People of the White Cane
November 13 is International Day of the Blind. It is common knowledge that the attitude toward people with special needs is the yardstick for measuring a society’s maturity, openness, and democracy. Like a mirror, it reflects all of society’s sore spots, values, and prospects for development.
There are 400 million visually impaired people in the world, including more than 70,000 in Ukraine. Twelve thousand children in this country only have residual vision, i.e., they can see almost nothing. They are taught by special methods at various types of specialized educational institutions. In Kyiv alone, there are six boarding schools for visually impaired children and one for totally blind youngsters. In Ukraine even the blind are taught the standard secondary school curriculum, with the result that they acquire all kinds of professional skills while still in school. Today they work on computers equipped with special blind-friendly sound-based programs. They even graduate as lawyers or teachers. Kyiv still has four enterprises where the blind manufacture unsophisticated electric appliances, and all sorts of cords and brushes.
Yet Ukraine has not tapped all the available resources to give the visually handicapped a chance. You won’t find glow-in-the-dark canes or ringing balls in this country. There are also not enough entrance ramps in Ukraine. But what causes the most concern is that Ukrainians are not quite prepared to accept a sightless person as a full-fledged member of society and work partner. On the other hand, a lot of novelties that facilitate the integration of a handicapped person into society have cropped up lately in the field of education. In order to see these innovations in action on the eve of International Day of the Blind, The Day’s correspondents decided to visit Kyiv’s Boarding School No. 5 for Blind Children.
To better understand what is impeding harmonization among seeing and sightless people, we talked with some of the school’s senior pupils. Ihor Kushnir, who is 18 and in the 12th grade, said he dreams of a pop singer career and is working hard to achieve his dream.
He is convinced, however, that if a blind person wants to get a job, s/he must be professionally a cut above the seeing candidate. Ihor is ready to compete with the able-bodied on equal terms, without any special concessions or privileges. He thinks this is also the way for people suffering from other diseases, such as cerebral paralysis or deafness. “I’ve set myself a goal, and I think achieving gives sense to my life,” Ihor says. “We, the blind, are no different from you, the able-bodied. Almost every human has one illness or another. The fact that we are unable to see does not mean we are second-rate people!”
A week ago Serhiy Neshchadym, also 18 and attending 12th grade, was exempted from military service, but the boy thinks this is unfair. He has dreamed about going into the army since childhood, and, in his opinion, residual vision is no obstacle. Serhiy does not consider himself inferior to those who can see well, he knows he can overcome everything. “If you feel you can deliver the goods, you must have the same obligations that healthy people have, and you must be allowed to live by general, not exceptional, laws. The common stereotype in our society is that people who differ from the general mass are some kind of freaks. Society denies them the right to live on equal terms with others.
This is not fair,” Serhiy says. He plans to become a good masseur after receiving a special in-depth education. He knows the basics of massage even today because he has been taught this for three years right at his school by teachers from the Higher Medical School of the Kyiv University of Medicine and Ecology. Real-life examples of boarding school graduates also inspire hope in the pupils. Graduates make a point of visiting those who are just beginning to overcome themselves. Speaking from the assembly hall stage, they promulgate a belief in being happy. Then the current pupils recount these stories to each other, proud of their comrades and the victories they have won.
However, you can’t expect everyone to be strong in spirit. Teachers claim this depends to a large extent on the attitude of sightless children’s parents. In contrast to parents with normal vision, a blind family does not consider it a catastrophe to have a sightless child. Zinayida Zahorska, a psychologist and school vice-principal, who has been dealing with this category of children for many years, singles out three types of erroneous attitudes that adults have toward blind children. The first is boundless pity for the afflicted child and the conviction that s/he is doomed. The second is overprotection, which paralyzes the little individual’s willpower and development. The third error is promoting a lofty ideal without instilling independence and life skills in a child, when the latter is unable to hold onto even what s/he has already achieved without the parents’ help. The school staff works with each of these categories on an individual basis, inspiring the hope that a blind child is also indispensable to society, his parents, and, finally, himself.
School principal Liudmyla Koval is convinced that it is impossible to prepare a visually impaired child for a full-blooded life without a special system of education and upbringing. Her pupils have to make strenuous efforts. Astonishingly, her pupils feel very confident moving around the boarding school. This is the result of hard work. Junior pupils are trained for a long time to overcome the fear of space: they learn to take their hands off the walls while walking, to “see” obstacles by hearing, and to catch the echo that is produced by objects encountered along their way but which is undetectable to people with normal vision. As the kids grow up, they learn to walk with a white cane. Practicing with the cane is just a game, for they all have already studied and committed to memory every inch of the premises. Incidentally, blind children have a remarkable memory. We never saw them groping for something — they would move in a precise manner, as if they saw things around them. But the truth is they memorize objects and always try to put them back exactly in the same place. They are also taught to wash clothes, iron, look good, and smile. It turns out that the inner states and facial expressions of blind children may not necessarily coincide. They are often trained to show a certain emotion that they may have just read about. They are taught not only not to be a burden on us (i.e., to do everything by themselves) but also to look like us, the seeing ones, and to be easy on the eye. All the kids turn their heads to the sound of your voice and give you a very natural and cheerful smile, for they feel completely safe and comfortable in the school. And how will they feel among us when they leave school? I only wish life does not erase those happy smiles but, instead, reinforce the kids’ belief in our readiness to accept them into the world of people with normal vision just the way they are.
