I can't help it, I must add my two cents' worth here.
I am writing from the viewpoint of a person who is a braille reader, not
a braille transcriber.
I learned Nemeth in the late 50s
and early 60s and used it in high school. I was blessed to have a
braille based education and I first learned Nemeth in public school from
a resource teacher who knew Nemeth and who could read it and write it, too.
I was amazed to learn from one of the lists I belong to that one of the
people had never learned Nemeth. So, my first thought is this: Are the
visually impaired teachers qualified to teach totally blind students
Nemeth or any other math braille code for that matter? Although I liked
my high school resource teacher very much, I don't think she was as
qualified to teach Nemeth as the resource teacher I had in public
elementary school. I believe a sighted VI teacher who doesn't read and
write braille proficiently and who has only learned braille from a
transcriber's point of view won't be able to understand how to teach a
blind person who depends solely on braille to any code of braille to
someone who has no experience of braille, whether it's a student in
Kindergarten or a person who has lost his or her sight later on in their
childhood.
I don't think that just learning braille from a transcriber's course is
enough to qualify a person to teach braille to someone else.
So, if there aren't resource teachers or VI teachers who are qualified
to teach either Nemeth or UEB math braille, then the poor students must
struggle to learn the braille math code as well as the math itself. The
transcriber will assume the student knows the math code and the
studen'ts VI teacher won't be able to answer any questions about what a
symbol means.
If an adult, like me, doesn't use any of the higher math symbols and
doesn't use any of the scientific and/or chemistry code, the code
learned in school will be forgotten. Yes, I remember the arithmetic
symbols for Nemeth, but I have forgotten everything I have learned in
algebra and geometry and I've forgotten the Nemeth symbols for this
higher math.
So, I think the problem of Nemeth and UEB math boils down to two things.
Are there VI teachers who are qulaified to teach either math code?
If a student has already learned Nemeth well and understands it switch
to a totally new math code? Blind children who are in the early grades
could probably switch but those who are learning braille for the first
time could learn either math code, if there are qualified people to
teach it and transcribe it.
Math was not my best subject in school, so I sympathize with any blind
kid who must learn to switch codes as well as learn how to solve the
math problems. Their math teachers in public schools can only teach the
math, they have no clude about how to teach math braille.
I guess I've written more than my two cents' worth.
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