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William: I remember thinking
it was all very important or that I was very important...I was going to
intermediate now and going to a school for sighted children. I remember
thinking at the time that that was quite a significant thing. That I was
going to a school just like everybody else.
William is one of seven
blind New Zealanders whose voices were used to explore some of the ways
in which blindness has been socially constructed in New Zealand society,
particularly within the education system. William's educational experiences,
along with those of the other six people interviewed for this study, were
embedded within cultural, ideological, and historical contexts. Sullivan
(1953) suggests that the individual may only be understood through their
relationships within their social group. Along with Mead, he proposed that
the self is a social construction. (Youniss, 1983). Social constructionists,
according to Schwandt (1994), focus on the "collective generation of meaning
as shaped by conventions of language and other social processes" (Scwandt,
1994, p.127). Social construction, itself, is part of a sociology of knowledge
that is rooted in Marx's proposition that a person's "consciousness is
determined by (their) social being" (Berger & Luckmann, 1966, p.17).
Berger and Luckman (1966)
say that the sociology of knowledge is concerned with the sum of every
aspect of knowledge. This includes not only theory, ideas, and ordering
factors, but also ultimately what everyday people know as reality. They
thus claim that reality is socially constructed, and in their work theorise
about the process of social construction. This process hinges on language,
which allows the individual to objectify and typify her or his subjective
experience; to transcend the here and now; and to build up meanings and
a social stock of knowledge which is distributed and passed from generation
to generation. Language thus apprehends and produces the world and conversation
is the tool used to maintain this world. Conversation, written or oral,
helps to legitimate societal institutions which are dialectically formed
to control individuals and which also, through the socialization process,
provide individuals with roles and identities that maintain society. From
such a perspective, Olssen (1991) points out that "what individuals like
to think of as their attitudes, their values, their actions are in fact
public rule systems or codes which define all possible modes of thought
and action" (Olssen, 1991, p.204).
Disability has been seen
and constructed primarily as a personal tragedy and a medical issue (Oliver
1990). Such constructs, according to Oliver, may acknowledge that there
are social dimensions to disability, but do not acknowledge the social
causes of disability as coming from the environment, but instead from the
individual's handicap. Gwaltney (1970), however, in his study in a Mexican
village depicted how blindness was viewed as a community problem and not
an individual problem. In this culture and setting it was believed that
blindness was a consequence of divine intervention and the villagers had
developed an elaborate system of social mechanisms, such as child guides,
to enable the full participation of people blind people in the community.
Scott (1969) in his qualitative study, The Making of Blind Men, examined
in depth the stereotypes and stigma which American society attributed to
people with vision impairments. He concluded that "Blindness. . .is a social
role that people who have serious difficulty seeing or who cannot see at
all must learn to play" (Scott, 1969, p. 3). The stereotype beliefs that
prevailed were that people with vision impairments were helpless, docile,
dependent, melancholic, aesthetic (more sensitive to music and literature),
and serious minded. These stereotypes lead to stigma in that people with
severe vision impairments were seen as 'different' as well as physically,
psychologically, morally and emotionally inferior to sighted persons.
THIS STUDY
Scott (1970) emphasized
how professionals and organisations changed the identities and respectability
of people with severe vision impairments in the service delivery process.
Barton (1988) along with other researchers (Gerber,1990; Oliver, 1992)
call for research to focus on understanding the world from the participant's
viewpoint, to examine contradictions in specific social encounters, and
to emphasize the 'social construction of reality and thus the ways in which
people in their interactions reconstitute the social order' (Barton, 1988,
p.90).
Bogdan and Taylor (1992)
believe that people who interact with people with severe disabilities hold
a range of definitions about these people. These perspectives include clinical
views, dehumanizing views, and humanizing views. Bogdan and Taylor suggest
that a sociology of exclusion, which has been extensively researched by
Goffman, Scott, Edgerton, and themselves is only part of the story, and
that a sociology of acceptance must also be included and explained in research
because accepting alliances do exist and these 'question deterministic
notions of labelling, stigma, and rejection' (Bogdan & Taylor, 1993,
p.279). In their study, The Social Construction of Humanness, they looked
at how non-disabled people formed humanizing definitions and constructions.
They state that there are four dimensions to humanizing definitions involving
the attribution of thinking or the ability to understand, reason, and remember,
to the other person; the ability to see individuality in the other person
by acknowledging their distinct qualities and personality, their 'normal
feelings and motives', and their life history or individual identity; the
ability to reciprocate in the relationship through a valued equal contribution;
and the ability to define a social place for the other person. Bogdan &
Taylor believe that a social place is not only playing a social role, but
also being an integral part of a group or the social unit of the definer.
In their study of accepting non-disabled people, disabled people were recognised
as 'someone like me' (Bogdan & Taylor, 1992, p. 291). Disability was
viewed as 'secondary to the person's humanness' (Bogdan & Taylor, 1992,
p. 291).
Such acceptance can be thought
of as the ideological aspirations of educational mainstreaming, or inclusion,
where children with disabilities are valued as unique thinking individuals,
who can participate in reciprocal relationships, who have a vital role
in their school and community, and who are not defined only by their disability.
In order to fully understand the meaning of blindness, it is important,
then, to be aware of the actual experiences and relationships of blind
people and study the meaning they, and others in their lives, give to blindness.
'Meaning-making' within the social constructionist approach is not an activity
of the individual mind but is a collective activity.
Blind people in New Zealand
have been informally integrated into the mainstream of education since
its inception in 1877 (Pole, 1986). The Rev. Chitty was one of the first
blind students to graduate from Auckland University at the turn of the
century. Blind students at the Institute for the Blind in Auckland were
mainstreamed in secondary schools near the Institute in the 1940s and 1950s
(Cattran & Hanson, 1992). Sight saving classes were opened at Waltham
School in Christchurch and Te Aro School in Wellington for children with
partial sight in 1949 (Mitchell & Mitchell, 1985). These sight saving
classes were followed by similar classes in Dunedin at Forbury School and
in Auckland at the Institute's school. The children in the Christchurch
class were the first children to be mainstreamed as a matter of policy
into the regular school in 1962 (Mitchell & Mitchell, 1985). Also,
in 1962, a blind child was integrated into her local Auckland Intermediate
school. (Catran & Hansen, 1992). In 1964, the New Zealand Department
of Education bestowed on the Foundation for the Blind (formally called
the Institute for the Blind) 28 acres of vacant land for their special
school, Homai College, at Manurewa . The children who attended Homai were
sent to Manurewa High School where they were supported by a visual resource
centre in 1965. and they also attended Manurewa Intermediate School in
the 1970s.
Today, most blind children
attend their local schools and there are visual resource centres in Auckland
(with an attached unit in Nelson), Tauranga, Wellington, and Christchurch.
There are sensory resource centres in New Plymouth, Palmerston North, Gisborne,
and Napier. There are also itinerant teachers of children with visual impairments
attached to an ordinary school in Dunedin and Invercargill.(Mitchell &
Mitchell 1985; Havill & Mitchell 1972). However, despite this long
history of mainstreaming, there is a surprising dearth of literature on
the experiences of blind children in New Zealand mainstream schools. O'Brien
(1989) is one notable study which delves into the issues of mainstreaming
students with severe and moderate vision impairments. O'Brien found that
schools and teachers have difficulties adapting the regular curriculum
and the students attributed their academic problems to inappropriate instructional
techniques in relaying information. She also found that teachers and students
in this study felt that it was the responsibility of the individual student
to attain popularity, or a positive social place, through a pleasant personality,
the ability of the student not to dwell on their disability, self assertion,
and a willingness "to have a go" (O'Brien, 1989, p.78).
This present study is an
integral part of a larger study which is about the inclusive or exclusive
encounters and relationships of seven blind adults, and three blind children
in New Zealand mainstream schools; and how the meaning of blindness is
constructed through these lived experiences. This present paper, however,
will focus on the memories of the seven adult participants about their
relationships, as children, with their mainstream principals and teachers.
Using the approach of qualitative research (Bogdan and Biklen, 1982; Donmoyer,
1990; Eisner, 1991; Patton, 1987; Reinharz, 1992; Walcott, 1994; Yin, 1984),
data was collected for this study through two to five open ended and semi-structured
interviews which lasted between one and half hours to three hours each.
These adults were braille users, of different ages which ranged from age
16 to age 56, and had various educational experiences in different mainstream
settings. These settings included mainstream schools near the special school,
schools with an attached visual resource unit, and schools with itinerant
teacher support. Data was analyzed inductively and abstractions were built
from particulars which were coded and grouped together into the themes
which form the results of this study.
Also, a discussion group
was formed to help negotiate the meanings within the study. This group
was made up of two people with vision impairments, including a representative
from Ngati Kaapoo (blind families), and a parent of child with a vision
impairment. Their opinions and thoughts about the study formed part of
the interpretation of the participants' experiences. This discussion group
helped to prevent the creation of a 'top- down' project which is a study
dominated by the researchers' concerns, methodologies, and interests, and
to avoid the colonising approach of a 'bottom -up' project in which participants
are evangelistically enlightened by the researchers (Bishop, 1994). The
intent of the discussion group was to form a collaborative research approach
in which people with direct experience of vision impairments interacted
with and advised the principal researcher on the research procedures and
interpretation.
THE THEMES:
FROM SOCIAL DEATH TO THE
SOCIAL
William certainly felt that
it was important to leave the special school. The other participants in
this study, who had lived either at the Foundation for the Blind, or at
the special school which was later established, all felt that it was a
significant achievement to be 'chosen' to participate in the sighted community
via a mainstream school. Otherwise, each of the participants felt that
their lives would be controlled and determined by the Foundation. This
was because they anticipated that they would be sent to work in the Foundation's
workshops for blind people and perhaps even live in the Foundation's block
of hostels, referred to by one participant as "the blind ghetto".
Anne: I um wanted to be
the same as my family. Um I wanted to be like my brothers and sisters.
And my parents wanted that for me too. ..... I thought I was better than
everybody else cos I'd got out of Parnell. And I remember being very annoyed
because at the end of Std 4 I'd had six weeks learning to be sighted. Learning
to be like sighted kids at intermediate school and I came back to the break
up in Parnell and no fuss was made of what I was doing. No mention or fuss.
And I thought I was terribly important. The most important person in the
world but nobody else thought that.
Tom: I think it was considered
I had the academic skills to go (to a mainstream secondary school). But
again ....there was a difference of opinion ..between the headmaster and
one of the senior teachers. One of the senior teachers felt I should stay
back another year...And of course the house staff didn't think I should
go at all. You know they felt this was really breaking out of (the Foundation's)
control: the cradle to the grave sort of stuff.
Sue: I remember...there
was a class of kids who were probably teenagers who were still at Homai
and they were in like the work experience class. And it was never made
plain to us that we would just go onto an intermediate school and I think
I always had it in the back of my mind 'oh will I make the grade' .....And
I mean it was probably blatant obvious from when I was quite young that
I would be able to, but no-one actually made that clear, which was a bit
strange in a way because I was always worried a wee bit about that. It
wasn't until our last year you know which meant we were in standard 4 that
we were told yeah we would be going to intermediate and I think I felt
quite relieved then because I hated to think that I would have to go into
that work experience class.
Hine: I never got asked
if I'd like to go intermediate. I was just told I was going. And I thought
it to be a privilege. I thought well they must think I'm pretty alright.
The belief that leaving
the segregated setting was a privilege and personal achievement can be
linked to what Finkelstein has (1993) identified as the 'social death model'
of disability. Here disabled people are considered not to be able to function
independently in the community, and are placed in institutions where they
are then unable to control their own daily lives. In contrast, once Anne,
Tom, Sue, and Hine were in the mainstream, there was the opportunity to
be social in a culturally valued setting, to establish themselves as persons
similar to others of their age, and to participate in a 'social life'.
They also now had the opportunity to equally participate in the community,
and to find a 'social place'.
Two other participants in
this study, Joe and Stuart, were integrated into mainstream schools at
the beginning of their school career. Joe believed that he could fit in
at a mainstream school, and neither he nor his family saw any reason to
send him away to the residential school. Stuart's family felt the same:
Stuart: It seemed bloody
strange that the youngest child should have to go away just because he
couldn't see and while that might sound acceptable to some people to my
family it wasn't. It was not understood because they didn't see a point.
They didn't see a reason for that.
In these two cases the family,
child, and perhaps teachers and others in their community, constructed
blindness as part of a continuum of human experience at least to the extent
of not assigning to blindness the outcome of social exclusion in school
and other settings.
WELCOMING PRINCIPALS
The principal's attitude
and leadership style is recognised as crucial to a school's philosophy
and value orientation (Ballard & McDonald,1995; Bogdan & Biklen,
1985; Fulcher, 1989). From their research, Bogdan & Biklen (1985) say
that when a principal believes that students with disabilities belong to
the school, then the stage is set for successful mainstreaming to occur.
Vandercook & York (1989) also note that it is important for the principal
"to model an accepting and welcoming attitude toward all children in the
school" so that each person in the school community can be valued for their
uniqueness.
Stuart felt included at
his first primary school and gives indirect credit to the principal for
his inclusion:
Stuart: His attitudes were
only available to me in so far as his teachers attitudes were available
to me and his teachers attitudes to me were always very positive.
Hine also appreciated her
friendly secondary school principal:
Hine: The high school principal.
He was good. Yes (he would mix), if we happened to bang into him or anything
along the way. We saw him at assemblies too of course. But no he was pretty
good.
William, who went to his
local intermediate school with other blind students, stated that his principal
was also inclusive.
William: I think he probably
paid a wee bit more attention to us, to the blind students than he might
have to others. He always used to speak to me quite a bit. ... I thought
he was quite inclusive. And wanted us to be involved in things.
Sue, who went to her local
secondary school, describes her principal as
quite overpowering but she
was really positive about me being there and she was really enthusiastic
that the school would do everything they could to help me.
However, an accepting principal,
alone, could not determine successful inclusive experiences for Sue and
William. Both felt that they were not fully accepted at their schools because
of relationships with teachers that were not inclusive.
Also, for Joe, although
he felt supported by the school principal, he did not feel included because
he did not attend his local school. During his primary school years he
boarded in the 'big city' where there was a mainstream school with an attached
visual resource centre. He travelled to the city from his family's farm
two hours on the bus each week, and so experienced schooling as exclusion
from his home setting. Nevertheless, the principal at the school did remind
him of home:
Joe: Yeah I was actually
good friends with the Principal... Mr T. and I thought that it was pretty
good cos we had a 'T' plough at home so um.... Cos like I have a plough
the same as him so. Yeah I used to have a yarn to him and that. Yeah he
was quite nice. I'm not sure if he's still there but um yeah he's a nice
guy
Joe did not feel included
at school simply because he was away from his own farming community. He
describes his life at this time as being of two worlds: school and home.
Joe: I remember.. going
up there and the first day at school. I was in room one. I misbehaved.
I did a bit ....sort of the first year and that. Cos I wasn't that old.
I was only five and I used to get pretty homesick ..I used to fight all
the time when I first started school. I suppose I was sort of rebelling
or something...I think I found it was pretty hard to make friends and that,
and I was a bit homesick.
In this case blindness was
constructed in a way which brought physical, psychological and emotional
isolation from the home, community, and, perhaps, identity with the distinctive
qualities of farming life.
UNWELCOMING PRINCIPALS
The participants who lived
at or near Homai College felt unwelcomed by those principals at mainstream
schools who grouped them together either in class, or through exclusive
language, so that they were identified not as students, but as 'Homai'
students. Hine did not feel welcomed by her intermediate school principal
as he was more absent than present. She "only saw him at assemblies". She
states also that she did not feel included at this school because
Hine: we were all together.
I thought that was unfortunate... I think we should have been split up.
Now, it would have been scarier, but no I think we should have been split.
Sue and William felt excluded
from their respective intermediate and secondary schools when they were
identified as separate from other students and as belonging elsewhere.
Sue: I think the teachers
... were reasonably happy to have us there but they basically felt that
the responsibility was mainly with Homai to make everything run smoothly.
And they did see us as separate. Like I think the principal and vice-principal
used to talk about the 'blind kids'
William: the principal kept
referring to us as Homai pupils. And I found that really offensive. And
the other teachers called us that too. I don't know whether it was some
sort of prehistoric version of political correctness. Whether they didn't
want to just call us blind pupils or whatever. ...It almost felt to me
at the time like they were trying to disown us...
Tom did not feel the principal
excluded him by his association with the special school, but stated that
he was specifically aware of being separate from part of the school's identity
which was rooted in the headmaster's enthusiasm for sports.
Tom: I think I felt at times
left out of things ... Like especially the sport thing was a big thing.
...Grammar was very much a..., like you know the headmaster at Monday's
assembly depended on how the 1st XV or the 1st XI had got on and if they
had lost then (he was) grim, in fact they were (all) very very grim actually...
He actually took the New Zealand cricket team over to England at some stage.
So there was definite high expectations on sport at school.
For Stuart, although the
mainstream schools he attended were not near Homai College, most of the
time he found the principal was unwelcoming. He initially attributed this
lack of acceptance to a lack of professional support for blind students.
Describing his entrance into the education system, Stuart said:
Stuart: The difficulty of
getting me into a school was horrendous....part of there being no professional
intervention, professional support, at this time meant that schools had
no idea how to deal with a blind child. There was ... one principal of
one school in the area who suggested to my mother that he couldn't take
me because I might jump across the fence at play time and run home....This
was the kind of ignorance.
However, as his school life
progressed, and as professional support became available, the justifications
for his exclusion changed . Stuart's second primary school principal comes
to life in Stuart's description:
Stuart: Corpulent in the
extreme, he looked like a walking pear. ...He was close to retiring ..and
he was this very ponderous public school old fellow who spent most of his
time in his office and he may grace the stage at assemblies occasionally
if he so wished to. ....He regarded the inception of blind children into
his school as an impediment if it was going to affect the administration
of his school and if it was going to affect the image of his school. So
he was one of the principals that was very much tied up with image and....
he was one of the most obnoxious people I think I have ever ever met in
my life ....His view of my being there and of other visually impaired students
who later came to that school was that they were okay as long as they were
within the framework of the school. He didn't want to make any exceptions.
Stuart's local secondary
school principal was similar in that he wanted to avoid challenges.
Stuart: The Principal at
the time ...was a "good news" principal. He liked good news.... You know
he was one of these awful missionary types. I don't know where he got it
from ....but...whatever problems I was having in the mainstreaming system
and trying to get used to the school of his were as far as he was concerned
problems that you know were related to the choice of school.
For these participants,
their principals perceived blindness as outside of their definition of
'student'. Blindness was something their school did not have to 'own'.
INCLUSIVE TEACHERS
Classroom teachers with
a welcoming and genuinely accepting position can create an inclusive learning
environment for the day to day operations of a successful mainstream class
with common sense adaptation of the curriculum and support (Biklen, 1989;
Orlansky, 1979; Searle, Ferguson & Biklen, 1985). In the present study,
Anne, believed that the success of any educational endeavour hinges on
"whether the teachers have the skills to identify the students' abilities,
help the students across the barriers that get in the way; and .. have
a vision of where the kids are gonna end up'. The participants in this
study felt included by a number of their teachers, especially when the
teachers' commitment to education included taking the time to learn the
communication medium of their students:
Hine: Some of them were
pretty amazing. ... I had a science teacher that would actually come along
and he'd draw diagrams for me and go through them with me. And he'd label
them for me as well, because he obviously had a bit of knowledge about
braille. And you know that was really neat..Yeah and that was a real help.
He was a brilliant teacher. I reckon he should never have been there. He
should have been a professor.
Sue: A couple of teachers
at school actually learnt braille while I was there. One of the maths teachers
and one of the typing teachers...which was really helpful."
Another common theme which
occurred amongst the participants of this study is that they felt accepted
by their teachers when their blindness was not considered an impediment
to learning and achieving.
William: I remember thinking
it was quite neat that I was in the A stream with all these other sighted
kids...I don't really know what the teachers thought that a blind child
could achieve. But certainly I don't think we were treated much differently
in terms of the classwork we were expected to do or how we were supposed
to hand it in and things.
Joe: I really haven't had
any really bad teachers. Some teachers make you work more than others which
doesn't do any harm.
Stuart: They were enthusiastic
as well and they were totally committed to educating kids. They didn't
regard themselves as baby sitters they regarded themselves as people who
were educating children
Anne: Extremely positive
(attitudes). I was lucky. My teachers at intermediate school were absolutely
excellent. They were good motivators and good stretchers and no nonsense.
Quite strict.
There was also praise from
the participants when they encountered a teacher who was simply intuitively
inclusive:
Sue: This maths teacher
was just totally natural and just treated me as she would any other student.
You know we just used to talk about general things as well ... it was just
really nice. ... yeah it was just nice for someone to treat you normally.
Stuart: My first class teacher,
she was a wonderful introduction to school really because, I don't know
whether she knew it or not, because her way of teaching things to other
kids was very very relevant to the way things were taught to me.
Anne was appreciative of
a teacher who shared, and sparked, her interest in a particular subject:
Anne: I always used to chat
to the pianists who provided our morning assembly piano music. I valued
the music in the school, very strongly. I valued our music teacher....
She was a bit crazy. I think I was one of the few students in the school
that really liked her. She introduced me to so much pleasurable music.
Joe also continued his theme
of feeling accepted by adults who reminded him of home. He describes his
'best' teacher below:
Joe: When I was in J2, I
suppose I had a teacher called Miss Martin. I think she had parents down
(this way) and that, so that was pretty good. And she'd grown up on a farm.
When teachers approach these
students with similar expectations to those held for others of their age,
but with recognition and responsiveness to their particular communication
and related needs, they construct blindness as part of ordinary human experience.
Such a construction seems to be a key element of inclusive practices.
NON-INCLUSIVE TEACHERS
All regular teachers do
not necessarily have an inclusive viewpoint. A 1984 New Zealand national
survey of primary school teachers found that the attitudes of teachers
towards children with disabilities varied according to the identified disability.
Teachers did not feel able to teach children with sensory disabilities
even when they said that they supported the principle of integration, unless
additional resources, support and training were available (Norman, Sritheran,
Ridding, 1984). Such feelings may be based on the actual experiences of
regular teachers, and were similar to those presented in O'Brien's (1989)
study, where teachers also said that they were unable to cope with the
instructional needs of blind children. Participants in the present study
noticed similar attitudes, and subsequent inadequate teaching practices,
from some of their teachers who made them feel 'different' because of their
particular needs.. Anne stated that her teachers at intermediate "continued
to teach the 'chalk and talk' style. Chalk and talk...on the blackboard."
Most of the other participants also spoke of similar difficulties about
the use of the blackboard. Below are some examples of their comments:
Hine: We weren't prepared
for the speed at which they learnt. Taking notes, we never had to do that
at Homai. Copying things off the board. Our teacher tried to be good and
tried to get us to hurry up. But intermediate was a whole new ball game.
Joe: But one thing though...quite
often it's quite sort of new to them when they put something on to the
blackboard and they've gotta sort of say it too....some are better than
others. ... It takes a bit of getting used to.
Also, there were misunderstandings
between teachers and the participants about Braille which led the participants
to believe that the teachers did not have an adequate knowledge about their
alternative method of reading of reading and writing, and were subsequently
treating them unfairly:
Anne: For a while I only
had one Perkins brailler so there was a bit of an argument about whether
I needed one at school and one at home. They're actually quite heavy to
carry especially when you're an eleven year old. ..My teacher used to argue
that I ought to be able to take it backwards and forwards.... But it was
bizarre because the typewriter was lighter than the Perkins and I had a
typewriter at school and a typewriter at home, but not a Perkins at both
ends. .... Yeah. I knew it was a pen and I knew it was hell of a lot bigger
than a regular pen and I knew I needed it at both places and it was heavy
to carry. So what's the argument...?
William: Well the resource
room was kind of like a home base and you'd go back there and collect your
books for the next period. ..So this particular time ... I thought that
we had finished the maths subject that we were doing,...I thought it would
be the next volume. .... I mean I knew that the teacher jumped around the
place ... And when I got there, we were not using that volume. And so I
explained what I had done, and the teacher said that I had to write, I
think I had to write 100 lines saying "I must remember to bring the right
textbook to class". And I tried to explain that I brought the right textbook,
its just that braille was so bulky that I'd brought the wrong volume. She
wouldn't accept it.
One of Stuart's teachers
actually refused to teach a Physics class because Stuart was in the class:
Stuart: I faced my very
first bit of institutionalised refusal to teach a blind student and it
came in the form of a man called Mr. M. We had the science classes streamed
and I was in the top one .....Mr. M. was supposed to teach the physics
module and he couldn't teach that class because I was in it...I complained.
I went to the Principal and I said "you cannot let this happen. It is not
legal." .... The suggestion was made that I change classes and go into
another class ...I said "No you have put me in this class because I've
earned the right to be there. Now you do something about it. It is your
problem. It's not my problem."...They changed the teacher. Mr. M. went
to some other class altogether, lower down the circle and I was taught
by this very very good science teacher anyway.
Tom attributed his lack
of success in certain academic subjects to his own lack of motivation to
work. However, he also stated at the same time that "some (teachers) felt
having a blind student in the class was a bloody nuisance" and that he
was "left" out. Similar feelings of abandonment were expressed by Hine
about her secondary teachers:
Hine: We were just students
to them and that was it. See with the teachers at Homai, I think we were
a bit more than students. I think they....they really wanted to get us
as far as they could. And they really took the time and they put their
whole energy into it. Unlike the mainstream school, well, 'all you can
do is teach 30 students. And those of you that get it, great, and those
that don't, tough'.
Sue holds a memory of a
class in which she felt left out, but she also felt unchallenged academically.
Sue: My Form 2 class I hated
because they put me into a class who I saw as being.....quite thick really.
And it really annoyed me because I you know I was sitting there and they'd
be doing really basic stuff. And it was just really boring. And the teacher
was really patronising ...I felt really angry that I'd been put into that
classroom because the classes were slightly streamed ... I'm pretty sure
it was a below average one. ... I mean I didn't bomb out in my Form 1 class.
I performed fine. ....but for some reason they just put me into that one.....I
told them I wasn't happy with it and nothing was done. So I just had to
put up with it ...I think what it might have been was that they actually
asked class teachers if they were happy to have a blind kid in their class
and obviously some of them maybe had said "no". And I know there was one
Form 2 teacher who in the past had always taken two blind kids but this
one year she'd said she only wanted one . So they put one (girl) in there
who was probably a bit brighter than me, but then they just put me in this
other class.....I sort of thought well what's the use of really trying
when no-one seems to think I'm capable.
On the other hand, Sue and
Anne sometimes believed that their teachers may have treated them differently
by working too hard and helping too much so that it was noticeable to them
and their classmates.
Sue: I think I felt a little
bit of pressure because I knew that all these people were doing quite a
lot more to make sure that I achieved so I felt a bit of pressure when
it came to exams and stuff to do well....I mean all kids are pressured
to a certain extent, but (their teachers) never had gone to special efforts
to draw diagrams and (to give) a bit of individual attention to explain
stuff.
Anne: Now I got into real
trouble one day cos I actually talked about noise in the classroom and
the teacher told the class off and I still feel bad about that ...the kids
were not noisy at all. ... In fact our class was pretty quiet and our teacher
used to comment that, because I was so sound oriented, she wished that
all the kids would listen as much as I did and and the kids had to focus
on more on sound cues than they would have otherwise without me if I hadn't
been there.
Anne's and Sue's teachers'
attempts to provide natural classroom reading support for them when there
was only print material available also seemed to be ill planned, especially
given the fact that both Anne and Sue did know how to read:
Anne: The teacher organised
somebody to sit next to me. A different person. ... They would rotate through
the class so all the kids had to put up with reading to me at different
times. Yeah. It certainly made me feel different
Sue: In most of my classes,
I had to have whoever sat by me ...read the stuff off the board, you know
to write up. And that was actually a bit of a pain,....I didn't like having
to feel dependent on the other kids in my class.... I think there was a
point where they decided that rather than putting all this stress on one
kid like my friend at that time or whatever, they'd make it so it was sort
of like a buddy system and everyone would have turns doing it. And that
was actually even worse because it meant that kids who wouldn't otherwise
want to do it were forced into doing it. Its really horrible when you're
sitting by someone who you know doesn't want to be sitting by you. You
feel like just saying "oh just don't worry about it, just go away and I'll
get someone else to do it." Cos its horrible feeling indebted to someone
who doesn't even want to be doing it.
Sue further explained that
"ideally they should have had a list of what was going to be written up
on the board already brailled or something. That way I would have been
totally equal"
From these experiences exclusion
is seen as created by the position that the blind student does not belong
in the classroom and that attention to their needs is not part of the teacher's
role. Here blindness is constructed as a negatively valued difference that
can be legitimately discriminated against by, for example, refusing to
teach the blind student.
CONCLUSION
The participants in this
study had been mainstreamed since the 1950s to the present day. However,
despite these mainstreaming practices, none was fully included at their
mainstream school simply because of their blindness. The stories in this
study did not reflect schools which consistently practiced inclusion. Ballard
and McDonald's (1995) study found that a school, which successfully included
children with disabilities, contained a community of staff and families
who all held an inclusive "world view" that children with disabilities
were 'the same as everybody else' (Ballard & McDonald, 1995, p. 20),
which is similar to Bogdan & Taylor's fourth humanizing dimension.
The principals and teachers
in this study held various views. Some principals were perceived as friendly,
helpful, positive and welcoming towards their blind students. Principals
also were seen as impediments to inclusion because they were absent, and
abdicated their responsibility for all of their students. Some principals
labelled, and categorized, their blind students through language and the
inflexible perpetuation of a school image which was rooted in physical
competition. Some also held the belief that children with disabilities
would be of no value to the school. There were also non-inclusive teachers
in the participants' stories about their school lives. These teachers were
not able or willing to change their teaching methods to accommodate all
of their students. They were perceived as unfair when they misunderstood
the reading and writing mediums of their blind students. At other times,
perhaps unwittingly, they stigmatized their blind students by being noticeably
too helpful. They a appeared to be unwilling to plan for, teach, and academically
challenge all of their students. However, there were inclusive teachers
in this study who were described as being enthusiastically committed to
their job and to all of their students; who challenged their students and
did not regard blindness as a barrier to learning; and who naturally shared
themselves and their interests with their students.
The blind adults in this
study had difficulty finding a social place as children in mainstream school
environments. The meaning that other people in their lives gave to their
blindness seemed to define them as different and they were not 'humanized'.
Blindness meant imposed limitations in their educational and social participation.
At other times they were accepted and included by welcoming people who
saw them as they saw every child. All of the participants in this study
stated that, if they had a blind child, they would not send their child
to the special school, but even then, as Anne stated: she "couldn't guarantee
that (she) could give my kid what they needed." Being in the mainstream
does not necessarily mean receiving an appropriate education, as this study
has begun to illustrate, nor does it mean inclusion. Ruebain (1996) defines
inclusion as a "all for one and a one for all philosophy" (p. 2) which
necessitates the rebuilding of schools and communities. New Zealand has
not attempted to reshape it's schools as inclusive for all students in
their communities.. Although the amendments to the Education Act in 1989
gave disabled children in New Zealand the right to attend any state school,
there are no clear guidelines for national inclusion policies. Each school
is also self managing and the individual school's policy is dependent on
the views of its Board of Trustees and staff, limited financial resources,
and the advocacy abilities of parents who have children with a disability
(Ballard and MacDonald, 1995: Codd, 1993; Mitchell, 1992). Inclusion for
all of the blind children in this study would have required an educational
community of inclusive teachers, principals and others who could make a
place for blind children where they would feel valued and wanted; who would
understand and accommodate their student's reading and writing medium;
who would plan ahead; who would challenge the students academically; and
who treated all their students as 'like everybody else'. Such a community
may not yet be able to be 'policied' into practice. However, the importance
of acknowledging and documenting blind people's exclusion experiences may
help to bring cultural and philosophical changes to the community, and
to the socially constructed and disabling meanings of blindness.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Grateful acknowledgement
is extended to all the participants who contributed their stories and wisdom
to this study; to Dr. Jude MacArthur for her support and advice; to the
study's discussion group for their fresh outlook and helpful interpretations;
and to the Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind for the Research
and Development Grant which helped to make this study possible.
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