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“To give light where He made all dark”: Educating the Blind about the Natural World and God in Nineteenth-Century North America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2020

Joanna L. Pearce
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Abstract

Nineteenth-century educators worried that blind children were particularly susceptible to moral apathy, religious decay, and atheism because they could not see the beauty of nature. These educators used instruction in biology, zoology, and natural history to teach blind children about the beauty of the natural world and the breadth of God's creation. Instruction techniques included innovative but expensive apparatuses and tactile models. Despite cost challenges, educators of the blind devoted time and ingenuity to expand the science curriculum, particularly nature study programs, to help their students become successful, productive, and pious citizens equal to their sighted peers. Teaching blind students about nature ensured the blind would not become burdens on society but could be brought into the proper, civilized, religious sphere of the sighted.

Keywords

Nature studiesscience educationblind studentsChristian education
Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 60 , Special Issue 3: Disability and the History of Education , August 2020 , pp. 295 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 History of Education Society

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References

1 Robinson, E. B. F., The True Sphere of the Blind (Toronto: William Briggs, 1896), 10-11Google Scholar.

2 Examples of the history of blindness include Schwartz, Harold, Samuel Gridley Howe: Social Reformer, 1801-1876 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956)Google Scholar; Ross, Ishbel, Journey into Light: The Story of the Education of the Blind (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951)Google Scholar; and French, Richard Slayton, From Homer to Helen Keller: A Social and Educational Study of the Blind (New York: American Foundation for the Blind, 1932)Google Scholar. For a discussion on funding for schools for the blind, see Pearce, Joanna, “‘Not for Alms but Help’: Fund-raising and Free Education for the Blind,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 23, no. 1 (2012), 131-55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Examples of biographies include Trent, James W. Jr., The Manliest Man: Samuel G. Howe and the Contours of Nineteenth-Century American Reform (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Freeburg, Ernest, The Education of Laura Bridgman: First Deaf and Blind Person to Learn Language (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Gitter, Elisabeth, The Imprisoned Guest: Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman, the Original Deaf-Blind Girl (New York: Farrar, Straus and Groux, 2001)Google Scholar; and Nielsen, Kim E., The Radical Lives of Helen Keller (New York: New York University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

4 For Canadian organizations, see Margaret Ross Chandler, A Century of Challenge: The History of the Ontario School for the Blind (Belleville, ON: Mika Publishing, 1980); Shirley J. Trites, Reading Hands: The Halifax School for the Blind (Halifax, NS: Vision Press, 2003); and Euclid Herie, Journey to Independence: Blindness – The Canadian Story (Toronto: Dundurn Group, 2005). For examples from the United states, see Mary Klages, Woeful Afflictions: Disability and Sentimentality in Victorian America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).

5 See, for example, Kimberly French, Perkins School for the Blind (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2004).

6 Kim E. Nielsen, Disability History of the United States (Boston: Beacon Press, 2012); Sarah F. Rose, No Right to Be Idle: The Invention of Disability, 1840s-1930s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017). Parents often resisted this characterization of their blind or otherwise disabled children, with some refusing outright to send their children to institutions or only sending them for a limited amount of time due to their being needed at home. For a discussion of how this applied to children labeled as imbeciles, see Rose, No Right to Be Idle, 14-48. Superintendents of schools for the blind noted similar parental concerns and viewed these parents with disdain. One example of this can be found in “Report of the Principal of the Institution for the Blind,” in Fifth Annual Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, &c for the Province of Ontario, 1871-72 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1873), 181. However, this was far from unique, with similar sentiments expressed in American schools as well.

7 Although modern convention is to use deaf to describe the medical condition, and Deaf to refer to those who are culturally Deaf and primarily use signed language to communicate, I have chosen to use deaf throughout this article, as I am referring entirely to the medical condition.

8 Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, “Nature, Not Books: Scientists and the Origins of the Nature-Study Movement in the 1890s,” Isis 96, no. 3 (Sept. 2005), 326.

9 Catherine J. Kudlick, “Disability History: Why We Need Another ‘Other,’” American Historical Review 108, no. 3 (June 2003), 763-93.

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12 Jason Ellis, A Class By Themselves?: The Origins of Special Education in Toronto and Beyond (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019).

13 The earliest school for the deaf was established in the United States in 1817 and in Canada in 1831; the earliest schools for the blind were established in the 1829 and 1871, respectively.

14 Paul Axelrod, The Promise of Schooling: Education in Canada, 1800-1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 30.

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19 Houston, “Social Reform and Education,” 256.

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21 Goldwin S. French, “Egerton Ryerson and the Methodist Model for Upper Canada,” in Chaiton and McDonald, Egerton Ryerson and His Times, 50.

22 Prentice, School Promoters, 60.

23 Albert F. Fiorino, “The Moral Education of Egerton Ryerson's Idea of Education,” in Chaiton and McDonald, Egerton Ryerson and His Times, 66.

24 Axelrod, Promise of Schooling, 30.

25 Prentice, School Promoters, 67.

26 Prentice, School Promoters, 68.

27 Neil Sutherland, Children in English Canadian Society: Framing the Twentieth-Century Consensus (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2000), 160.

28 Mary W. Boyle, “Edward Austin Sheldon and the Oswego Movement: A Model of Innovative Administration” (master's thesis, Loyola University, 1972), 65, https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses/2557/.

29 Robert M. Stamp, The Schools of Ontario 1876-1976; A Project of the Board of Trustees of the Ontario Historical Series for the Government of Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 51.

30 Sutherland, Children in English Canadian Society, 161.

31 A discussion about the development of the senses in education is beyond the scope of this paper. For more on how sensory input, including touch, has been studied in the history of education, see Ian Grosvenor, “Back to the Future or Towards a Sensory History of Schooling,” History of Education 41, no. 5 (2012), 675-87.

32 Sutherland, Children in English Canadian Society, 178-79.

33 Stamp, Schools of Ontario, 58.

34 Stamp, Schools of Ontario, 60-61.

35 Rose, No Right to Be Idle, 2.

36 Justin T. Clark, City of Second Sight: Nineteenth-Century Boston and the Making of American Visual Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 145.

37 “Truman Foster, The Blind Sunday-School Scholar”, Sunday School Advocate, 51, no 2, (Nov. 1851), 20.

38 Clark, City of Second Sight, 146; and “The Boston May Fair”, North American Magazine, 8, no. 2 (June 1833), 94-98.

39 Denis Diderot, “Letter on the Blind for the use of Those Who See,” Diderot's Early Philosophical Works, ed. and trans. Margaret Jourdain (Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 1916), 81-82.

40 Charles Frederick Fraser, Fighting in the Dark (Halifax, NS: C. F. Fraser, 1879).

41 Unsurprisingly, the ability to raise the blind out of their moral darkness through education was a common theme in annual reports of schools for the blind. See J. Laurence Cohen, “Shining Inward: The Blind Seer, Fanny Crosby, and Education for the Blind in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 11, no. 1 (2017), 55-68; Klages, Woeful Afflictions; Clark, City of Second Sight; and Pearce, “Not for Alms but Help.”

42 At one point, these debates were so contentious that certain subjects were banned from further discussion.

43 Forty-Second Annual Report of the Trustees of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind, October 1873 (Boston: Wright & Potter, State Printers, 1874), 11.

44 Forty-First Annual Report of the Trustees of the Perkins Institution, October 1872 (Boston: Wright & Potter, State Printers, 1873), 11.

45 Forty-First Annual Report of the Trustees of the Perkins Institution, 11.

46 Forty-First Annual Report of the Trustees of the Perkins Institution, 11.

47 Forty-First Annual Report of the Trustees of the Perkins Institution, 11.

48 Examples of this disdain toward parents appear in annual reports from all schools for the blind during the nineteenth century. In Ontario, mothers were blamed for their children “fast falling into idiocy,” while Missouri's Institution for the Education of the Blind prayed that blind children should be preserved from “a mother who does everything for it.” Fifth Annual Report of the Inspector of Asylums, 181; and Second Biennial Report of the Trustees Missouri Institution for the Education of the Blind to the Twenty-First General Assembly (Saint Louis: Missouri Institution for the Education of the Blind, 1860).

49 Comments by H. L. Hall in Proceedings of the First Meeting of the American Association of Instructors of the Blind, Held at the Perkins Institution for the Blind, Boston, August 20, 21 and 22, 1872 (Boston: Rand, Avery, 1873), 89.

50 Comments by W. H. Wilkinson, Proceedings of the First Meeting of the American Association of Instructors of the Blind, 87.

51 Missouri Institution for the Education of the Blind, Fourth Annual Report of the Trustees of the Missouri Institution for the Education of the Blind (Saint Louis: Geo. Knapp & Co, 1855), 11.

52 Proceedings of the Second Convention of American Instructors of the Blind Held at the Indiana Institute for the Education of the Blind, Indianapolis, August 8th, 9th, and 10th, 1871, (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Printing and Publishing House, 1871), 126.

53 Proceedings of the Second Convention, Indianapolis, 91-93.

54 Robinson, True Sphere of the Blind, 20.

55 Robinson, True Sphere of the Blind, v, 21-22.

56 Robinson, True Sphere of the Blind, 195.

57 The blind themselves also discussed this as a possible career path. See, for example, New York Institution for the Blind, An Account of the New-York Institution for the Blind; Together with a Brief Statement of the Origin, Progress, and Present Condition, of the Institutions for the Blind in This and Other Countries (New York: Press of G. P. Scott, 1833), 33.

58 New York Institution for the Blind, Account of the New-York Institution for the Blind, 32.

59 New York Institution for the Blind, Account of the New-York Institution for the Blind, 32.

60 Richard Fowler, S. G. Howe, Perkins Institution, and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind, Eleventh Annual Report of the Trustees of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind, to the Corporation (Boston: John H. Eastburn, Printer, 1843), 11.

61 American Association of Instructors of the Blind, Proceedings of the Convention of the American Association of Instructors of the Blind held in the Hall of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind, Philadelphia, PA, August 15, 16, and 17, 1876 (Philadelphia: Culbertson & Bache, Printers, 1877), 7.

62 I have yet to come across a school for the blind that acknowledges students from non-Christian backgrounds, instead focusing on their acceptance of different Christian denominations.

63 James W. Welch, Achievements and Abilities of the Blind (Columbus, OH: F. J. Heer, 1905), 230.

64 Welch, Achievements and Abilities of the Blind, 235.

65 S. G. Howe, “Review: Education of the Blind,” North American Review 37, no. 80 (July 1833), 20-58, 50.

66 B. G. Johns, Blind People: Their Works and Ways (London: John Murray, 1867), 52.

67 Maurice de la Sizeranne, The Blind Sisters of Saint Paul, trans. L. M. Leggatt (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1907), 3.

68 Cohen Jr., “Shining Inward,” 56.

69 Abram V. Courtney, Anecdotes of the Blind: With a Memoir of the Author (Boston: Abram V. Courtney, 1835), 4.

70 Kohlstedt, “Nature, Not Books,” 324-25.

71 Kevin Armitage, “Knowing Nature: Nature Study and American Life, 1873-1923” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 2004), 5-6.

72 Armitage, “Knowing Nature,” 10.

73 Kohlstedt, “Nature, Not Books,” 327.

74 Armitage, “Knowing Nature,” 11, 19.

75 Armitage, “Knowing Nature,” 22.

76 Armitage, “Knowing Nature,” 29.

77 Kohlstedt, “Nature, Not Books,” 330.

78 A subgroup of the Committee of Ten on Secondary Schools debated the best way to approach standardizing education in the sciences in 1892. The National Education Association created the Committee of Ten to standardize education overall across the United States with similar pedagogical goals.

79 Kohlstedt, “Nature, Not Books,” 335-36.

80 William Torrey Harris, How to Teach Natural Science in Public Schools (Syracuse, NY: C. W. Bardeen, 1895), 24.

81 Harris, How to Teach Natural Science, 24.

82 Harris, How to Teach Natural Science, 41.

83 Harris, How to Teach Natural Science, 29-30.

84 Harris, How to Teach Natural Science, 17. Harris claimed an average time in school of five years for children in the city and only three years for those in the country, while blind children usually spent ten or more years at residential schools.

85 Harris, How to Teach Natural Science, 38.

86 Harris, How to Teach Natural Science, 28-35.

87 Stamp, Schools of Ontario 1876-1976, 187.

88 For further discussion of the public's fascination with demonstrations of blind children reading, doing science, or creating handicrafts for sale, see Klages, Woeful Afflictions.

89 B. L. McGinnity, J. Seymour-Ford, and K. J. Andries, “Geography,” Perkins School for the Blind, http://www.perkins.org/history/curriculum/geography.

90 Robinson, True Sphere of the Blind, 153.

91 Robinson, True Sphere of the Blind, 153; and Report of the Trustees and Principal of the Missouri Institution for the Education of the Blind to the Twenty-Second General Assembly, (Jefferson City, MO: W. A. Curry, 1863), 1.

92 Robinson, True Sphere of the Blind, 154.

93 McGinnity, Seymour-Ford, and Andries, “Geography,” paragraph 9.

94 Report of the Trustees and Principal of the Missouri Institution, 14.

95 Proceedings of the First Meeting, Boston, 60.

96 Proceedings of the First Meeting, Boston, 60.

97 For a brief overview of this debate, see Irwin, Robert B., The War of the Dots (New York: American Foundation for the Blind, 1970)Google Scholar; Pearce, Joanna L., “The Tactile Babble Under Which the Blind Have Hitherto Groaned: Dots, Lines and Literacy for the Blind in Nineteenth-Century North America,” in Edinburgh History of Reading: Subversive Readers, ed. Rose, Jonathan (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 97-115Google Scholar.

98 With much reluctance, I must admit that a discussion of this debate is outside the scope of this paper.

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105 Proceedings of the Convention, Philadelphia, 78.

106 Proceedings of the Convention, Philadelphia, 77.

107 Proceedings of the Second Convention, Indianapolis, 11.

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110 Good, Arthur, “Writing-Machines for the Blind,” Popular Science Monthly 33 (Sept. 1888), 650Google Scholar.

111 Robinson, True Sphere of the Blind, 150.

112 Proceedings of the Convention, Philadelphia, 78.

113 Proceedings of the Convention, Philadelphia, 5.

114 Alessandra Iozzo, “‘Silent Citizens’: Citizenship Education, Disability, and d/Deafness at the Ontario Institution for the Education of the Deaf, 1870-1914” (PhD diss., University of Ottawa, 2015), 101.

115 Robinson, True Sphere of the Blind, 163.

116 Bennett, Della, “Science for Our Schools,” The Mentor 1, no. 5 (May 1891), 146-47Google Scholar.

117 Robinson, “True Sphere of the Blind”, 165.

118 Henry Snyder, “A Chip from an Ohio Workshop,” Proceedings of the Eighth Biennial Convention of the American Association of Instructors of the Blind Held at the Missouri School for the Blind at St. Louis, Missouri, August 19, 20, and 21, 1884 (St. Louis: Commercial Printing Company, 1885), 44.

119 Robinson, True Sphere of the Blind,” 163]

120 For further discussion of institutions needing to show that their disabled pupils were being effectively educated in order to maintain government and public funding, see Rose, No Right to Be Idle, 2-48; and Pearce, “Not for Alms but Help.”

121 Ontario Institution for the Education of the Blind—Brantford, Ontario, Canada Report of Principal Dymon, Dr. L. Secord, Acting-Physician, and the Examiners for the Year Ending September 30th, 1888 (Brantford, ON: Watt and Sherston, 1889), 12, 22-23, 24.

122 Mary S. Redick, “The New Education, or Kindergarten for the Blind,” in Proceedings of the Sixth Biennial Convention of the American Association of Instructors of the Blind held at the Kentucky Institution for the Blind at Louisville, KY, August 17, 18, and 19, 1880 (Louisville: John P Morton, 1880), 43.

123 Snyder, “A Chip from an Ohio Workshop,” 43.

124 Grosvenor, Ian and Macnab, Natasha, “‘Seeing Through Touch’: The Material World of Visually Impaired Children,” Educar em Revista 49 (July/Sept. 2013), 46Google Scholar, 53. A further exploration of museums and tactile exhibitions for the blind in North America is a fruitful avenue of inquiry but is outside the scope of this paper.

125 Welch, Achievements and Abilities of the Blind, 190.

126 Welch, Achievements and Abilities of the Blind, 183.

127 Welch, Achievements and Abilities of the Blind, 183.

128 Welch, Achievements and Abilities of the Blind, 184.

129 Welch, Achievements and Abilities of the Blind, 187.

130 Welch, Achievements and Abilities of the Blind, 188.

131 Proceedings of the Convention, Philadelphia, 8.

132 Perkins School for the Blind, “Accessible Science: General Tips,” Perkins School for the Blind eLearning, https://www.perkinselearning.org/accessible-science/getting-started.

133 Kate Fraser, “Simple Adaptions to Increase Accessibility in Science Instruction,” Perkins School for the Blind eLearning, Dec. 7, 2015, https://www.perkinselearning.org/accessible-science/blog/simple-adaptations-increase-accessibility-science-instruction.

134 Nonscriptum, “3D Printed Teaching Models,” Perkins School for the Blind eLearning, Sept. 9, 2019, https://www.perkinselearning.org/technology/blog/3d-printed-teaching-models.

135 Olivia Kate Cerrone, “Sight Unseen: This Teacher Brings Science to Life for Blind Students,” Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 2, 2019, https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/2019/1202/Sight-unseen-This-teacher-brings-science-to-life-for-blind-students.