Rensselaer Union, Volume 3, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 June 1871 — Education of the Blind. [ARTICLE]

Education of the Blind.

A new feature in the education of the blind has been developed in Great Britain. Many could not be sent to schools that are for the purpose, poverty forbidding; and these schools being few, distance adds to the Inconvenience. The new thing is this—to teach the sightless along with the sighted in any school. Of course the raised type is used, but in the lessons and classifications no difference is made, nor is any extra trouble experienced by the teacher. Black letter books are also used by the friends of the blind to help them in study at home. In school they use their own* kind several half hours daily, and take their place along with the others in all oral exercises, such as spelling and questioning. The merit of devising the plan belongs to a Mr. Alexander Barnhill, Superintendent of the Glasgow Mission to the Out Door Blind; and the honor of introducing it belongs to a Mr. Thomas Kay, head master of the Greenock Charity School. This gentleman says thtp, whatever doubts he liad of the experiment previously, have, after a year’s trial, been com pletely dispelled, and that, “if teachers would only make the experiment, every blind child in the country might be educated in the common schools with very little additional expense.”