Re: Schools for the blind, training centers, and how they perform.
[[wow]], there are a lot of interesting anecdotes here.
I can definitely relate to having to follow ridiculous and strict rules. At the school for the blind that I went to, we weren't allowed to go out on our own, either. Admittedly, most of the students who lived in the dorm had multiple disabilities, and quite severe ones at that. A couple of the students were nonverbal, couldn't feed themselves, etc.
But for those of us who could think for ourselves, interact in normal ways, things weren't great. It was heavily implied that we were blind, so why would we want to go out alone anyway?
On the other hand, there was also a rather disconcerting double standard. We weren't expected to go to college after we graduated, by default. But if someone said that was what they wanted to do, God help them if they changed their minds later. We would be put down incessantly, told that we didn't know what the real world was like, we were unprofessional, and
that we would never be successful.
The teachers had their favorites, who could get away with everything, and people like me, who were considered troublemakers, were constantly made an ass out of.
The reason I became a favorite punching bag for the four years I attended was that, when I first arrived, I noticed an appalling trend. Teachers and classroom aides would congregate in the doorways of classrooms and talk none too quietly about students who, more often than not, were sitting right there, and could clearly hear everything that was being said about them. Even in cases where the students couldn't understand or respond to what was being said, it infuriated me that such behavior was allowed to go on, and that no one was doing anything about it. So, one day, about a month after I first began attending the school, I pulled two of the worst offenders aside, and told them, politely but firmly, that it wasn't right that they were doing that. They were extremely sho
cked that I had said anything.
While I wasn't punished outright, from that day forward, teachers told other students that they shouldn't be friends with me, that I was a bad influence, and, of course, they held me to a much higher standard than everyone else. While I will be the first to admit that, during that time, I fought back, and didn't make their lives any easier, it wouldn't have mattered what I did. I was already a scapegoat, and I knew it.
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