EDUCATION
309
EDUCATION
Contemporary Education of the Bund. — Gen-
eral Aspects. — In nearly all the countries referred to in
the foregoing table, most of the schools for the blind
maintain three distinct departments: a literary de-
partment, a department of music, and an industrial
department. The rank of these institutions is higher
or lower from an educational point of view according
as more or less prominence is given to hterature and
music as compared with indu.strial or manual training.
In the leading schools the literary department em-
braces kindergarten, primary, secondary, and, in a
few instances, collegiate education; the department
of music embraces primary, secondary, and collegiate
education; while the industrial department embraces
the teaching of handicrafts, varying in kind according
to age, sex, and country. The courses of study in the
literary department are generally the same as those
pursued in the pubUc high schools of tlie respective
countries. The work in the department of music
varies from instruction in the mere elements of music
to thoroughly organized courses of stutly and highly
specialized instruction in the science and art of music.
In the industrial department the chief trades are: in
the male department, piano-tuning, wood-carving,
the making of baskets, mats, matting, brooms, and
mattresses, chair-caning, hammock-work, and uphol-
stery; in the female department, basket^making,
knitting; hand- and machine-sewing, crocheting, fancy
work of various kinds.
In the experimental stages of education, there was a tendency in almost all the schools for the blind to make the industrial tlepartment the most prominent feature. The lack of books, of adequate educational appliances, and of definite methods, the comparative ease in teaching some one or other of the simpler trades, the want of technical experience on the part of instructors, the dependence upon manual occupations and mechanical arts for self-support, the readiness to be swayed by the utilitarian principle of training the blind for the active duties and occupations opening the way to self-maintenance and independence — these and other similar considerations were strong argu- ments in favour of industrial training, to the neglect and detriment of the prime and essential work of edu- cation. Of late years, however, a marked change has been wrought in the ideals pursued in the education of the blind. Owing to the increase of general intelli- gence, on the one hand, and the steady decrease in value of manual labour, on the other hand, educators of the blind have come to realize that it is not techni- cal skill, or ability to work successfully at one or more of the usual trades, but only a broad and liberal scheme of education that will release the blind from the bondage of dependence, uplift them as a class, and raise them to a level of usefulness and independence. In consequence of the extensive employment of ma- chinery in almost every department of human activ- ity, there has sprung up among cilucators of the blind a growing conviction that the only field in which the sightless can hope in the future to compete success- fully with the seeing is a field of thought where the in- tellect can have free play and where blindness will be no hindrance to advancement and success. The blind need, therefore, at least as good an education as the seeing. The question as to whether they are capable and entitled to such an education has not been settled in the same manner in all countries. In many of the European institutions the prevailing idea is that, as a class, the blind must necessarily remain at the foot of the social scale, forever dependent upon the more fortunate classes, and that what is done for them is rather in the spirit of favour and charity than as of strict obligation. In the United States the education of the blind rests on a different basis. As modern methods of instruction have proved the possibility of imparting to the normal blind child practically the same education as to other children, it is generally
acknowledged that the blind, as a class, have an equal
right with the seeing to share in all the educational
benefits which are provided for every child in the
commonwealth; and since this education cannot for
obvious reasons be given them in the common schools,
special provision should be made for their education
in distinct institutions, public or private.
Systems of Embossed Print. — Three centuries and a half elapsed after the invention of printing before any attempt to make printing available for the blind as a class was successful. Whatever information and in- spiration may have been drawn by the ingenious in- ventor from special processes devised before his day, the credit of having first made reading by finger- touch possible must be accorded to Valentin Haiiy (see above). The first book embossed by Haiiy for the use of the blind was, according to Guadet, his "Essai sur r&lucation des aveugles" (1786). This book was translated into German by Michel, and into English, in 1795, by the blind poet Blacklock. The style of type adopted by Haiiy was the French script, resemb- ling the legal manuscripts of the time. The capital and small letters were respectively fourteen and seven and a half millimetres high. The book was a quarto of 11 1 pages, printed on one side only, two pages being gummed together back to back, to preserve the relief. The pages were embossed from metal type by the blind children of Hatiy's school under the direction of Clousier, the court printer. While this invention won unstinted praise for Haiiy, he himself, when he heard his achievements compared to those of the Abbe de I'Ep^e, modestly protested, "I only fit spectacles, while he bestows a soul." From 1806, the time of Haiiy's departure for St. Petersburg, to 1854, when line-print was superseded by point-print, the type used at the Institution des Jeunes Aveugles at Paris, varied between the French script, the Italic, and Roman capitals.
Embossed Printing in Enghmd. — Printing for the blind had been used in France for forty-three years, in Austria for eighteen, in Prussia for twenty-six, before it was used in England; Hatiy's system of printing, it is claimed, was introduced into England by Sir Charles Lowther, to whom it was suggested by a copy of one of the books printed at the Institution des Jeunes Aveugles, and purchased for him by his mother, he being himself blind. In 1826, James Gall, of Edin- burgh, who had seen specimens of books embossed at the Paris institution, set himself to improve the alpha- bet, by making it more perceptible to the touch. In 1827 he printed a small book in an angular modification of the common English alphaoet. It is said to have been the first English book printed for the blind in Eng- land, and naturally great interest was excited when it was found that the blind could read it easily with their finger-tips. Between 1828 and 18.38 no fewer than 20 styles of embos-sed printing were brought out in Great Britain. Of these, however, only six obtained recog- nition: those of Haiiy, Gall, Fry- Alston, Lucas, Frere, and Moon. Haiiy's script was adopted by Sir Charles Lowther in his publication, in 1834, of the Gospel of St. Matthew. Though Gall modified the common characters of the alphabet to make them more easily distinguishable by touch, he did not believe that arbi- trary characters would ever be universally adopted, maintaining that these books should be legible to both blind and seeing. Besides two or three booklets pre- viously embossed, Gall printed, in 1832, the Gospel of St. John. The Fry-Alston system of embossed print- ing is the plain upper-case Roman without ceriphs or the lighter strokes, and was devised by Dr. Edmund Fry and adopted by Alston at the Glasgow Institution for the Blind, of which he was principal. In 1832 the Scottish Society of Arts offered a gold medal for the best system to produce cheapness and tangibility in connexion with an alphabet suited alike to the fingers of the blind and to the eyes of the seeing. Nineteen
