said I had set a new standard for blind students. I can only hope he sticks to his guns.
 
Now this is a cute story about a blind high school girl, but there's something terribly wrong with this picture. It should not have been either the necessity
or the duty of the blind student to teach her teacher--the professional--about high expectations for the blind. The teacher should have known and had proper
expectations for the student and should have been able to teach the student about the subject if indeed she had needed any teaching. In this case of course
she didn't.
 
"So," you directors and rehabilitation professionals of the National Council of State Agencies for the Blind may ask, "this cute but troubling story had
to do with education, not rehabilitation, so why are you telling it to us?"
 
Fair enough. So let me tell you another story. This story does have to do with adult rehabilitation and O&M, and it didn't happen fifty years ago (when
the instructors in orientation and mobility were beginning to be trained); it happened less than two months ago--on the very day I saw the call for papers
for this conference.
 
One of the state agencies for the blind (it shall remain nameless in order to protect the guilty) sends a group of blind teenagers to the
National
Center
for the Blind in
Baltimore
each spring to introduce them to successful adult blind role models, to see the latest technology for the blind, and to give
them at least a glimpse of the National Federation of the Blind&#8217;s notion of proper training. Those students who wish may be introduced to a bit of hands-on
Federation travel training.
 
I was walking down the hall one day this spring during the latest such visit as one of our outstanding teachers, Amy Phelps, was giving a travel lesson
to a young, blind female visitor. We were introduced, and then Amy said to the teen, "Tell Mr. Omvig what your mobility instructor said to you the other
day." The student replied, displaying what can only be described as sheer defeatism, "My O&M instructor said I can never be independent!"
 
This is wrong, it is outrageous, and it sickens me! And, as I say, this story does concern the adult VR system. It explains why some of us who are rocketing
rapidly into the ranks of old timers in this field keep working and writing and talking and pleading.
 
Very recently I learned of a state agency for the blind that had a kind of laundry list of items VR counselors were expected to purchase routinely for new
blind clients. Among other things the list included such items as Crock-Pots and microwaves so the blind wouldn't run the risk of burning themselves on
stoves; black-and-white cutting boards so that the blind could operate visually using contrasting colors; knives with special safety guards so the blind
wouldn't cut themselves; and flashlights blind travelers could use at night. I suggest strongly that what new blind customers need is proper adjustment-to-blindness
training, not gadgets and gimmicks.
 
The fact is that the knowledge exists right now--we don't have to wait until some never-to-be achieved future--as to how properly to train and empower people
who are blind. The knowledge also exists how properly to establish appropriate levels of expectations for those blind individuals with whom we work. It
should not matter one iota where the knowledge has come from. Nor should it matter whether we as individual workers have come out of the ranks of the system
which has trained traditional blindness professionals or from the organized blind movement itself. What does matter is that we come together, study together,
learn the truth about blindness together, dream together, and then work together so that we can empower rank-and-file blind people together.
 
As an aside, when people first began offering some kind of help to the blind, they were volunteers. Then in time paid workers, professionals, joined the
work of the volunteer helpers. Now of course these professional workers receive state and federal funds to provide the services to the blind the public
expects. In these circumstances I believe responsibilities have shifted from simply being nice to blind people to what should now be characterized as a
duty for blindness professionals.
 
Just for fun I looked up the meaning of "duty" in the latest version of Dictionary.com, the most convenient tool available at the time. It points out that
duty means: "Something that one is expected or required to do by moral or legal obligation."
 
If we accept this definition, and I do, then blindness professionals of today have a moral if not a legal obligation to learn the truth about blindness
and then to pass it on routinely to the blind people with whom they are paid to work. This is the only way expectation levels can be set accurately.
 
One of the most devastating things that can happen to any human being is to be trapped in the prison of low expectations, but for the vast majority of blind
people, this condition has been the norm rather than the exception throughout recorded history. In President Bush's First Inaugural, he referred to low
expectations as "soft bigotry," and I think he is right. As we begin the discussion of lowered expectations concerning blind people, just whose expectations
are we talking about? Is it the blind themselves? How about parents and other family members? Perhaps we are talking about educators? Or could we also
be talking about blindness professionals employed in the VR system? Is it members of the general public, or might it actually be all of the above?
 
The fact is of course that it is all of the above. While there are exceptions to every rule, it is commonly understood among the well informed that throughout
history blind people have been regarded as inferiors who are incompetent, inept, and virtually immaterial, if not irrelevant. We have been thought of as
wards and as people who need to be taken care of rather than as employable citizens. We have not been expected to do for ourselves or even care for ourselves,
and we certainly have not been expected to participate fully in or contribute markedly to society. This problem is then compounded, because tragically
most blindness professionals themselves have succumbed to the same social conditioning--the erroneous myths, the misconceptions, and the superstitions--about
blindness.
 
Just think about it. We have been educating blind children in
America
for nearly 180 years now&#8212;the first school for the blind in
America
, the
New England
Asylum for the Blind, was established in 1829. We have provided employment for blind adults in the sheltered shop system for more than 150 years&#8212;the first
sheltered workshop was established in 1850 in
New York City
. And we have been providing VR services to blind adults in one form or another for eighty-seven
years&#8212;the original VR Act was adopted by Congress in 1920.
America
has devised a truly elaborate blindness system.
 
Yet studies show that, even after all of these blindness services, more than 70 percent of all blind people of working age are unemployed. Further, of those
who are working, far too many are significantly underemployed. Clearly we have provided training, lots of it, but sadly very little of it has been effective
training based on the truth about blindness.
 
We can blame employers who are reluctant to hire the blind for a small part of it, but the fact remains that the blindness system has failed in its duty.
It has not been operated properly, and traditional blindness professionals must share much of the blame for the failure.
Recently I was asked to devise some method for measuring expectations--a daunting task. However, I have thought of at least one possibility: I call it the
hierarchy of truth. Before turning to a discussion of this hierarchical approach, however, let's examine two additional cases of low expectations--of soft
bigotry. Dr. Ronald J. Ferguson was formerly a senior research fellow at
Louisiana
Tech
University
in
Ruston
,
Louisiana
. In his recent book, We Know Who
We Are,1 Dr. Ferguson tells the following disturbing true story about a young, totally blind teenager:
 
When Jessica [fictitious name] was in ninth grade, she underwent two weeks of vocational and academic assessment in conjunction with the writing of her
rehabilitation plan. A number of tests were administered to determine her vocational interests as well as academic achievement and potential for college.
The results on all of the academic assessments showed that Jessica, although only in ninth grade, had scored in the ninetieth percentile or higher on tests
normed for high school seniors as well as those normed for first-year college students.
 
Jessica's parents permitted an informal survey to be conducted in several classrooms at three different universities. Jessica's test scores were shown to
upper level undergraduates majoring in education or graduate classes of rehabilitation students. The professor asked the students to give their impression
of the young woman's academic potential (a fictitious name was used). In addition, class members were asked to suggest possible careers that this person
could pursue based on the test results. Overwhelmingly, class members noted the student had outstanding academic potential. Some of the suggestions for
a career included engineer, medical doctor, scientist, and lawyer.
Jessica's parents had not told the university students who participated in the informal survey that she was blind. Even so, these university students were
mystified when they learned that, reviewing these same test results, Jessica's rehabilitation counselor--the blindness professional assigned to help her--had
suggested that she consider careers, not as an engineer, but as a secretary, not as a medical doctor, but as a receptionist, not as a scientist, but as
a customer service representative, and not as a lawyer, but as a computer operator.
 
Just consider: the blindness professional, who had been trained to serve and supposedly help the blind, expected about what the average person on the street
might have expected of this bright blind teenager. Now, no one would suggest for one minute that this professional intentionally tried to hurt the young
blind woman or do her wrong in any way. Far from it! The motive would have been the exact opposite--to help. It was the counselor's understanding of blindness--or
lack of understanding--that led to the grievous error and the soft bigotry. How could the VR counselor's expectations vary so markedly from those of the
college students who looked at the same test scores? Obviously the counselor knew nothing whatever of the truth about blindness. He failed in his duty.
 
Consider another case. A student working on a master's degree in orientation and mobility--an aspiring blindness professional--tells her classmates that
she has just met the best blind traveler she has ever encountered. She is working with him in the
San Francisco
area to teach him how to manage the new
BART (the Bay Area Rapid Transit system). A blind classmate, the young (and perhaps impertinent) Fred Schroeder, asks innocently, "If your student is such
a great traveler, why does he need you to help him?" The young O&M student responds, completely oblivious to the implications concerning lowered expectations
of her reply, "He needs me because a blind person cannot possibly learn to manage BART without help." The brash young Fred Schroeder asks, "Who do you
believe taught me to handle the BART?"
 
Again, without thought about the implications, the sighted student replies, "I don't know. Who did?" This young woman was in a master's class to learn to
teach blind people, and I am certain she believed she held high expectations for the capabilities of the blind in general and her students in particular.
But she didn't. The fact is that Schroeder had taught himself. The problem was that the sighted student did not understand the true nature of blindness
and therefore did not understand the true capabilities of blind people.
 
The question of lowered expectations is complex. Blindness professionals of today all discuss the need for raising expectations, and they give the impression
that this is routinely happening. I am sure they believe that the issue has been addressed and, since it is so prominently discussed, that the historic
problem has been fixed. It hasn't.
 
When we are talking about the problem of lowered expectations, we are not implying that an intentional wrong has occurred. In work with the blind, people
universally intend to do right. However, even though we are dealing with good intentions, expectations remain far too low, and therefore the problem for
blind people continues to be soft bigotry.
 
Here is a true story concerning a different kind and level of expectations. The outcome for the blind customer is also completely different. When Joanne
Wilson
was directing the
Louisiana
Center
for the Blind, she knew the truth about blindness and had high expectations--expectations of normality--for her
students. When one young male student left the center, he went on to college at a major university. Five or six other blind young men were in his dormitory.
They had not experienced National Federation of the Blind training and empowerment. A couple of years later Joanne encountered this young man at a meeting.
He thanked her profusely for "making me different." Joanne asked him what he meant, and he recounted the following story:
 
On a Sunday afternoon, when he had some extra cash, he grabbed his cane, left his dorm room, went to the bus stop, and took a bus to the local K-Mart, purchased
a TV, rode the bus back home, and connected his new treasure. That evening he invited his blind friends in to watch his new TV.
 
To a person, they were flabbergasted. "How did you do that?" "You mean you took a bus and went to the store by yourself?" "How did you know what bus to
take?" "How could you find the store?" "How could you find the TVs and decide which one to buy?" "How could you hook it up by yourself?"
 
Joanne Wilson knows the truth about blindness, and she believes it. When she ran the
Louisiana
Center
for the Blind, she set expectation levels in accordance
with this truth. Then she routinely passed her knowledge on to those around her. As a result they have normal expectations for themselves and are not prisoners
of the very system that was intended to set them free.
 
The Interpersonal Expectancy Effect2
 
A Harvard researcher, Robert Rosenthal, showed the remarkable effects of lowered expectations in a study conducted in 1964 and 1965. Rosenthal was concerned
that, "one person's expectation for another's behavior could come to serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy."3 He conducted his study in a
California
school
that operated under an ability-tracking system in which each of the school's six grades was divided into three groups: fast, medium, and slow.
 
After the principal of this
California
school had read a Rosenthal article on "investigator expectancy effect," which discussed the fact that the bias of
the researcher was reflected in the outcome of certain studies, she wondered if the expectations her teachers had for their students had anything to do
with the level at which they performed and their resulting placement in one of the three tracks. Because of this concern the principal had invited Rosenthal
to conduct the study at her school.
 
Rosenthal began his study by administering IQ tests to selected students. He then lumped students into two groupings--those who were expected to improve
at an average rate and those who would be expected to improve at a superior rate. He told the teachers who would be working with the youngsters which of
the students were expected to be average and which were likely to be superior.
 
Rosenthal returned to the school several times over a two-year period, retesting the students on each visit. His findings confirmed his worst fear: the
self-fulfilling prophecy had come true. The students the teachers expected to be average functioned at an average rate, and the so-called superior students--those
the teachers expected to be superior--improved at a superior rate. In fact the tests showed that IQ increases actually tracked with teacher expectations
for each group.
 
After the study was completed, Rosenthal revealed the startling truth--the dirty little secret. When he split the students into the two groups, he had done
so randomly. This meant that the average group included superior students, and the superior group included average students. However, he had led the teachers
to believe that those in the average group were students who had tested at an average level and the ones in the superior group had tested superior. The
teachers' expectations for the members of each group correlated precisely with the students' achievement. No doubt the teachers who were involved in this
study believed that they held not only fair but also high expectations for all of their students in both groups--no doubt they were people with good intentions.
 
Since this problem of soft bigotry could arise so easily and naturally among teachers who believed they were teaching what they would call normal children,
just imagine the impact of lowered expectations on an entire group of people already perceived by society as something less than normal. Among other things
this study also shows all too clearly that people who believe they have high expectations for those with whom they are working often really don't and that
good intentions alone don't cut it.
 
The Hierarchy of Truth
 
My own colleagues in the National Federation of the Blind may express some skepticism when I introduce a hierarchical approach to the issue of setting proper
expectations for blind people. We are quite aware that in the past the hierarchical approach has failed the blind miserably when we examine what some call
"the hierarchy of sight." Those who adhere to this hierarchical approach--that includes almost everybody in
America
--believe that the degree to which a
blind person can be competent, successful, and happy rises or falls in direct proportion to the amount of vision he or she has. Great emphasis is placed
on functioning visually if one has the slightest amount of vision. (By way of personal confession, I was convinced before I encountered the National Federation
of the Blind that I absolutely had to have vision in order to be successful and happy.) Those who hold this view are dead wrong. The fact is that the amount
of vision&#8212;if any&#8212;a blind person possesses has nothing whatever to do with competence, happiness, or success. It has only to do with the kind of training
the blind person should be provided.
 
But I believe that the hierarchy of truth is another matter altogether: that is, the level of expectation an individual has concerning maximum achievement
for the blind as a group--or for a particular blind individual--rises or falls in direct proportion to the level of emotional understanding and acceptance
he or she has concerning the truth about blindness. This is true regardless of whose expectations are being examined--those of the family, society in general,
the particular blind individual in question, or most especially the blindness professional involved.
 
And what is this truth about blindness? It has been developed and fine-tuned by the National Federation of the Blind over the past sixty-seven years and
may be stated quite simply in a few sentences:
 
(1) First (as Dr. Jacobus tenBroek (the founder of the National Federation of the Blind was fond of saying), blind people are simply normal human beings
or, at least as normal as human beings are. That is, we are no more or no less than ordinary people who just happen to be blind.
 
(2) The blind are a cross section of society as a whole, and individually we are as different as sighted people are. Therefore, contrary to popular myth,
misconception, and stereotype, we are not all alike.
 
(3) The physical condition of blindness is nothing more than a normal human characteristic. The characteristic of blindness is no different from all of
the others which, taken together, mold each of us into a unique person. Blindness is not what defines each of us.
 
(4) The trained blind person uses alternative (nonvisual) techniques to perform efficiently without sight those tasks and functions that would be performed
visually if he or she had ordinary sight.
 
(5) Given proper training and opportunity, the average blind person--not those perceived as the super-blind--can participate fully in society and can compete
on terms of absolute equality with his or her sighted peers. In short, given proper training, blindness can literally be reduced to the level of a physical
nuisance or inconvenience.
 
(6) To state it all very neatly--if it won't permanently damage too many psyches--vision is not a requirement for competence, competitiveness, success,
and happiness for properly trained blind people, and it is respectable to be blind.
 
(7) Finally, the real problem of blindness is not the loss of eyesight itself but is rooted in the public's misunderstandings, misconceptions, and superstitions
about it. In short, the blind are perceived--and generally perceive themselves--as inferiors and are a minority group in every negative sense of that term.
Therefore service providers must come to understand this significant truth; then they have a duty to focus their blindness services accordingly and provide
programs aimed at teaching their students or customers a new and constructive set of attitudes about blindness based upon an understanding that prevailing
views are wrong and harmful.
 
(8) To sum it all up simply, the blind person must accept rather than deny the fact that he or she is blind and then learn to become comfortable with it.
All of the foregoing is the simple truth that should be adopted by schools and agencies as the defined philosophy they teach regularly and openly to their
blind customers.
 
>From all of the above, it naturally follows that, if a blindness professional truly understands blindness and believes that blind people are normal people
who can do what normal people do--that is, if the blindness professional knows the truth about blindness--then proper (normal) expectations will be set
for blind customers routinely. Further, the blindness professional, whether educator or rehabilitator, will arrange for services which will raise the expectation
bar for the blind customer to the level at which it should be, and the customer will be empowered as a result. In general the expectation level for a particular
blind customer should be precisely the same as it would be for that same individual if he or she were not blind.
 
I pointed out above that the problems of lowered expectations are very nearly universal. They are shared by members of the general public, employers, family
members, and friends, and all too often the blind themselves--they have bought hook, line, and sinker into the myths of the hierarchy of sight and the
concomitant inferiority of the blind. Ultimately, of course, the general public will come to understand the truth of the normality of blind people, but
the blind themselves have the primary responsibility for making this happen.
So too family members and friends will get it, but this will probably happen only when blind people themselves have come to know the truth and can share
it with others: that is, when their success and happiness have risen to a level commensurate with their comprehension and internalization of the truth
about blindness.
 
This brings us to the ultimate question: how then can blind people learn the fundamental truth about blindness and thus become empowered? There can be but
one answer--the duty rests with blindness professionals. It is their duty to give their blind students or customers inspiration, optimism, and the golden
gift of hope. It is their duty to teach the truth about blindness and, by so doing, to raise the level of expectations to that which is normal for each
of their blind customers. Then it is also their duty to learn about proper training, to learn where to obtain it for their customers, and then to make
certain that they get it.
 
It is not the function of blindness professionals to tell their customers what cannot be done. The main duty of the genuine professional is to help his
or her customers raise expectations and do what to those customers, in the beginning, may have seemed to be impossible. Enough obstacles stand in the path
of the blind person without having the blindness professional or the blindness system itself add to them.
 
Nor is it helpful when blindness professionals who are thinking and living in the past flare and become angry when it is pointed out that their stereotypical
attitudes and methods are outmoded. It is not all about them! It is about the people who have been hurt by the failed blindness system, and it is all about
improvement. It is about making conditions, training methods, and opportunities better for the blind than they have ever been.
 
The National Federation of the Blind has discovered the truth about blindness, and this truth is shared routinely with blind students who attend NFB or
other progressive centers. Similarly this truth is presented as a part of our master's degree programs at
Louisiana
Tech
University
in
Ruston
. One of the
most exciting developments to occur in recent years has been the acceptance of this truth by more and more educators and rehabilitators.
 
There seems to be only one way that people--either blind individuals or blindness professionals--can internalize this truth universally and raise the bar:
that is, through immersion into blindness. Full immersion is what happens at the NFB training centers, and it is also what happens for students of the
Louisiana Tech program. This practice must become the norm across the nation.
 
Therefore my urgent plea is that blindness professionals everywhere take advantage of the information that is available for the asking and learn the truth
about blindness. By so doing, you can do your duty and also be empowered to raise the level of your own expectations for your customers to what will be
normal levels for each of them. In turn you can guide them to raise their own expectations accordingly. Give them inspiration. Give them the truth about
blindness. Give them hope because, where there is no hope for the future, there is no power for the present.
 
If we as blindness professionals give our customers all of these things, they will have appropriate expectations for themselves and therefore they will
be encouraged to do those things which other normal people do. For the blind, great expectations are nothing more than normal expectations as measured
against the truth about blindness.
 
Endnotes:
1. Ronald Ferguson, We Know Who We Are: A History of the Blind in Challenging Educational and Socially Constructed Policies: A Study in Policy Archaeology
(
San Francisco
: Caddo Gap Press, 2001), 22.
 
2. Robert Rosenthal and D.B. Rubin, "Interpersonal Expectancy Effect: The First 345 Studies," The Behavior and Brain Sciences, 3 (1978): 377-386.
 
3. Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, Pygmalion in the Classroom (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968).