Re: I have a multiple account
There are blindness-based institutions and training programs that do a lot of good things. But as has been stated, there are many which shelter to the detriment of students, and that's definitely not good for anybody.
I am so, so grateful that I was mainstreamed. When I was five or six, the public school board where I'd attended kindergarten and first grade started trying to push a blind school on us. My mom's response was basically "over my dead body". The school was an hour away, would've meant I either had over an hour's commute every day or would've only been home on weekends. It also meant I would've been spending the majority of my time around blind people. That in and of itself is not an awful thing - there are many lovely blind people out there in the world, I've even met some of them - but unfortunately, upon visiting this school, we discovered something a bit insidious. A lot of "blindisms" were present, and a sizable part of the population was actually deafblind; there was a lot of loud vocalizations, humming, rocking, hand-flapping and other stuff going on (I remember some of this myself, and my parents told me other things which meshed with the slivers I can still recall). Anyway, they did not want me raised in that sort of environment, and did not want me an hour from home more hours of the week than not during the school year, so that was a hard nope. So I was mainstreamed. Sometimes I didn't have books or assignments prepared on time, and I had to play catch-up. We had to think on the fly in order to find ways to teach me more complex geometry and other bits of math (I had hell trying to picture how to calculate the surface area of a cylinder, for instance). We had to find different things I could do in gym class, because running around playing dodgeball and ball hockey and god knows what else was just a recipe for somebody getting hurt. There were some behavioural issues when I was young, because I'd get bored and then get disruptive. But overall, I was raised around sighted individuals, I learned to listen to them and talk to them. I didn't care about everything they did, not by a longshot, but virtually all of my good friends were sighted, and it was never a pity thing. Still isn't, to this day. My current partner is sighted, and in total, all but two of my partners throughout my life have also been sighted. I don't mind blind people, but the cringe-worthy, extremely socially awkward stuff just makes me want to run like hell the other way. People imitating screenreaders, people who don't observe even basic hygiene, people who think it's really amusing to make "fight" recordings between screenreader voices...just no. No. All the no.
I'm not prepared to speak to whether or not this or that or the other blind school teaches the proper etiquette for navigating the world, but I feel that my lack of experience actually makes this harder for me to empathize with. So much of it, for me, is common sense that I have trouble finding the difficulty. I find myself thinking "God, just go -talk to them already!" or "you know, a "hello" never hurt anyone".
And inasmuch as maturity relates to this conversation, I really don't think age is a definitive indicator of maturity. I think the only approach that works is a reactive one. Rather than trying to set this arbitrary age limit on internet access, particularly on this forum, we simply observe those who show up, and if their immaturity or disregard for rules gets them in trouble, they're dealt with.
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