Re: Schools for the blind, training centers, and how they perform.
@Devin, a lot of that makes sense, though as I said at my special school the educational standard was if anything higher than a mainstream school just because life was so dam dull and regimented you had little else to do, and because with such small classes the teachers could tayler work to what you needed to learn, though this was no less dehumanising I remember one occasion in which we were having a supply teacher and our teacher took him around the class and stood in front of each pupil discussing their strengths and weaknesses (very much more of the latter), in a quite demeaning way, right in front of the pupils with us having no say about what was said, it honestly felt like being sold at a slave auction or similar).
About food I can relate, though in a slightly different way sinse at my specialist school the food itself was not of a bad standard but you got no choice at all about what you ate, "you don't have to like it you just have to eat it" was an of ten repeated maxim, and if you didn't eat everything on your plate woe betide you. This situation got so bad my mum negotiated me taking sandwiches rather than me having to sit and attempt to eat something like fresh fruite salad or tomatoes, the texture of which makes me physically sick, though the school definitely disliked this intensively and used every excuse to get in the way of the idea.
Ironically my mum's special school did the same thing to her 50 years ago, and she still! hates any form of pasta.
I have sinse learnt that this paranoyer about "you must eat everything!" is a British cultural thing that was passed down from the generation who went through war rationing and post war rationing (sinse in Britain rationing lasted into the fifties), though that still doesn't make it right.
As far as self reliance goes, university/colige can help with this on a pure living skills level, sinse at my university some things were naturally done, such as providing meals and cleaning the room, others I had to do myself such as laundry and washing up my own cup if I ever wanted a coffee, it was definitely a good preparation for when I moved out and got my own flat, particularly sinse during my masters I was in colige in holidays and thus had to do all my own cooking and washing up too. then again I learnt all of these things at home like anyone else from my mum which helped, so I suppose I did have an advantage.
On the "confidence" thing of camlorn's, I am not exactly sure what he means, but I do remember a point when I used to be quite afraid of things like burning myself on hot items while cooking or getting lost outside. I got to a point however where I realized if any of those things did happen it didn't matter too much, indeed after giving myself a couple of miner scolds with a kettle and getting slightly lost then learning how to navigate back I didn't see the point of worrying too much, but this took experience, and I still had to start slowly and work up, eg I began with a quite small trvel kettle that was easy to pickup and pour from.
Btw, I don't bother ironing, instead I tumbledry everything, then pull it out the dryer while still warm and hang stuff in the creases. This is much easier, provided you can hang things streight, and I would be rather wary of doing myself an injury with an iron, though I know I could master it if I had to.
Then again all my ultra! smart things like my wastecoats and evening trousers or my tuxedos that I wear on stage are dry clean only.
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