2017-11-08 06:11:41

@24 Not having been in the situation, I have briefly shared your thought process, but I agree with post 27 in that there is a definite degree of fear. I'd also like to add though that not being in a place like that for years (gosh, one year feels like a long time, students attended these schools for a lot longer than that) eliminates the connection that you'd have with the place. Even if you hate it, you'll still likely be scared to rebel against its system.

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2017-11-08 07:29:41

Sir Badger nailed it in post 27, though I will say I was there for two years and did pretty much all the fighting  I was able to at eight years old, eg, not obeying without question like the rest of the Daleks.

for punishments, corporal punishment has been illegal in  Uk in schools since the sixties I believe, but it was generally as Sir Badger said intimidation tactics or emotional manipulation, "it is the rules" was their favourite phrase. On one occasion when I was "guilty" of talking to another boy at night I was given a long sermon on how one of the boys in my dormitory had some undisclosed illness and would be in hospital unless he slept, and since he was the  of one of the school governors this would get back to my parents and the police (the boy in question was absolutely fine, it was complete balls but unfortunately very emotionally manipulative balls).. 
There were then more mundane yet still quite nasty things like long hours copying in braille or being made  to get up an hour earlier than everyone else.

My class teacher was actually a dead ringer for Prof Umbridge in harry Potter and the Order of the phenix (and believe me, when you've copied in braille for a couple of hours it feels! like it's cutting your hand open).

The school where II went is actually closed now, and good riddance.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-11-08 21:24:04

Does anyone remember that article I was talking about righting in my earlier post? Here it is...
http://punchback.ddns.net/en/articles/2/
I still think I need to proofread it a little more, but for now it looks pretty good to me.

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2017-11-08 21:50:35

Having gone to a mainstream school from the mid 90's up until 2005, and then completing my high school education in a school for the blind, I definitely have perspective on both sides of this issue.

I've heard that mainstreaming is handled much better these days. I sure hope so, because my experience, in a tiny school where no one had ever dealt with a blind student before, at least not in the elementary school I attended, was damaging on many levels. it's a shame that the term bullying gets thrown around so casually these days, and has been diluted from its true meaning, because what I experienced there on a daily basis was far from a laughing matter. Having said that, I at least knew that I was being held to the same standards as every other student, and was, in fact, called out frequently for things like not doing my homework while the class clowns and worst bullies got away with everything. The reason I went to the school for the blind in the first place was due to an incident which I definitely don't want to go into, but suffice to say it was a result of the culmination of over 10 years of pent up rage directed towards teachers, students, and even my family, who never supported me in all that I was going through either. They were against me going to the school for the blind at all, because they were afraid that it would cause me to become lazy, and that I wouldn't amount to anything once I left. That turned out to be true, sadly, but they really had no choice after the incident that got me kicked out of the public school I had attended. It was their easiest option, because otherwise we would have had to move.

There are many, many things that I could tell you about my time there, not all of them completely negative, but I'll stick to a couple of major points.

One of the very first things I noticed, within days of being there, was how unprofessional many of the staff members were. Teachers, and teachers' aides, would congregate in the doorways of classrooms while we were all doing an assignment, and talk loudly about their problems with other students. More times than not, said students were sitting right there. I was horrified at this practice. Not even my worst public school experiences could hold a candle to that. So, me being 15 years old and thus stupid and rebellious, I confronted two of the worst offenders one day after class. I might as well have put a target on my back for the rest of my time there, because after I did this, not only did they not change, they, and other teachers as well, actively encouraged students to shun me. not that I would have gotten along with most of them anyway; I had never learned to socialize properly due to being treated like either a leper or a punching bag at public school, but it was just the fact that they couldn't stand to be wrong, so they made me out to be this horrible person who would lead anyone who dared to come near me down a bad path. I did have a few friends, who mostly were misfits themselves for one reason or another, usually because they couldn't stand the school either, but I know they took a lot of crap for hanging around me. I'll be forever grateful to them for standing by me; they really did not have to do that and sacrifice their reputations for me.

I'll give one example that illustrates what these teachers would do. So one year, we were going to have one of our school dances. I don't remember which one it was, but I think it might have been the Halloween dance. Anyway, they didn't want to hire a deejay for this particular event for some reason, so they asked for a student to volunteer to do it. I did, naturally, because I did, and still do, have an extensive library of music covering tons of genres. Although admittedly it was much smaller in those days. So they told me they would think about it. A few days later, a friend of mine said he'd heard two teachers' aides talking about who was going to provide the music for the dance. One of them said I'd asked if I could, and the other said, "No way that's happening, she would just play devil worshipping music the whole time." They knew damn well that my friend was standing right there and would tell me they'd said it, too.

I could go on for hours and hours about this. I could talk about the guy who verbally and sexually harassed me for years, but no one would do anything about it because they felt sorry for him due to his additional disabilities, which were not mental in nature, so he knew exactly what he was doing. Or maybe the fact that, if you lived in the dorms, as i did, you weren't allowed to sit outside, let alone go anywhere, unless it had been preapproved by your parents and the staff weeks in advance. Don't even get me started about the disastrous pilot project that they called apartment living, either, where you were supposed to learn how to take care of your own apartment, but actually caused me to go into a severe depression, which one certain staff member literally laughed in my face about, no less.

The only other thing I will say at this point is that I think it's true that academics suffer at these schools, or at least they did where I was. I remember hearing, although I can't recall who said it, that it was because the school was comprised of mainly students with additional disabilities, they got special exceptions and were not held to as rigorous of standards by the state. So the pacing was definitely slow, but it was more than that. Most nights, we either didn't have homework at all, or we got study halls, and while I can appreciate that some students did struggle with the workload, I could basically get my assignments done in 5 minutes. I don't say this to boast, because I'm really not intelligent. I know this because during my senior year, I decided to do a little experiment. For the last half of that school year, I decided that I was not going to do one assignment for my health class, because if the experiment failed, I knew that no one in their right mind would care if you failed a health class. So, I didn't, and guess what? I didn't fail. It was literally impossible for anyone to receive a failing grade in any class, because if you missed assignments, the teachers would breathe down your neck, offer extensions, and, if all else truly failed, you couldn't participate in sports or other activities until you completed your work. Come to think of it, though, the health teacher didn't even bother to chase me down while I was analyzing the situation, probably because I wasn't enrolled in any activities worth taking away from me anyway.

What I'm getting at is that, after I graduated, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that i was completely unprepared for college. Sure, I took the ACT, and I had an average score, but I knew that had I stayed in public school, I would have at least felt somewhat ready to tackle college. I did not, however, want to put myself through the humuliation of having to take remedial classes, or have to ask for tutoring, and be known as that stupid blind girl that the tutors would probably snicker about over drinks later, since, as I understand it, most tutors are just volunteering students. I had a few other more personal reasons to not attend college too, but, although my parents still resent me for it, and throw it in my face during fights, that is one thing I absolutely do not regret. I'm glad I didn't put myself through all that stress.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2017-11-08 22:01:09 (edited by CAE_Jones 2017-11-08 22:04:39)

... yikes yikes
at29: The actions of the people involved speak for themselves, but might I draw attention to the fact that a prison cell / emergency shelter was in such a poor state that a malnourished 10-year-old could make enough of an effort to tunnel out as to require being stopped by force? It's way less uncommon than it should be for abuse to go unacknowledged, but if the place was falling apart that badly, that says it won't be dealt with, not because of croniism, but because of apathy. If everything happened exactly as described, I see 3 things coming of notifying the Sheriff: nothing, an investigation consisting of "hey, a kid said you did something abusive...?" "They lied and also are a dirty criminal" "OK, sorry to bother you", or an actual investigation. The last one would be the most surprising.
Also, maaaaybe suggest a journalist ask for a tour and specifially for the cell...ar? On short notice (see: Pyongyang). Anyone can tell a story, and any authority figure can be dismissive or corrupt, but investigative journalists with enough evidence to turn into page views can summon the wrath of Twitter, which if I remember correctly tricked Legion into possessing a guy where Jesus would find them, then ditched.

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2017-11-08 23:21:49 (edited by Dan Gero 2017-11-08 23:23:18)

The part of the wall that was coming apart was about a foot in diameter I think. I don't think they'd dismiss it, because I hear abuse, either physical, mental
, or both, goes on in a lot of schools. It's kind of hard to dismiss something like that if a lot of blind people have gone through hell in those schools. The last time I went there for summer camp was 2016, and they have gotten better, but they still did a terrible job of moderating the place. I was bullied right in front of the staff and they always claimed they didn't see it and just dismissed it. Regardless of how much better they've gotten, they still need to be prosecuted for the things they've done, because there's no excuse for taunting and beating a malnourished blind child, regardless of how mean I was.

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2017-11-08 23:27:49

@Turtlepower, couldn't agree more with your post. I also experienced some of the events you mentioned on your post in my primary school.

2017-11-09 00:26:07

Wow, shotgunshell. Is that.... Real? Seems pretty unbelievable that staff would do things like that.
The school in my area has had many lawsudes against it. Apparently in the 50s staff would throw braillers at students, and in the 70s someone had burn marks on their back or something. I'm not sure what's true and what isn't, though.

I am the blind jedi, I use the force to see. I am the only blind jedi.

2017-11-09 00:39:40

well at my school bullying was pretty much ignored but when we were in our last year there was a kid that was causing problems. the school did nothing about it but the deputy head had words with a couple of us from my class and told us to deal with it quietly next time we got him alone. basically we we were told to give this kid a kicking by a member of staff who would ignore it if anything was reported.

and another time a kid with behavioural problems had refused to come to a lesson. the teacher picked 4 of us who were the biggest and told us to, "go and get him, if he doesn't want to come, make him."
I got a black eye out of that incident, he actually didn't get a mark but because we did as ordered, which I regret now although we didn't have much choice, he reported us to the head and we got yelled at and put on detention for the rest of the term. no good saying the teacher told us to do it, just makes life worse.

Who's that trip trapping over My bridge? Come find out.

2017-11-09 00:47:22 (edited by Dan Gero 2017-11-09 00:49:23)

@Post34 It is real. Nobody could make something like that up, at least not to my knowledge.
@Post35 There's always a choice, when the teacher told you to do it you could have said no I'm not going to.

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2017-11-09 01:48:15 (edited by SirBadger 2017-11-09 01:56:43)

not at my school there wasn't. see my previous posts. I didn't get involved in the first part of that i wrote about, 2 other lads did though. as for the second, i do regret taking orders because the person in question did have problems i didn't know about. we didn't actually do anything to him though. when we turned up he lost it and lashed out. i got punched in the face and grabbed his arm. one of the others grabbed the other and we marched him to the room he should have been in.

I'm not trying to justify that though, just pointing out the kind of things that went on and that were not only allowed by teachers, but actually ordered.

that same poor kid was expelled not long after for smoking and sent to a school for children with extreme behavioural problems. this was the kind of thing we were threated with too. toe the line or you'll go somewhere like he went.

at a guess the teachers did things like that because they knew they'd be in a lot of trouble if they used force against a pupil. so they'd just order some of the other boys to do it. only come back then is the students get in to trouble and they can deny they had any part in it.

Who's that trip trapping over My bridge? Come find out.

2017-11-09 03:08:40

@Post37 and you didn't tell your parents about it?

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2017-11-09 03:16:03

Parents aren't always the best source of support, assuming they'll support you at all. Some, like mine, prefer to bury their heads in the sand. And part of that can come in the form of blaming you when things go wrong. I'm about as far from perfect as one person can be, but i do know that some of the times when my parents claimed I made them look bad were actually instances when the school, whether that was the public school I attended or the school for the blind, were at fault. They just had no clue how to be there for me.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2017-11-09 04:13:25

I'll tell you I went to public school from kindergarden through graduate school and even to get my doctorate. I did not exactly have an assistant. I had a teacher who made me come in an hour early for school and we learned Braille and stuff like that and she was from the county. I also had a mobility instructor who gave me semi-weekly lessons in mobility and navigation and she was so good I could manage the busses in my town at 5 years old.  I had a person follow me around school as an assistant for about 6 minutes until my Mom called the school and got them to get rid of her. Only thing I didn't do is I actually got exempt from PE after elementary, but that is as much because I have weird shoulders that can dislocate on just a little pressure (I can't lift more than 20 pounds no matter how strong I get in terms of muscles) and have a tracheotomy.

My parents also were very adamant I learn socialization and stuff and did a lot to teach me on their own part. So I never developed rocking and I always looked at people when I talked to them. Though I have, and still have an eye-pressing habit that I indulge when I know I'm alone if I'm not careful.

I did everything the other kids did, I even took part in the potato gun marksmanship challenge in AP Chemistry (the teacher made four different potato guns, each running on one of the four gas laws and you got to fire once for every one you could properly remember and do calculations with. I wasn't the most accurate shot but I won anyhow because I was one of the few who knew all four laws.

As for adaptive tech, I always had it, but I also learned on how to get grants and such to reduce the cost or even get it for almost nothing. Also, my state is one of the few that still has a separate department for the blind that isn't lumped in with other disabilities and even has an adult education center for the blind alone. but I've done a lot of self-advocacy, learning how to advocate for myself from my mother doing it first when I was younger and making it clear I had to do it.

I never went to my state's school for the blind, but from my good mobility instructor's statements she gave to me on it, "It wasn't for the college-bound like you but it was good for kids who had bad home situations and could be a refuge for them," though she was highly critical of schools for the blind in general.

As I never wound up learning to cook all that well and then my vision went from 20:400 to almost nothing very quickly, the mobility skills I used are no longer viable and I have to learn a lot of mobility skills over again now, using different techniques, so I'm having a stint in an adult education for the blind facility soon enough. I take it when my work isn't in the way instead of vacation so I can become more independent. Budget cuts mean in my state I go there or I won't get enough training and although my parents and family were big in teaching me a lot growing up, they had a lot of areas they didn't know how to teach me, so I spnd a little time each year with some who do.

I'm far from helpless so I would prefer just working at my own home if I could on stuff like this, but that isn't a viable thing with the way funds for the state are, so that's what I have to do. So schools for the blind have a point to existing, but not so much anymore. I also began school in 1990 if you want a year to pin it down on.

In college there is also a disability resource center, and in later stuff, I was able to get funding to help with  a research assistant at times and also thanks to modern tech, most modern philosophical journals are available as digital things I can use my screenreader on.

so again, the places have their uses and I have to use one now for mobility and cooking (though I'm teaching myself a lot through trial and error at home in terms of cooking and cleaning.) but I think if you can, go public in terms of education. I have a lot more going on than probably several of you and I handled a rather crappy school, and went through college just fine.

Though I think it might depend on schools too. I met a bunch of people in high school who went to the Texas one and they seemed great, extremely well-educated both in terms of academia and socialization and mobility.

2017-11-09 05:34:48

@38 part of the psychological thing with those places was that they were in control. parents was another of their mind games. if you did something wrong, we'll tell your parents and they'll yell at you too kind of thing.

so going home and telling your parents, the teacher told me to do this or that was unthinkable because you had it hammered in to you that they wouldn't believe you and the staff would give their own version and be believed.

that kind of mentality was used by staff there for much worse things too which I won't go in to but I was fortunate enough not to have ever been a victim of that.

Who's that trip trapping over My bridge? Come find out.

2017-11-09 11:31:31

"Sir badger I remember the @we'll tell your parents@ thing my specialist school was a fan of that one too.

Now on the bullying issue, I definitely had problems at the special school but that was more shunning and me being an outsider. My secondary school, which was a mainstream  school had things happen which were pretty extreme  which I won't go into and yes, did leave me with issues.

In that case though I don't think it was because it was a mainstream school, it was basically because the school was a shithole. The county council had the bright idea of saving a school from closure by sticking the unit for blind kids in it, which meant a huge culture of covering things up among the exec staff that went as far as encouraging a lot of kids to not take gcse's so that they could insure a good pass record, and even getting some of the worst offenders out of the way whin offstead inspection season, not to mention things like literally walking out of classes when things got too bad.

Things in that school were pretty dam awful, however I don't put this down to it being a mainstream school, so much as it being basically a shithole in the worst part of the county with a catchment area full of complete scumbags and criminals, heck it was a school where knives were pulled on teachers.

The school where I finished and did my a levels was vastly different, but that was in a far better catchment area and had far better people attending, indeed it is where I should've gone from year 7 onwards (that's age eleven), and where my brother went, but due to me not being able to use a laptop and there being nobody around to transcribe braille at the time I was forced to go to the shithole.

Said Shithole is also closed now I think, though I have considered suing the local authority over that one.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-11-09 22:20:29

I wouldn't say I am 100 percent against schools for the blind, but now that I think of it, I should probably have began in such a school and continue in a mainstream one, rather than doing the reverse. It wasn't too bad overall, but these 4 last years that I spent in such a school clearly weren't my favourite and though things weren't as bad as what was described in the last posts, I and many other pupils felt like we were much to constrained compared to how we would have been otherwise, somewhat like what was said in post 1.
And I also agree that it's better not to stay in that kind of school for too long.

2017-11-11 20:07:41 (edited by Ghost 2017-11-11 20:13:02)

hi all,
This turned out to be a very long post.
Let me provide my experiences with blind schools. So, I would like to start by saying that I am also 100% against blind schools. My experience at my first school was dreadful. Some of the students would gang up on me and bully for no reason. Once, a kid who was a few years older than me ganged up on me with his friends, kicked me to the ground, climbed up on my back, and kicked me in my ribs a few times. None of the teachers did anything about it. I later learned that a few of the teachers were watching him beat me. Also, the teachers would exact corpral punishment on the students.  The teachers liked to slap students in the face and pull their ears hard. One of the vice principals, who was also blind, was quite extreme. He would punch students in the face and pick them up. Once, the teacher found some of the faucet  handles I stole and hid.  Knowing the vice principle, and being at a young age, I said one of the other students had taken the faucets. The vice principle punched the students and nearly threw the student out of the third floor window if the class teacher hadn't told him to take it easy. That same vice principal apparently on his guard teacher duty, one day at night, called three female resident students and raped them. The story was published on the news, and the teacher was sent to jail for 5-7 years. Around that  time, it was towards the end of the school year, and our teacher stopped coming to class for some reason. Some of the students in my class started ganging up on me. They were clawing at me, kicking me and trying to throw me to the ground. I shouted until my voice was hoarse, but noone came out of the other classes, even though I could hear teachers continue talking inside. I eventually ran to the toilets, and the turkish toilets have a faucet inside them by standard. These ones happened to have long hoses attached to them. As the other students followed me into the bathroom,  I took cover in a stall and sprayed highly pressurized water onto them as they tried to pursue me into the stall.  This allowed me to take a break for a while, and find a semblance of calm. If I were to list all the truly awful experiences I had in my first school, I could write a large book. In one particularly bad experience, a much older teenage student would follow me around, and fire an airgun directly into my ear. It is noteworthy here to say that, I was 7 at the time. The student was with a group of students mostly, and they would stalk me, often waiting near my classroom, or in the boys bathroom. Once, in the boys bathroom, he tried to stick the gun directly into my ear canal.  The situation got so bad at times that, I would  get permition to go to the bathroom during class to avoid encountering those students.  When I couldn't go to the bathroom in class, I would go downstairs to the lower floor boys bathroom, or the girls bathroom. The only thing that was done about this was the teacher forced the boy to apologize.
Also, once at my first year there, one of the older students tried to burn down the school. He apparently used the braille books as fuel for a fire in one of the classrooms. The teachers managed to put the fire out, though the classroom was severely damaged, and most of the books, and the bookshelf were destroyed in the fire.  The school also smelled like smoke for a long while.
My experience here lasted for about 1.5 years, upon which we moved, and I was sent to another blind school. My experiences here were nothing compared to the first school, limited only to the teacher shouting at us, and prefering certain students. In my final blind school, where I spent my middle school years,  was still nothing compared to that school, though my first year was aawful. In the first year, some of the students would make fun of me in almost every conceivable way, and call me names. As I am a bilingual english/turkish speaker, there are some sounds in turkish that I don't pronounce well. Those students would make fun of the way I said certain sounds, and insult me for doing so. This got to a point where I might've had some psychological problems as a result of this.
I also had some teacher problems.  we had psychotic teachers who would yell at us for anything or would insult us. That was extremely humiliating to be insulted and demeaned by a teacher in front of all my peers. There was one teacher in particular, who in his mobility class, once tripped one  student and laughed when he fell. He would taunt us for being too slow or  clumsy. He knew I was scared of snakes, and would  keep telling me that snakes were around.
In one particular gym class, he forced everyone to run 8 laps around the gym, encluding me, even though I had a heart valve condition, and had a signed medical report for that which explicitly stated that I was forbidden from participating in high efort tasks. That was one of the worst experiences of my life.  He ordered us to run in pairs, and I was exhausted by the third or forth lap and my pair was literally dragging me. Even though I told him multiple times that I felt unwell, he told me that I was fine and that I was to continue. When the eight laps were finally over, I felt terrible, and was in a cold sweat.  All I can say about this is, if something had happened to me during that incident, my family could probably sue his ass off in court for that.
After all of these experiences, I would under no condition recommend blind schools to anyone. During my times there, they were worse than a jail cell to me. In a jail cell at least, you are allowed to go out once a day. At school, going out of school grounds  was entirely up to the whims of the teacher.
Edited: added content

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

2017-11-11 20:23:09

I really wish the death sentence was still a thing, all these blind school teachers need to be executed for this. For anyone who thinks I'm telling a bad joke, I'm actually 100% serious. They need to be executed, no questions asked. Raping blind children? Raping a person or even a child is bad enough, but raping blind children? Punching people in the face, throwing them out of windows?

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2017-11-11 20:40:08

hi,
I agree with you 100%. He apparently called them to the bedroom the teacher on guard stays at, and raped at least 3 children. The article is still in the turkish news. One of the children apparently went to the principal and told him about it. The principal then called the police, who sent their sexual crimes investigation unit to the school.

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

2017-11-11 20:41:13

@45, I'm pretty sure not every school for the blind is as extreme, or terrifying, as described in post 44... more to the point, I take anything said by someone who freely admits to stealing and hiding school focets with a grain of salt. This has been a long discussion and an interesting one... but it's good to see there are others with perspectives like my own. Schools for the blind have their place, but I am definitely not a fan of them... I never went to one, and given the chance to redo things, I still wouldn't. I personally can't think of any advantage to a school for the blind over a mainstream integrated experience, other than maybe the fact that physical education and athletic activity is more readily adapted and available. And to anyone else who says anything about the social environment and being among your own kind... that can only last so long. Blind people can't stay in the blind community forever, and being sheltered will make the experience that much more awkward... I've been saddened by many meetings with blind people who are bright, intelligent people, but who don't get very far because of poor social skills... many of which come from attending a specialized school.

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2017-11-11 20:54:38

hi,
Seriously? You bring up something that I did about 14 years ago? Do you think I'm mentally deranged or something? Or that I'm delusional? I swear that every event that I described in my previous post took place. In the case of the rape incident, I can link to articles in the turkish media, which will support my point.

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

2017-11-11 21:16:07

I'm not saying those things didn't happen. Just saying that not every signle school for the blind in the world reflects those experiences. Having said that... that definitely must have been one heck of a school, and not only blind schools have those issues. any sort of specialized or segregated school seems to be cause for issues like that.

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2017-11-11 23:00:54

Double post, but also... @shotgunshell, I think you're throwing out the capital punishment a little too freely.

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2017-11-12 00:00:36

Yeah, it is true that there are a few things that schools for the blind do well, most of which are centered around extracurriculars and sports. I said in my original post in this topic that not all of my experiences at the school I attended were negative. Well, most of the positive experiences that I had were because I was able to participate in sports, something I never in a million years could have dreamed of doing in public school. Besides, gym class was a nightmare in public school, just another excuse for everyone to point and laugh at me. Anyway, I was able to play goalball, and I ran track and was also on the swimming team. Those were oppurtunities I wouldn't take back if given a chance. I also participated in the choir, which admittedly I could have done in public school as well, but I doubt those backwards assholes would have given me the time of day if I'd tried, so I do feel like that was another oppurtunity I otherwise wouldn't have had.

And, while I 100% agree with everyone who has stated that these places stunt your growth socially, I did have to say that the first true friendships I ever forged were at the school for the blind. Oh, I dealt with my fair share of backstabbers, dysfunctional blindies, and well, folks who would have been dysfunctional even with 20/20 vision, but I at least had connections there. In public school, everyone either ignored me, pretended to be my friend so that they could make fun of me later, outright bullied me, or, on the rare occasions where someone dared to be bold enough to try and befriend me, it was usually short-lived because their friends would no longer associate with them if they had anything to do with me. So I can at least say that, had I stayed in public school, I would have had some pretty severe trust issues. Not that I don't have some already, but I can practically guarantee that they would be a billion times worse.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.