Pupils who are defective in vision / a report of the Advisory Council on Education in Scotland.

  • Great Britain. Advisory Council on Education in Scotland
Date:
1950
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pupils who are defective in vision / a report of the Advisory Council on Education in Scotland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    is done by sighted children. The blind and many of those who have less serious impairment of vision have problems that are peculiar to themselves. Their social needs, their most natural behaviour patterns, their satisfactions have a disposition and colour that are significantly different from those of sighted children. They require then not an education borrowed from the sighted and modified by their deficiencies, but an education that is designed to meet their needs and to prepare them for a full and harmonious life. 3. Two Main Groups ; Blind and Partially Sighted 9.. It is sometimes assumed that people can be divided into two discrete groups, the blind and the seeing. This assumption is erroneous. There are people who are entirely blind and people who have normal vision, but between these two there are many gradations. Some have the merest perception of light and are unable to discriminate objects ; they are for all practical purposes blind. Many have a degree of impairment that can be adequately corrected by glasses, and they can take their place in school and life on equality with those who have normal vision. Some have vision enough to place them outside the category of the blind both in occupation and in education, but their vision even when corrected as fully as possible does not allow them the range of experience in school or in industry that is available to those whose vision is normal. It follows that education for children with defective vision must provide for three groups. The first group consists of those who with correction can be placed in the same category as pupils with normal vision. The second group consists of the blind and those who while having some perception of light are so lacking in visual discrimination that they require to be educated by methods appropriate to the blind. The third group is most difficult of all to determine and to serve. It includes children who while not being so deficient in vision as to require methods appropriate to the blind have not sufficient sight to enable them to profit from ordinary schooling, those who have vision that is rapidly deteriorating, and also those children whose vision would deteriorate if they were subjected to the visual strains of normal education. Those in this group are usually described as “ partially sighted.” The term is well chosen in that it emphasises their possession of vision and implies that they should be educated by visual rather than by non-visual methods. 10. This Report is not concerned with children whose vision is so nearly normal that they can with suitable correction, remain in ordinary classes in ordinary schools. The needs of such children are adequately met, provided that their spectacles are used when required, are kept clean and are correctly placed in relation to the eyes. ‘Teachers should make certain that these conditions are fully met by all children who use spectacles. The main problems centre in the blind and the partially sighted. In dealing with those two broad classes within the same Report, no suggestion is made that the educational needs of the two groups are similar. It must be emphasised that the needs and interests of the blind and the partially sighted are fundamentally different and that methods of education must also be fundamentally different. The partially sighted belong to the world of the sighted, not to the world of the blind. The two groups are discussed together here simply because they raise certain common administrative issues.
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