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Entry tags:
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- disability: blind,
- disability: disabled people don't exist,
- grad school,
- history,
- history: blind history snippets,
- history: trust me - i'm an historian,
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History and Repeating It: Funding Through Taxation and why David Cameron is a lousy Victorian
There's a thing going around right now where certain government have decided to move to a charity-based model on public services such as libraries, schools, hospitals, and services for vulnerable populations such as disabled people.
Funny this should come up right now when I've been examining the impact of funding-related decisions such as this on educational facilities for students with disabilities in the late 19th Century. You know, when a lot of Victorians got together and went "This whole funding of public services such as libraries, schools, hospitals, and services for vulnerable populations such as disabled people needs to stop being charity based and come out of taxes."
Funding based on charity appeals is not just bad for Institutions, and it is not just bad for the people served by these Institutions. It also has long-term problems for society.
So, let's talk about my area of expertise: residential-based schooling for children with disabilities.
When the Asylum for the Blind needed to struggle constantly for money, a large part of their activities were based on, in essence, begging for money to support the school. They were constantly having to turn down applicants because they didn't have the funding to take on any more students. They couldn't effectively budget because charitable fundraising is always a crap-shoot that could end up with far too little money to feed the children in their care. They were very limited in what new programs they could introduce, had limited success in retaining teaching staff, and were unable to send their staff to other Institutions to learn how to teach blind students.
However, after a two year long campaign that involved going to every county in the province, the Board of Directors and the Principal for the Asylum managed to convince the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick parliaments to set their funding of the Asylum to the number of students from their respective provinces that were there, rather than a varying amount between $500 to $1000.
That, gentle reader, is when the funding for the school from all charitable donations and all government grants doubled. Because the amount of money it required per student in order to properly function as an educational institution, to feed their students properly, to ensure the building was well heated in a Nova Scotian winter, to introduce new educational reforms, to bring in books the students could read, and to pay their staff suddenly came into their pocketbooks, they could function as an educational institution rather than go around begging as a charity, presenting their students as pathetic.
The response by the Asylum was also quite incredible. The number of students jumped very quickly (suddenly girls were getting educated more often than before because free education usually means girls get education), and the number of options those students had for learning trades they could use to support themselves increased. The Principal was able to start some amazing programs, such as the Home Teaching Network that helped adults who became blind learn to read and navigate the world rather than sink into depression and desperation from their change in status. The Free Lending Library that sent braille books across the Maritimes was started, and there was a successful campaign to make the mailing of braille books free. The Principal also started an awareness campaign on helping prevent blindness in children by targeting nurses who cared for newborns in the signs & symptoms of infant blindness. Various highly successful programs were set up so that blind people could get loans to start small businesses to support themselves after graduation. Suddenly blind people were contributing members of society, getting an effective education in the same vein as their sighted counter parts, and relied less and less on the direct kindness of strangers and family members.
When various governments are saying "Let's take away government funding and turn these service organizations into charities again", they're saying "Let's have these service organisations go back to having to beg, to having to present the people they help as pathetic and helpless." They're saying "We don't think the people these services help are as deserving as rich people who won't need them." They're saying "access to education, to libraries and the services they provide, to assistance for vulnerable peoples such as people with disabilities should only go to those who can afford it, and everyone else can just sit around waiting for the scraps that the rich choose to throw out. Beg, little peons. Beg. And maybe we'll let you into this citizenship thing (except not)."
David Cameron and his ilk are suggesting we go back to a system the Victorians decided wasn't working. Maybe if we knew some of that history, knew why the Victorians decided that using tax money to support education and libraries and the like was a good idea, people would know why this is the worst. idea. ever.
Funny this should come up right now when I've been examining the impact of funding-related decisions such as this on educational facilities for students with disabilities in the late 19th Century. You know, when a lot of Victorians got together and went "This whole funding of public services such as libraries, schools, hospitals, and services for vulnerable populations such as disabled people needs to stop being charity based and come out of taxes."
Funding based on charity appeals is not just bad for Institutions, and it is not just bad for the people served by these Institutions. It also has long-term problems for society.
So, let's talk about my area of expertise: residential-based schooling for children with disabilities.
When the Asylum for the Blind needed to struggle constantly for money, a large part of their activities were based on, in essence, begging for money to support the school. They were constantly having to turn down applicants because they didn't have the funding to take on any more students. They couldn't effectively budget because charitable fundraising is always a crap-shoot that could end up with far too little money to feed the children in their care. They were very limited in what new programs they could introduce, had limited success in retaining teaching staff, and were unable to send their staff to other Institutions to learn how to teach blind students.
However, after a two year long campaign that involved going to every county in the province, the Board of Directors and the Principal for the Asylum managed to convince the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick parliaments to set their funding of the Asylum to the number of students from their respective provinces that were there, rather than a varying amount between $500 to $1000.
That, gentle reader, is when the funding for the school from all charitable donations and all government grants doubled. Because the amount of money it required per student in order to properly function as an educational institution, to feed their students properly, to ensure the building was well heated in a Nova Scotian winter, to introduce new educational reforms, to bring in books the students could read, and to pay their staff suddenly came into their pocketbooks, they could function as an educational institution rather than go around begging as a charity, presenting their students as pathetic.
The response by the Asylum was also quite incredible. The number of students jumped very quickly (suddenly girls were getting educated more often than before because free education usually means girls get education), and the number of options those students had for learning trades they could use to support themselves increased. The Principal was able to start some amazing programs, such as the Home Teaching Network that helped adults who became blind learn to read and navigate the world rather than sink into depression and desperation from their change in status. The Free Lending Library that sent braille books across the Maritimes was started, and there was a successful campaign to make the mailing of braille books free. The Principal also started an awareness campaign on helping prevent blindness in children by targeting nurses who cared for newborns in the signs & symptoms of infant blindness. Various highly successful programs were set up so that blind people could get loans to start small businesses to support themselves after graduation. Suddenly blind people were contributing members of society, getting an effective education in the same vein as their sighted counter parts, and relied less and less on the direct kindness of strangers and family members.
When various governments are saying "Let's take away government funding and turn these service organizations into charities again", they're saying "Let's have these service organisations go back to having to beg, to having to present the people they help as pathetic and helpless." They're saying "We don't think the people these services help are as deserving as rich people who won't need them." They're saying "access to education, to libraries and the services they provide, to assistance for vulnerable peoples such as people with disabilities should only go to those who can afford it, and everyone else can just sit around waiting for the scraps that the rich choose to throw out. Beg, little peons. Beg. And maybe we'll let you into this citizenship thing (except not)."
David Cameron and his ilk are suggesting we go back to a system the Victorians decided wasn't working. Maybe if we knew some of that history, knew why the Victorians decided that using tax money to support education and libraries and the like was a good idea, people would know why this is the worst. idea. ever.
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But, hon, ppl know Cameron is only blustering about charity and "big society" because the realities of ideologically-driven privatisation and punitive cuts sound worse. Ppl know but they voted for him and his ilk* anyway. Sorry. :-(
ILU! ::solidarity::
* Ok, so I just wanted to type "ilk".... I need some small pleasures in life. ;-)
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He then complained it was unfair to try and catch him off-guard like this, and protested quite a bit. But it was clear that he wasn't doing a single bit of unpaid work. (And frankly, I'd be surprised if he ever had.)
I'd be less inclined to roll my eyes if there was a scrap of evidence that any of these people were out actually doing what they want the rest of us to.
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Speaking of bad Victorians, my own state is trying to repeal our anti-child labor laws...
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Also, anyone who can survive long-term on benefits deserves a paid job because they're already better at managing a budget than most bankers but, of course, bankers aren't used to having to count the pennies cos of the HUGE salaries and VAST bonuses they get for losing everyone else's money and destroying our economies.
Also, while I love volunteers, I'd like my next operation to be performed by an actual surgeon. In fact, I'd like the next person I see at the Citizens Advice Bureau to have been doing it for more than a few hours and understand the basic system for helping me although, due to a recent influx of n00bz via the local Tory council's push for volunteers, this isn't currently very likely (I wonder if the council timed this to coincide with the cut in legal funding for benefit appeals so their inexperienced n00b volunteers would "help" ppl on benefits to lose their claims cos they can't navigate an impossibly difficult benefits system... /cynicism).
/bitter
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So even at the individual employee level, people earning a wage to do the work, fund raising consumed so much of their time and energy that they hardly had any time left for proselytizing.
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Considering the actual paid people in the job centre screwed me over badly enough with "misinformation" (their term) that I lost three months of dole money, I don't think you need volunteers to cock it up. I did ask them how the they'd get by if they suddenly had zero income for three months, and they said I had to understand there were rules. Not the point there, I feel.
(And speaking of giving people jobs - I vote that all disability advisers should be removed and replaced with actual disabled people. Then they might actually do their damn jobs.)
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Hmm...
*sigh* Sounds like your cue to stab their idealogy in the eyeballs with sharp points.
By the way, some of us in Torn World are mulling over the possibility of starting a disability right movement in the Southern Empire, kind of like the gender reforms they had a while back. We've got a variety of stories about disabled characters, "A Monstrous Feast" being a recent addition. I keep reading your posts for inspiration.
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All this stuff about the "voluntary sector" is nonsense - voluntary means people working for no money, or funding things themselves. Buildings, maintenance and vehicles, which all such activity requires, needs paying for and people can't if their job is taken away and their taxes are put up to pay for sovereign debt repayments.
Here is what I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago.
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Rhetoric aside, I think this would be an excellent idea.
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Because I'm sick of having some middle-class able-bodied woman come out with bullshit about "but you look like a healthy young man" or "why don't you just..." when the "just" is something that's easy enough if you're able-bodied, but completely fails to take into account anything.
Example - mine took it upon herself to lecture me that I could save money if I cooked in bulk and put things in the fridge. I asked how I was supposed to lift a large pan - I use a cane, which I can go without if I'm lifting light things, but if I'm going to be lifting something heavy I definitely need it. Which means I have one hand free, not two. Which she could see because she was looking at me. So I ask her how I'm meant to lift this pot, and she mumbles "Well, that's your decision..." which is the same thing she'd said when I pointed out that being hard of hearing, I didn't think I'd do well in a call centre.
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Why yes, he was seeing her because the huge amount of pain he was in and the inability to take his meds was making him suicidal.
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(And don't get me started on how many people - with zero knowledge of technology, hearing loss, or anything related - insist I'd be fine with hearing aids. And act like this is a revelation. Because clearly, I've reached 24 living in England, with access to newspapers, television and internet, without having heard of these magical "hear-ing aids.")
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Argh.
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The NHS inherited a huge number of physically crumbling institutions because private philanthropy could not keep up with the costs of maintaining and running hospitals.
Sigh. Their upscale education seems to have given these people no understanding of history at all.
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Re: Hmm...
(Anonymous) 2011-02-27 22:13 (UTC)(link)This needs to be quoted widely. May I? And how should I attribute?
Re: Hmm...
Re: Hmm...
I'm really glad that you like this quote. I often talk about the fragmentation of society, its resulting dysfunctions, and the urgent need to make it work before it comes completely unglued. So I love it when something sticks well enough that people want to spread it around.
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Hahahahahaha WHAT. IS IT NOW?
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I can't do a job involving heavy lifting, on account of bad joints and cane. I also can't fly or breathe under water, are you going to say that's just how I feel?
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