trouble | Entries tagged with academic stuff: summer of research

Picture it: Halifax, 1878. A man of wealth and good breeding writes the following:

...Our Superintendent in his report claims the right of our Blind to be considered in the general system of Education. This principle is recognized in the United States, and in many of the European Nations. The Emperor of Brazil not only had an institution erected for the Blind of that country ; but also got a state endowment for it of $24,000 per annum. Turn to wherever we may, the value of Blind Institutions are being generally recognized ; so much so in England within the past few years, that a College for the higher education of the blind sons of gentlemen has been erected at Worcester, and a Royal Normal College and Academy for Music, at Upper Norwood. The Legislature of Massachusetts a few years since appropriated the sum of $80,000 to the Perkins Institution of Boston, for the erection of new buildings. Other examples of munificence might be given. Are we then in the face of these examples to stand still or go on progressing. Cannot the Institution be made practically one for th Blind of the Maritime Provinces. Cannot we be brought to recognize the fact that although the sight may be lost there is a human brain behind the forehead and a human heart beating within the breast. We should ask that the same consideration be extended to the Blind, as is given to other afflicted classes of the community. In order to advance our sympathy for all, let us do what is right for all.

I'm pretty sure that last little bit is basically "Yo, we want want the Deaf school has. And we want it now!"

I was a bit confused by the references to the Emperor of Brazil, but it turns out that Brazil was an Empire between 1822 and 1889, under Emperors Pedro I and Pedro II. The More You Know.

I'm mostly interested in how the Perkins School (that's the one that Gridley Howe was running) is perceived in Halifax. It seems to be viewed as the Greatest Thing Ever, which makes some sense being that the Superintendent is a graduate from there. But reading it in tandem with Woeful Afflictions is... interesting.

Anyway.

The individual members of your Board are personally familiar with much that is herein contained, your frequent visits to the Institution make you conversant with every detail of its internal management, but as these Reports constitute the only available literature respecting the Blind and their education, it is advisable that their circulation be extended to every part of the Maritime Provinces, in order that the public may fully understand the purposes for which the Institution is stained, and the sources from whence its annual income is derived.

That's another good one. I read it in two ways. First, I don't think the actual Board Members are nearly as involved as Fraser describes them. Second, it's again a veiled reference to the Deaf school, which is pulling in a lot more in donations right now. And also has students from everywhere.

I'm also intrigued by the constant needling at the public and the government. An example:

Realizing the importance both to the individuals and the public of utilizing a non-working class, your Board have liberally granted instruction in handicrafts to three young men, whose ages prevented their taking advantage of the course prescribed for regular pupils. This action, on your part, deserves every encouragement from the public, whom you have thus relieved from the indirect burden of their support. [emphasis mine]

Look! Look at the work we are doing! We are doing it for you, John Q. Public! You!

In case you are curious what the kids in the school were learning (by 1879):

Classes in the following branches are formed each year: Spelling, Reading in Boston, Moon, and Braille systems, Pencil and Point Writing, English Grammar, Geography, History and Arithmetic. In addition to the foregoing, two extra studies are taken up in each successive year as follows:
1 - Composition and Elocution
2 - Natural History and Heathen Mythology
3 - Natural Philosophy and Physiology
4 - Geometry and Astronomy
5 - Algebra and English Literature

IOW: Please learn to read three different styles of writing the same language because we haven't all agreed on what language to use yet. Also, learn two different ways of writing because Sighted people can't be bothered to learn Braille.

Note to self: 1880 is when the Annual Reports finally started publishing newspaper reports about the School. I wonder if they didn't show up before then, or if the new management (the President had retired) is the reason.

Current Mood: geeky
Current Location: Nova Scotia Public Archives

[I should note that I'm in the crankiest mood ever, so I'm trying not to actually talk to people until that goes away, since everything is growly and stupid.]

Anyway, on more pleasant: I'm still working my way through Woeful Afflictions. I had put off picking it back up after the first chapter because it was so dense. This chapter is an improvement generally in language and tone, but I came away from it wanting to scream.

First Knee-jerk Reaction:
Samuel Gridley Howe is generally seen as this great Friend To Blind People. He ran the first residential school for the blind in North America, and developed a lot of ideas on how to "train" blind people in manual labour. I think the Wikipedia Entry on Howe's work with Blind people probably gives a good idea on how people viewed - and still view - him.

Which is why reading his constant comments about how blind people are blind because their parents or grandparents were bad or sexually perverted, that blind people should never be allowed to breed because of what it would do to generations yet unborn, and that blind people were generally all-around inferior to everyone else is a tad upsetting. He also asserted that all truly right-thinking people would want to be deaf over being blind, because blind people were incapable of learning the nuances of language, and blindness should really be limited to working class people.

Awesome.

Now, in less knee-jerk and more thinky:
What's really interesting about this chapter is that Klages covers how Howe went from "Blind people: just as awesome and capable as everyone else" to "Blind people are pathetic and suffer mightily and must not ever breed or masturbate". At the founding of the Institution, Howe argued that blind people were "fully human" and quite capable of taking care of themselves and doing everything that sighted people could do. However, the Institution itself needed charitable donations. According to Klages, this contradiction caused problems in the "marking" of blind people, and, as time went on, Howe's Annual Reports presented blind people as more and more pathetic, needing donations to survive.

This is partly due to the increased industrialisation. While Howe was setting up workshops so blind adults could potentially earn a living, the same jobs were being done by machines at a faster pace and without need for food, rest, etc. So, while Howe went through and tried to present purchasing goods made by blind people as not charity, it was becoming more apparent that it was because things were being made better and faster elsewhere. Howe felt that people were less likely to purchase goods rather than just give to charity, while he wanted to create a situation where blind people were actually self-sufficient.

Klages also talks about Howe's growing ideas that blind people needed a "natural family". I had known, but forgotten, that he eventually moved his school from dormitory-style living to cottages where there were a few children and a matron. Each of these cottages, like the dormitories, were single-sex. His theory was that having a matron would prevent the children from committing "unnatural sexual acts", and segregating them would prevent the children from falling in love and marrying.

I was also really interested in reading about how Howe wrote about class. In the first years of the Institution, he had developed three "tracks" that blind people could be put on. The first was training for intellectual type work, like being lawyers or ministers. The second was being trained entirely in musical stuff, and the third was all manual stuff all the time. Later he gave up on all of that and decided everyone was getting all of the forms of education because it would allow the upper class students the chance to truly understand manual labour, and the lower classes to have a refinement to their activities. And then he gave that all up because blind - defective. *sigh*

This chapter does talk a bit about people as posters, but doesn't get nearly as "academic wank" as the last chapter did.

I have no deep & meaningful conclusions, because tired.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Grad Pad

There is something about this style of writing that just makes me imagine a purple pen.

Could parents of these poor helpless ones only drop in an see our comfortable school rooms, bed-rooms and parlours, our two pianos and organ, our workshops and play-room, our kind attentive Superintendent and lady teacher, our new pleasant good natured housekeepers, who fill the place of father and mother, the christian tone pervades the whole establishment, we think they would deeply censure themselves for not having taken advantage of such an opportunity to have their dear ones taught those things which give zest and happiness to life here, and prepare them for a joyous life hereafter. We go farther and say : it is cruelty on their part, for we have seen a poor child come to us helpless, nervous, and wholly ignorant, his face telling of the complete blank of the mind within, yet see that same boy a few months after as he begins to spell out words for himself, as he learns to make sweet chords on the musical instruments, and as he walks with ease and confidence through the streets of our city, cane in hand feeling his way along, his face radiant with a new light, beginning to feel his own powers to acquire knowledge, self-reliant and happy ; and having informed them of all this they still will not make the effort to send their children.

Run-on sentences! Oh, how I love Victorian run-on sentences. They're so earnest.

I also find this paragraph really interesting, in light of the Ongoing Discussions About Language:

The term [Asylum] was first applied to home for the blind, established in England before any effort was made to awaken their self-reliance and fir them to "fight the battle of life". At a later period schools were introduced into these asylums, thus changing their characters while the original name was still retained. In the United States an Institution of this kind is styled wither "Institution for the Education of the Blind" or "School for the Blind". The former name is objectionable chiefly on account of its length, while the latter has the advantage of brevity, besides the recommendation of defining clearly the nature of the Institution.

Current Mood: exhausted

Okay! So, I spent some time this evening (between chatting on twitter about "student issues" and making yummy-smelling vegetarian sloppy joes [which are still cooking]) plotting a map with the homes of the students that attended the Halifax School for the Blind in 1873.

( There's a screen-cap of a map of NS behind the cut )
The map is also available interactively (somewhat) on Google Maps.

City	Number of Students	Distance from Halifax
Musquodoboit	2 students	72 km
Londonderry	2 students	125 km
Pictou	2 students	164 km
Great Village	1 student	120 km
Ingonish *	1 student	453 km
Walton	1 student	91.6 km
Victoria Settlement	1 student	180 km
Bridgewater	1 student	106 km
LaHave	1 Student	119 km
Tatamagouche	1 student	148 km
Halifax	2 students	0

My goal is to plot out the distances that students came from over time.

I'm mostly doing this out of curiosity, I admit. I don't think the information I'm gathering is necessarily going to be terribly useful to what I'm going to end up writing, but it may be, and I'd hate to have to recreate it from notes later.

Plus it looks cool. *grin*

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: at my desk plotting out history

For some reason this paragraph is cracking me up:

The first meeting under the Act of Incorporation, to elect Managers and Officers, was held at the City Council Chamber, 27th April, 1868, since then there has been no annual meeting, as until the present year it was found impossible to get the Institution into operation ; it therefore becomes necessary to report progress from the commencement.

What I find amusing about it is that it's basically "We haven't really been able to do anything for three years because we haven't had an Institution. But now we do. Because we're awesome."

[Oh, background: The reason the School for the Blind was founded when it was was because a dude with lots of money left 5000 pounds NS Currency for the School if the city could get enough money to build an actual building. That money was left in 1867, which was when the school was actually incorporated. In '68, the school was proclaimed, and in 1871, the school actually opened its doors. I find it odd that there was apparently no Annual Meeting between the school being incorporated and the school being opened.]

[Maybe my sense of humour is strange.]

That aside, there are some interesting things going on in the founding of this Institution as opposed to that of the Deaf one. Like the Deaf school, there are teachers hired initially who are in the same situation as the students: The first teacher hired is a Blind woman, although she's assistant teacher to a Sighted woman. When the blind woman (Mary Dwyer) ends up sick from the Halifax weather (this seems a common complaint), the school hires C. F. Fraser, who is also blind, and a graduate of the Perkins Institute in Boston.

So, having hired their first blind male teacher (Fraser was not yet principal at this point), the Annual report reads:

They were fortunate in procuring in her place the services of Mr. C. J. Fraser, son of Dr. Fraser of Windsor, who had been thoroughly educated at the Perkins' Institution for the Blind,k at Boston, and who has proved himself well qualified to take the place of teacher, - from his high musical talent, and thorough devotion to his duties, they look forward with much confidence to the future. Since his taking charge of the boys, he has taught them self reliance, by permitting them to find their own way through the city ; and they now go to their several places of worship alone, and can be met walking the streets as confidently as those who can see, - this adds greatly to their enjoyment, and their independence.

{Girls, as you all know, do not need independence. They're busying learning to sew with the new sewing machines.)

Part of why this is really interesting is they seem to sort out really quickly the importance of having teachers who are "like" the students - something the Deaf school didn't do. And I wonder if this is in reaction to that lack.

[I wonder how much they're competing for donations with the School for the Deaf?]

It looks like things get really interesting in the Fourth Report, but that will have to wait till tomorrow.

It's nice to be doing something. I've missed my archives. *hugs archives close*

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: Nova Scotia Public Archives

I've finally got myself sorted enough to start reading actual books again, which is nice. I'm just digging in to Woeful Afflictions: Disability and Sentimentality in Victorian America by Mary Klages.

If it doesn't get itself sorted soon, I'm not going to be happy recommending it to people dipping in to disability history for the first time.

[This brief review is heavily coloured by my being so tired I'm dizzy. Sleep time now.]

The first chapter focuses on philosophical questions about blindness and disability in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and how philosophers like Hume were talking about and describing "being human". I understand why Klages is doing this - the "experiment" of teaching Laura Bridgman ("the original deaf-blind girl" - more on this in a bit) was about testing ideas of how people who had no input but what outsiders gave them would develop religious ideas. (There was a theory that blind people were by definition more likely to be atheists because they lacked the ability to "see creation". Also, they were less compassionate because they lacked the ability to see people's pain.)

So, I'm not sure how much of this chapter I actually followed. I mean, it contains a lot of sentences like this: "Thus, in the system of natural language, disabled people - including the blind - could become both signs and readers, both objects and subjects of the signifying practices constituting sentimental semiotics." Which I think means "blind people were [later than the above-stuff] both objects of pity and people able to pity others more because they were blind."

The chapter also talks a lot about France without ever really talking about France. I think it's important to mention, when talking about the first School for the Blind being started in France, that the origin story is very similar to the first School for the Deaf. I must do some more reading to see what people have said about this conjunction.

But again, I think this chapter needed more context before it's useful to the uninitiated reader.

Copy of Radio Messages

Sir R---- B---
H. M. S. Renown,
Via Campberdown.

Will His Royal Highness the Prince honor the School for the Blind of the M. P. and the pioneer work for the blind of Canada by a brief visit to the school tomorrow. Our boys and girls aquiver with excitement at the Prince's second coming to Halifax. PERSONAL: As an old friend I would ask you to do what you can to have His Royal Highness visit the School for the Blind. It would do a power of good.

I like the idea of being aquiver with excitement myself.

As for the only other comment I have about today's researching (I'm about to go home. I got through about half a file folder):

Damn it, dead people.

I've just read something that implies that a large number of braille letters were thrown out. Or they're filed entirely separately from the other correspondence. I hope it is the latter, or the baby Anna is going to cry.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Nova Scotia Public Archives

I'm in the archives right now, reading one of the many many many letters written by the Superintendent of the School for the Blind.

This sentence is interesting to me re: attitudes towards disability.

"I hope you will consult an aurist at once as if this continues it is liable to cause deafness which in Tommy's case would be a great calamity."

Which I'm adding to the very tiny pile of stuff I have that implies that deafness was not considered a great calamity in Halifax at this time, but just a Thing That Could Happen, and here's how we work around it.

It's a tiny bit of stuff. I'm curious if I'll have enough to ever make that argument effectively.

Current Mood: curious
Current Location: Nova Scotia Public Archives