The Psychological Study of Blind Children
B:Author:y Walter E. Dry Superintendent, Oregon State School for Blind, and Elizabeth C. Cooper Washington State School for the Blind
When I first began to learn to laugh cheerfully with a blind child when he walked square into a door ajar, and to put objects into hands before they had a chance to grope, I began also to wonder if the queer forms of behavior I saw everywhere about me were entirely due to the accident of sightlessness.
For instance, there sat Rollo, slouched in his seat, his mouth half-opened, one hand flapping persistently back and forth before his one quite hopeless eye; Rollo, who never answered by much more than a grunt unless it were to explode into violent recriminations; seventh-grade Rollo, who could read a Braille sentence seventeen times and still not frame the sense of it.
The day before, in seventh-grade arithmetic, when I had asked pretty, curly-haired Jane the value of one-half in per cent, Jane had, after much frowning concentration, suggested five per cent, at which the class and I had gone over the old drill: ‘’ one-half? fifty per cent; one-fourth?twenty-five per cent; etc.,” and Jane and I had discussed whether we would not have just as much apple to eat if we had fifty per cent of one as we would if we had a half of one, and Jane had entered into the discussion vivaciously and had smiled engagingly at me, and then had answered two minutes later, when I propounded the original question, “Forty-two per cent!” A number we had never mentioned!
And again there was Marjorie, who, in the sixth grade, spelled as, “a-z,” and sixteen-year-old Charles, who was greatly puzzled over the recently discovered phenomena that 8 and 8 could equal 88 as well as 16.
So I went to the Little-Boys’ Housemother, knowing she had had medical experience, and she informed me with a pitying smile that at least half these children were definitely feeble-minded and a third of them congenitally syphilitic so that many would be suffering from paresis in another ten years. “Do you see that boy?” she asked, pointing out the window.
I looked, and observed a little chap of seven or eight, throwing a sheet of paper into the air, shouting with glee when the wind took it, and running to follow inaccurately its path and to hunt about till he could find it and repeat the process. He was utterly alone on the playground and deeply engrossed in his game, and we watched him repeat the operation several times until the Housemother said, ‘’ That boy is ten years old and has done nothing but that one performance every day that was dry enough, on an average of four hours a day for six months! You can’t tell me lie isn’t feeble-minded!’’
A moment later she said, “Do you see David there?” I saw David, an awkward, big-headed child of six or seven, sausageshaped, coming slowly down the schoolhouse steps to the walk that led to the Little-Boys’ Cottage.
“He has come along that walk four or five times a day every day for six months, but?watch him!” We watched. David came down the steps to the walk, followed it to where it branched, took the correct branch, then stepped off onto the grass, and, instead of trying to regain the walk, wandered hopelessly off into the yard and was soon wailing dismally that he was lost.
‘’ He has every sign of feeble-mindedness?there’s not much one can do with him but teach him a few things and put him where he can’t harm others. Half the children here are of his level or worse. No, it’s not their blindness?look at the brilliant blind ones?look at Frank there.’’
I looked again and saw a sturdy small person of about six industriously dismembering an alarm-clock. He came at the Housemother’s call, without stumbling over anything or hesitating, to talk unselfconsciously with me in the manner of any normal interested six-year-old. And I thought of the fourteen-year-old Bess, brilliant in geometry learned from a Braille text, of fifteenyear-old Arthur with his slow smile and his incredible speed and accuracy in arithmetic?and was convinced.
From the Housemother I went to the Shop-Teacher and put my question again, “What about these children? Are they feebleminded?” The answer was indirect, “You have Martin in some of your classes, I’m sure. What do you think of him?”
“Martin! Why, he is one of my best students in eighth-grade arithmetic. He quite regularly and constantly gets ‘one,’ and on his last card he had a ‘one’ in his history also. He showed me a very creditable poem he had written the other day, and, all in all, I should say he is at least average, and probably better than the average eighth-grade pupil in public school.’’
“You do not come much into contact with the younger pupils, but do you know which one is David ? Probably not by name, but I know you have seen the little seven-year-old who will not walk to the stairs, but sits down and slides along as a two- or three-yearold would do. And he is afraid of everything, doesn’t know how to play, is extremely ‘edge-y’ when the other children come near him, going into most violent tantrums if they accidentally bump him or touch him. His conversation is rather foolish and meaningless, and, on the whole, you probably regard him as anything but a normal seven-year-old, if you are to believe your own senses. “And yet, he is just about where Martin was when he was David’s age! I know that is hard to believe, but Martin could not dress himself when he was eight or nine, was simply terrified at the shower-bath, was almost totally helpless in getting about, had absolutely no initiative, and, in fact, would have been classified as absolutely feeble-minded!’’
The difficulty was hardly solved by the above conflicting opinions of those who should know these children best. How does one tell whether a child is feeble-minded or not ?
Every competent psychologist, confronted with a supposed case of feeble-mindedness, resorts to one or a number of mental tests, the results of which can be checked against the norms of thousands of children. Thousands of normal, sighted, children.1 What do you see when you hear the rasp of a saw? Well, you see something?the shiny blade, the pile of sawdust, the rhythmic swing of the sawyer’s body, the piece about to fall. But what does a blind child see when he hears that noise? We do not know. He ‘sees’ the noise, perhaps. But assuredly he does not see anything that remotely pertains to the thing seen by the normal sighted child. And that is just why even those tests which are not physically impossible for the blind child are not usable, because so far there is nothing, or at least very little, to check them against. Again, no blind child is ever treated in an entirely normal man1 For a discussion of psychological testing of the blind see E. Pintner, Intelligence Testing, new edition, Chap. XIX.
ner, at least not until the age of six, and neither are the abnormalities of treatment the same for different children. Which degree of abnormality resulting from abnormal treatment shall one consider ‘normal’ for blind children? Shall we say that this blind child, who has been waited upon hand and foot and so is physically and mentally helpless, is more nearly feeble-minded than this one, who has been treated like a puppy that should be drowned and so is a gibbering little demon? The one nearest the sighted norm is not necessarily nearest the yet undiscovered norm for blind children. Feeble-minded, or only under-developed? That is, congenital feeble-mindedness, or “pseudo-feeble-mindedness”? This is the problem awaiting solution at the very threshold of work with blind children, and almost none of the carefully graded instruments used in this problem with sighted children can be, or are, used. The few we could adopt, we find little data on to standardize by, and so we are thrown back upon the old method of trial-and-error? of taking them in, imbeciles and all, of trying one method after another, following each hypothesis to its own blank wall, until at. last we fail, or succeed, and at the end know only one thing? that these tactics did (or did not) help this child with that background and those emotional disturbances make normal reactions and become a civilized human being.
Let us look at David today. He is in no sense a normal boy, but neither is he the same David just described. Today he walks downstairs; he is not what one would call fearless, but there are many things of which he has absolutely no fear. He goes about the place, hardly ever getting lost; he swings in the boys’ swings, slides down the slides, climbs trees, and does many of the things that Frank delights in. He is still somewhat ‘edge-y,’ but rarely goes into a tantrum. His conversation has taken on meaning and sense; he is fair at numbers, reads everything he gets hold of, has a knowledge of words beyond his age. Who shall predict what he will be when he reaches the age of Martin ?
Or, let us consider John. At the age of fourteen, John came to us from another school for the blind, two years ago. Perhaps ‘stodgy’ would describe John as well as any word. He seemingly did not take an interest in much of anything; he was not ugly or vicious, but just did not care to exert himself or seem to want to co-operate in any way. Today, without exception, he is the most helpful and dependable boy we have. He is not brilliant in his studies, but he is interested, willing, and a hard worker. He passed the eighth grade tests this spring and is anticipating his entrance into high school with a great deal of pleasure.
Just last fall, Alice came to us. She was eight, a delicatelooking child with some sight. She has had poor health and has so often heard her parents tell just how ‘delicate’ she is, that there are many things she cannot possibly do, and many foods she cannot possibly eat, because they ‘always make her ill.’ Dogs, or animals of any kind, make her ‘very nervous’ when there are adults near, though she has been seen to play with them and enjoy it when alone. She tattles, she weeps, she goes to almost any length to get attention, and of course is heartily disliked by her playmates. However, Alice is in no sense the same Alice she was last fall when she first entered school. It is too early to tell how she will respond; she may turn out to be definitely feebleminded, or it may again be a case of ” pseudo-feeble-mindedness.” In the cases cited above one can definitely say:
“David had been excessively frightened before we took him. John had been brow-beaten and abused at the school he came from. Alice had been too much pampered at home.” All true?all perfectly obvious after the child had been experimented with long enough to prove him, in Burnham’s phrase, only “pseudo-feebleminded,” and, as such, probably curable. Nearly every blind child appears to be feeble-minded and a great many of them are?how can one know whether there is any use starting in on educational work, how can one know in what direction to start, how can one know, save by comparison with the child’s own past behavior, what sort of results are being obtained ? These questions are not answered, at least not by a single answer. Every one with every child has several quite workable hypotheses which must be tried.
In this connection take our study of Bill, a totally blind highschool boy, whom we have had opportunity to observe rather closely and individually for several years.
Bill was born in 1911 in a small town in Minnesota where his sixteen-year-old actress mother was awaiting his father’s return from a drunken spree. No one knows why his eyes “went bad,” ophthalmia neonatorum, incorrectly cared for, most probably. He was supported by his grandmother, who never allowed him to dress or feed himself and who never taught him anything, until, at the age of five, he entered a School for the Blind. Here he learned to march lock-step into the huge barn of a dining-room, to avoid punPSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY OF BLIND CHILDREN 189 ishment by sneaking, to masturbate, and very little else. At twelve, an aunt in the eastern part of Washington took him (his grandmother was dead, his father had disappeared and was thought dead, his mother had married again) and he appeared at our school, a cringing, dirty, ill-kept, ambitionless, quite obviously feebleminded little lad. Tomorrow Bill will be twenty years old. Far down the hall I hear his joyous, echoing, spontaneous laughter; up he comes with his swinging, uneven, ‘blind man’s’ step?happy, loving, eager? to ask a sensible question about a project of his own that he is working out on the typewriter. He is slight, five feet and a half perhaps, careful in his dress, handsome in a clear-cut, engaging fashion, his sensitive mouth is smiling, his artists’ hands are quick and nervous, his eyes white and sightless. Except for this last, he would compare favorably in appearance, manner, and ‘manners’ with the ordinary high school boy. Yet, living with Bill, knowing him intimately, we are in serious difficulties with the analysis and treatment of his particular type of “pseudo-feeble-mindedness” which, after all, may be real.
In Bill seem to be concentrated to a greater or less degree, almost all the behavior problems with which we have to contend in our work with blind children. He is not typical, because most of them have only one or two of the feeble-minded traits he shows, but he is a conglomeration of typical ‘blind-school’ difficulties. To begin with, there is seemingly a very real inability to take direction?direction of any kind, suggestion, command, reason. Our whole school is permeated with this stubborn, and in most cases quite unconscious, clinging to one’s own uncorrected thinking. It is an axiom that groups of blind people cannot work efficiently together and that “you can’t tell a blind man anything.” In trying to explain to Bill how to get from one side of Fifth Street to the opposite side of Sixth Street, a thing he very much wished to know one morning, I was confronted with his entire loss of self-control. He could not, or would not, remember which way Main Street ran. His sole reply to careful, kindly direction was a hurried, dogged, “Yes, but when I go from Tenth Street, I always turn to the left, so I can’t see why I should turn to the right here.” Or, “7 do it by left-and-right, so I don’t know what you mean when you say north and west.” “No, I can’t do it,” “No, I don’t see,” over and over, despite the fact that Main Street is entirely familiar to him and that he found his way home over un190 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC familiar territory by figuring directions from the sun a very few days before.
Then, seemingly diametrically opposed to this tendency, is the immense reluctance of many blind children, as well as adults, to assume any responsibility or to undertake any type of action whatsoever.
One summer Bill lost three copies of Braille music, pieces he loves (he is a very fine musician) and can hardly replace, through sheer inability to remember to replace them on the piano when he placed his ‘cello beside it. He has not yet written to order new ones, although they were not his own and he has complained of their loss on an average of once a month ever since; although he has the money and the address necessary and is very much humiliated to have to confess to his music teacher that he has lost them. He never looks for an object before he asks the nearest member of the family where it is; he never looks at his watch without asking what time it is; he has only recently learned to change his underwear without being told. Another almost universal trait among blind people is extreme inattentiveness?so extreme as to be often mistaken for the firstmentioned trait, unwillingness to take direction, rather than for what it is, partial inability to receive it.
Bill’s hearing has recently been tested and found extraordinary?he has what musicians call’’ perfect pitch’’ and can instantly name any tone or tone combination that he hears?yet he goes through many whole meals with a family he loves and is interested in without comprehending one word of the general conversation, or even of conversation addressed directly to him unless he is spoken to several times. The most common speech in a ‘blindschool’ is not “I don’t know,” but “What did you say?” One or more of these characteristics, combined with a great many others of similar type, are found to an extremely abnormal degree in almost all blind children. All of these and many more are present in Bill to such an extent that we are hard put to it to devise ways to correct them, or indeed, to decide whether they can be corrected at all.
Perhaps one of Burnham’s types of pseudo-feeble-mindedness, that case where emotion dominates intelligence to such an extent that the individual is unable to correct his thinking by reference to experience, is the explanation of Bill’s apparent unwillingness to be told. Perhaps Adler’s statement that children whose imPSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY OF BLIND CHILDREN 191 portant organs suffer defect look with suspicion and mistrust at the opportunities which they see developing around them, and have the tendency to isolate themselves and evade their tasks, is an explanation, and Bill is really failing to allow himself to comprehend because he can evade a task if he refuses to understand it. Perhaps he is simply over-compensating his ever-present sense of inferiority by an insistent emphasis upon his ways, no matter upon how trivial a basis his way may be erected. Adler’s statement that such belligerency may arise when the normal tenderness of parents toward their children is not manifested to the proper degree may account for it. We do not know. All we can do is to try every hypothesis and see if any helps to change Bill’s obvious feeblemindedness to normality. In each of the difficulties, we have no basis but a theoretical one upon which to proceed, but since we believe as Adler that “inabilitj7 or seeming stupidity, clumsiness, apathy, are not sufficient proofs of feeble-mindedness,’’ we have no choice but to go on using somewhat the same tactics as Witmer in his study of Don, hoping to determine the really feeble-minded from the pseudo-feebleminded and to cure the curable. We must remember that what is essential is “to see the child’s situation with the eyes of the child,” and that “children who come into the world with organ inferiorities become involved at an early age in a bitter struggle for existence which results only too often in the strangulation of their social feelings.”
If we can succeed with David as we did succeed with Martin, Jf we can make a normal man of Bill, if John continues on his normal high-school existence, then we can begin to use as a basis for measurement some of the criteria we have so painstakingly worked out by our theoretical, cut-and-try, methods. Then we can begin to accomplish with these children some few of the things that are being so strikingly accomplished with sighted ones.
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