Roger,
What Center did you attend? Sounds like one out of the early 50's.
Actually, the training center in Seattle back in 1965, when I
attended, had some pretty decent students. Except for one staff
person, the "Therapists" who taught us "blindness skills" were quick
to remind us that they were the "Professionals" and we were the
Patients. We had on staff a psychiatric social worker, who worked
overtime to find just how our pathetic condition was affected by our
inept sexual mores. Alice Olson was the only decent member of the
staff. Alice was blind. She also had a blind twin sister. She was
not a Therapist. She was an instructor. She taught Braille, typing
and daily living skills. Alice was a task master, hunting us down and
walking us to class, while the therapists all sat in the staff break
room drinking coffee and complaining about their students.
By the time I became director of the training center, we had long
since cleaned house and installed some cutting edge instructors. If
you will allow me a moments bragging, I would tell you that from 1984
until 1993, I had the finest, most effective program for newly blinded
adults in the nation. Okay, bragging is over. We were good, and we
had many success stories. But of course I can scare up some very
angry former students, too. As good a program as we had, we knew that
one size did not fit all.
I tried to instill in my staff the belief that we were effective only
if we were constantly changing and growing. Sadly, this was not in
the tradition of programs that found the Truth Everlasting, and set it
in concrete.
Today I stay out of direct contact with the programs I used to direct.
I left 24 years ago, and the world is much different.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/4/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
At least I'm not alone. I went into rehab with a severe paucity of adult
living skills myself. It was not that I had never learned adult living
skills. It was just that most of them were rather useless in my new
condition. Then I had to face the other blind people who were
contemptuous of me for not being as functional as they were without
regard to the fact that I was brand new to this blindness stuff. The
rehab center taught me some things, but most of these living skills I
had to figure out on my own and I am still figuring out some even now.
On 4/4/2017 11:33 AM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Well Miriam, one thing your story points out, whether East, West,
North or South, as a nation we are run by our prejudices. And no,
your story is not something out of Blind History. It is Right Now
History in the Making. While your story is far different from mine,
overall, there are some very distinct similarities. Yours is a story
I encountered over and over while working in the Orientation and
Training Center.
In my situation blindness or vision loss was never discussed. Despite
my difficulties in school, on the play field, and in my social
life(almost Monkish in nature), I was treated as fully sighted and
expected to behave as such. So my dad taught me to drive. This was
as much a testimony to his courage as to my own success. I learned
from our lessons that I would never be safe on the road. I never did
drive, probably out of fear for my own life as much as for others.
But I did teach my second wife to drive...although I seldom mention it
because she is such a lousy driver.
Anyway, it's very hard for a gangly young teenager to ask a girl out
on a date, knowing that he would also need to tell her that he would
be picking her up on the bus. I did some group dating, but until my
first wife and I began dating seriously, I never took a girl out
alone. But back to my growing up. The positive side of not
discussing my vision was that I was expected to do all the same chores
that anyone else in the family did. I learned to wash and dry and put
away the dishes, prepare the food for meals, and cook. I learned to
do my own laundry by the age of 12, and have done it...along with
Cathy's and the kids, ever since. I mowed lawns, baby sat, and did
odd jobs including picking beans and strawberries for spending money.
Much of this was prior to becoming blind in my left eye at 17, but I
hadn't used that weak eye much prior to the retina detachment.
It was a very new experience to bring adult students into the OTC who
had been so sheltered that they had no adult daily living skills and
no social skills. I still chuckle at the woman, a social worker, who
asked me, "How can you expect to rehabilitate people who have never
been habilitated?"
During my entire career with the Department, it was the same story.
Parents and families driven by guilt, disappointment, anger toward
their family member. This left the blind person feeling rejected,
inferior and useless. And now the family shoved that pathetic lump of
a human being into my arms saying, "Do something!" I have more
stories than there is space to tell. Most of these people moved on
into the real world and managed to survive...sort of. Some became
alcoholics or drug dependent. Some adapted and put up a shell of
normalcy over their damaged Being. But a very few, like yourself, had
the drive and the inner courage and determination to make the best
life they could. And in so doing they also have begun to put a new
face on what it is to be blind.
What we do is an uphill struggle. Like our political beliefs, we are
few in number. We are like the spawning Salmon trying again and again
to leap the rapids and find a safe haven upstream. We may never reach
it, but it's in our Nature to keep trying.
Have I mentioned before that I really respect you for your strength in
the face of a world that has crushed so many of our blind brothers and
sisters?
Carl Jarvis
On 4/3/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
Interesting. Well, let me tell you a short story of my path to social
work
and what it was like when I got there. My mother was really worried
about
what kind of work I could do when I grew up. After all, I was this
handicapped child, legally blind. She had reason to be worried. I'd been
thrown out of the nursery school I attended after I fell down the cement
stairs in the front of the building. The sun was shining on them in such
a
way that there were no shadows and I didn't have depth perception. So
she
asked the only person she knew who had an education and might no the
answer,
our family doctor who also was a family friend. Dr. Weinstein looked
into
the matter and suggested that I might become a social worker. I was,
maybe,
twelve or thirteen years old. He explained that social workers helped
people. So it was decided. I thought that would be a good thing to do. I
was
absolutely sure that I could not get married, have children, or run a
household. After all, my mother never taught me to do any household
chores
except to shell peas. So I latched onto that goal and never let go. What
Dr.
Weinstein didn't know was that schools of social work in and around New
York
City weren't exactly delighted to welcome legally blind students. The
most
prestigeous was at Columbia University. It was called The New York School
of
Social Work. Back in 1959, it was perfectly acceptable to refuse someone
on
the basis of blindness and they did. Adelphi School of Social Work said
they'd accept me if I managed to find my own field placements because
they
couldn't guarantee me any. Field placements were the heart and soul of
social work education. N Y U said if I proved that I could find a job
and
work for one year, they'd consider accepting me. I think, perhaps the
Social
Work School at Hunter College accepted me unconditionally. But then
someone,
maybe a legally blind sociology professor of mine, maybe the recreation
director at the Lighthouse, told me that I should apply to a school away
from New York so that I would have to leave home and could learn to live
on
my own. That's how I ended up at the University of Michigan.
Interestingly,
they accepted me on the basis of my interview at Columbia which had
refused
me. But what I wanted to do was counseling or psychotherapy so I wanted
a
concentration in psychiatric social work. The person in charge of that
program refused me on the basis of my blindness. By the way, back then,
I
had a lot of useable vision. I was not using a cane and I was reading
with a magnifying glass. Anyway, they insisted that I take the
rehabilitation sequence. That was the only way I'd get a fellowship. It
was
probably the only way I got in. The rehab agency where they placed a
group
of us was dreadfully backward. The workers were called agents, not
counselors. All they cared about was getting jobs for the least disabled
clients so they could get raises which were based on the number of
closures
they got. The School of Social Work placed students there because they
thought that we, and our supervisor, who the school also provided, could
be
agents of change. It was truly an insane idea. I begged them for a
psychiatric field placement for the second year, but the head of the
psychiatric sequence said she would only permit me to have one that
wasn't
certified. Instead, they offered me a family service agency which would
have
been fine if I'd had a good supervisor and was allowed the kind of cases
which permitted me to learn to do counseling. Those were white, middle
class
clients and they were given to experienced staff members. I learned a
lot
about race segregation and poverty that year because the agency gave me
the
cases that they considered worthless and hopeless. So actually, I got a
real
social work education that year, not the shortcut to becoming a
psychotherapist that I might have gotten if I weren't visually impaired.
When I graduated, I could have gotten supervisory jobs and, in one case,
a
director's job, if I'd been willing to work in northern Michigan or down
South. The guy at the Lighthouse wanted me to take the job as director of
a
tiny agency for the blind in some southern state or other. I wanted to
live
and work in New York. The family agencies in New York didn't want me,
even
with a family agency placement. Of course they didn't. I was blind and
they
probably figured out what the agency in Yipsilanti was really like. I
worked
for 2 days in a little family agency in Patterson, NJ and quit because
there
was no way I could do that commute, and I didn't want to live in
Patterson.
The New York State Commission for the Blind put pressure on the New York
Sstate Dept. of Mental Health to hire me in an after-care clinic for
people
just released from mental hospitals. This wasn't what I had in mind, but
the
location was OK. Only the director of that clinic didn't want me there
and
when it was my turn to get one of the offices with real walls, a real
door,
and a window, they wouldn't let me have it because they said it was too
far
for me to walk. I did walk back there to the bathroom several times a
day,
however. So I stayed in my office at the front with dividers rather than
walls and no windows. When I left, where do you suppose I went? I went
where
they all wanted me to go, to the Industrial Home for the Blind which was
a
miserable place to be. There are other things that happened like how no
one
wanted to hire me when I thought I'd return to work when my older
daughter
was five, and when a former classmate of mine, who was the head of
social
services at an agency for mentally ill people, refused to hire me because
of
my disability. But eventually, I did work on my own, for 30 some odd
years
in adoptions. And even then, disability caused difficulties. But social
work? It didn't practice what it preached when it came to accepting
people
into its ranks.
Miriam .
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, April 03, 2017 8:37 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy]
Re:
[blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] NY
meeting:
‘End US embargo of Cuba! Get out of Guantánamo!’
Miriam, (second try)
Back in the 50's and 60's I recall declaring that there were three types
of
people who were totally self centered, self serving, and stuck up. They
were Marines, Texans and Social Workers.
I knew decent young guys graduating from high school who enlisted in the
Marine Corps and when they finished their four year hitch, they couldn't
keep their shirts buttoned because the buttons seemed to burst off their
chests. I met people from Texas who were so pleased with themselves
that
they preferred a full length looking glass over another human being.
But
the worst, the very, very worst of all were the Social Workers. I know
that
they had to have been born just like everyone else was born. First
nasty,
disgusting sex, followed by great labor pains...now it's called
contractions, and then there they were, babies. But Social Workers seem
to
have simply materialized at some point, as new adults. 23 years or 25
years
old, proudly presenting their Masters Degree from Stanford, Yale or
Princeton. And in that piece of paper rested all of the wisdom and New
World Thinking. The young social workers of that time even looked down
their noses at the old social workers. Blessed with Absolute Truth,
they
went forth to damage the children of the world. And they weren't any
much
better with older adults, either. I often wanted to ask, but was far
too
polite, if it weren't difficult to work all day with a corn cob up their
butt.
Over the years I have become so much wiser and far more tolerant. I
have
met some down right decent Marines. In fact my Brother-In-Law was such
a
creature. And so is my eldest son-in-law. Then I met some really nice
young adults, a group of them traveling together. They were a bit
nervous
about coming so far out west, thinking there was great lawlessness out
here.
We met at a conference and I fell in love with all of the young
women...I
was between wives at the time, and I asked them from whence they came.
"Texas!" they beamed proudly.
Later I even had a male friend from Texas. I think the difference is
that
these people were, "From" Texas.
Finally, after holding firm to my belief that Social Workers were really
Goblins who grew in the corn patch and took on Humanoid bodies, I
finally
met a few who did alter my long established belief. I even hired a
Social
Worker for my staff. She was, and still is, a cracker jack of a woman.
I
hired her as one of two Braille Instructors. But her real job was to
pull
folks out of their crappy attitudes. She was amazing at it.
Yup. I've come a long, long way toward open acceptance of
everyone...well,
almost everyone. In fact, that list is far too long to post here.
Carl Jarvis
