Blind Teaching the Sighted

Too many sighted people believe it is impossible for blind parents to offer any real assistance when it comes to educating their sighted children. It is my opinion this is the reason far too many sighted parents shuffle their children off to schools for the blind instead of making the effort to teach these children at home until they are old enough to join mainstream students in school with sighted children.

This reasoning makes no sense to me. It is not as if we can separate blind, deaf, mentally challenged, or disabled children from children without disabilities for the rest of their lives. Eventually, disabled children become disabled adults. As disabled adults, they must be able to adjust and interact within the full population, which includes a larger number of non-disabled people. If we as a society hide these disabled children away for nearly two decades of their lives, how do we expect them to perform and respond to life outside of the cocoon life experience of special schools where there is little to no contact with non-disabled children? The answer is simple; we cannot expect this of them.

Children need socialization with children from various backgrounds including those with special needs and disabilities. It is this writer's belief that many parents of disabled child feel they are protecting their children from the hardships of being with children who do not understand their problems; however, it is my belief that the more children with disabilities within the regular school system, the more tolerant and educated the child within the school system will become.

My situation is somewhat different in the fact that I am the one with the disability, multiple disabilities actually. Well over a decade ago, I learned I am losing my sight to a hereditary eye disease in addition to a problem with my optic nerves. While the vision I had as a child was not perfect, in the years since it is almost to the point of becoming non-existent in a manner of speaking. Additionally, after I begun to accept life as a blind woman and mother, I made the decision to return to school to work as a medical transcriptionist.