Mark,
Reading your message, I have a lot of respect for you, and those like
you. The blind community is littered with people who would've given up, or who
make these agencies their life and conform to them. I recently attended the
youthslam convention NFB hosted this last summer, in the hopes that I would be
able to get something out of it. While the nfb does do some good things, I
think their main fault is in the conformance issues that they require from
people. We often see things, though not as obvious as the report they did on
the mac and voiceover in an attempt to at least somewhat hold people to the
usage of jaws and windows. But, I seem to have veered off the track of my
original thoughts, this wasn't ment to be an attack on the NFB. At the
youthslam, they didn't really encourage independence quite as much as they
encouraged conformance to their ideals; something that I'm not to big on. I had
an issue with this for the main reason that the students attending this program
were going to be taking these ideas home with them, and thus acting on them.
One of the main things that struck me was the dorm leader for our dorm having a
conversation with us. It started out with the idea that there is a theory that
the sighted have more power over the blind because, the blind apparently submit
and let that happen. While this could've gone in a good direction, the question
of "how have the sighted had power over you," was asked, and it was turned in
to a huge pity party as far as I was concerned. It wasn't as much the theory,
as the way that the conversation went, as opposed to where it could've went.
So, this all said. Good luck as an instructer. As an instructor, you will be
able to leave people with a good impression and give them ideas and some sense
of a goal. One of the people (Mike May), and I'm probably spelling that wrong
stood out at me through the camp. On his first day, he talked about how he
wasn't aloud to ski because of insurance purposes, I believe it was. So he
worked around it and found a way to do what was said couldn't be done. That
sort of impression and others while being in a session he taught were what
stood out the most for me and those who had the ideas of independence.
On Nov 30, 2009, at 11:51 AM, Mark BurningHawk Baxter wrote:
> You, and I to a lesser extent, and others are the exception. I was
> born blind, didn't go to any institutions for the blind, was raised as
> an only child, mostly in rural Vermont with minimal help from state
> agencies. Graduated from Dartmouth when I was 20, again with minimal
> if any help from agencies--didn't have my first experience with any
> agencies or institutions for the blind until I was 24, when the
> Carroll Center was offering a medical transcription course and I
> needed another, safer place to be. They kicked me out of their dorm,
> making me homeless, after six weeks there. Rehab flatly refused to
> support me and my music career in any way, and pressured me to go to
> the Carroll Center in the first place, then pressured me to get
> therapy and reform my ways when they made me homeless. I only started
> cautiously learning how to deal with the agencies in 2007, when it
> became clear that my failing hearing was going to force me out of the
> transcription career I'd had for 13+ years. I learned Jaws and
> Windows essentially by myself, as I've always been good with tech.
> Even now, while I may have learned a little about how to get along
> with the agencies and get what I need, it's a very uneasy truce at
> best./ I hope to be starting a job at another institution for the
> blind soon, but this time as a trainer, not a student, which hopefully
> will turn out better. You can see why I advocate for the abolition of
> such systems. They do not foster independence of thinking, and tend
> to punish outside-the-box people, in my experience. I do realize that
> people blinded later in life may not adapt as fully as those born
> blind; I'm learning that as I lose my hearing, so I have the privilege
> of seeing both sides of the coin, but think about what that implies--
> that the pressure on those whose world has already been blasted by
> losing their sight will essentially become putty in the hands of high-
> pressure agencies who are set in their ways. The system seems to
> punish at both ends--if you're too independent, you're pressured to
> conform; if you're new to blindness, you're taught not to think for
> yourself. Hell, I didn't even do mobility orienting stuff until last
> year, when Rehab here in CA suggested I ry it, and I decided, in the
> interests of keeping the peace, what the heck; my mobility teacher
> quickly realized that there was very little, beyond the immediate
> rehearsing of directions, that she could improve upon what I and my
> dog were already going. Since I got Trekker, that's even more so; now
> that Trekker is temporarily broken, I truly feel the loss. :) I don't
> see how the agencies really have done me any good, other than in the
> purely material realm, and if I weren't as articulate as I am about
> stating my needs, and as forceful as I am about what I need, which
> most people are not, even that gain might be minimal, and even now the
> damage is significant. So, that's where my beef with the system(s)
> comes in; sorry if that makes it a personal grudge, but there you are
> then.
>
>
> Mark BurningHawk Baxter
>
> Skype and Twitter: BurningHawk1969
> MSN: burninghawk1...@hotmail.com
> My home page:
> http://MarkBurningHawk.net/
>
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