From: Al and Masha Sten-Clanton 
Subject: Re: Parents Fight Closing of Janesville School (fwd)
I was in a public school from first to fourth grade, then spent four years
at Perkins School for the Blind, then want to a public high school.  I
have no wish to denegrate Perkins, for I learned some important lessons
there.  I do believe, though, that blindness is no reason for putting a
child in a residential school.  (Whether blindness in combination with
some other disabilities is a good reason is beyond my competence, but I
have a strong presumption in favor of mainstreaming.)
The fact that many public schools provide lousy blindness services, or
maybe none at all, indicates to me the need to improve greatly the schools
in question, not the need to send blind kids off to "separate but equal"
segregation.  It makes sense to provide the specialized training in
blindness skills outside the regular classroom, much as we provide
specialized training in the law in law schools, training in nursing skills
at nursing schools, and the rest.  It seems to me that the best approach
is to teach children very early that they are members of the whole
community, that they have the right and in some ways the obligation to
participate in that community's life as do their sighted peers, and that
they have the right to the tools for doing it and the responsibility for
using those tools fully and wisely.  
What, I wonder, is meant by "the freedom to be blind?"  Freedom to do
what?  Since I did not choose to be blind, the notion is at least in my
case quite literally nonsense.  If it means the freedom to use the tools
we need to do effectively the things we'd do with sight if we had it, that
is what the public schools, perhaps along with one or another blindness
agency, should and can do.  If it means the "freedom" to achieve less than
one's sighted peers, or "freedom" from learning to deal with life in the
larger community, then the word "freedom" is a dangerous misnomer for the
thing.
I'm reasonably sure that, in large part, residential schools historically
did the best they could to prepare their students for many aspects of
adulthood.  Some of our best leaders came from these places, and some of
my close friends.  But in a world where we are less apt than before to
tolerate segregation of blind people, and in which public schools have
(though not often enough) demonstrated that blind children can get the
tools they need for entering the big wide world, I doubt the wisdom of
touting the special school as the cure for the problems we face.  
Just some thoughts!
Al
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