Library Collections: Document: Full Text

Such is the scene which presents itself to the delighted visitant of the Parisian Institution for the young blind; and he comes away with a feeling of unqualified admiration for that spirit of humanity which, guided by science, is there accomplishing so much in defiance of the apparently insurmountable obstacles of nature. But he who goes again, and again, and examines not only the foliage and the flower, but waits for the season of the fruit, finds his admiration dwindling into doubt; and feels at last the painful conviction, that all this display is of comparatively little good, and that not one half the benefit that might be derived from such splendid means ever accrues to the unfortunate inmates. He asks the question, How many of those who leave the institution at the expiration of their time are enabled to gain their own livelihood, -- and is startled at the answer of not one in twenty. What then? Must they relapse into their original inanition? Must they take their places by the highway, and beg at the corner of the streets, with the pangs of dependence sharpened to torture by increased sensibility? Alas! it is almost as bad as this with many. And how is it proposed to remedy this evil; how do they hope to prevent the glimmering which the blind here catch of happiness from being followed by a futurity doubly dark and wretched? Why, instead of looking for the cause of the evil, instead of suspecting the system, and correcting that, they propose to establish a place for the permanent reception and support of those who come out from the institution, and who cannot provide for themselves. This is very like educating men for the almshouse.

We were painfully affected by this conclusion, which seemed like the destruction of one of the fairest fabrics that ever blessed the dream of the philanthropist; and were led to examine again and again the system in detail, until we discovered, or thought we discovered, most apparent causes for the meagre harvest of good, which is reaped from such a promising soil. We looked in vain for the improvements which ought to have been made in the apparatus of Haüy, during the thirty years which had elapsed since his death; -- we looked in vain, for none existed. A narrow and illiberal jealousy; an attempt at secrecy and reserve met our endeavors to examine the nature of this apparatus: and when we inquired whether some obvious and simple changes might not be made for the better, we were repelled by the sapient and reproving answer, that surely if any improvements could have been made, such great and good men as the Abbe Haüy, and his successors, would not have overlooked them.

But before exposing the faults of the system of education pursued at the Institution for the Blind at Paris, we ought, perhaps, to explain it as it now exists. Pupils are admitted from the age of ten to fourteen, and are expected to remain there eight years. During this time they receive a very good intellectual education; they have much attention given to the cultivation of their musical powers; and are taught also many kinds of handicraft work. Their library consists of about forty different works, which have been printed in raised characters, and are legible with the fingers; among them are Latin, English, and Italian grammars; Extracts from Latin, English, and Italian authors. They have maps constructed by a very expensive and clumsy process; they paste the map of any country upon stiff pasteboard, then, having bent a wire into all the curves of the coast, and laid it along the courses of the rivers, and in the line of the boundaries, they sew it down to the pasteboard, and taking a second map of the same dimensions, paste it immediately over the first, and pressing it down all around the wire, leave its windings to be felt. Here it is obvious to any one, that common ingenuity could devise material improvement. Some have in fact been devised and put in operation at the Institution in our city, where the maps, made at one tenth of the expense of the Parisian ones, present the most obvious and important advantages over them. (4)

They have also in Paris music printed in the same way as the books, that is, by stamping the notes through the paper and producing their shape in relief on the opposite side. It is not found very advantageous, however, to print music in this way, for the memory of the blind is so tenacious that they can learn very long pieces.

Mathematical diagrams are made in the same way as the maps, but in defiance as it were of common sense, they retain the old ones of Haüy, which are very large and clumsy; -- so large, that the hands of the pupils must be moved about in all directions to feel the whole outline of the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid, -- whereas the smaller the diagram is made, the more easily is it felt and studied, and the less does it cost. The blind are indebted, we think, to the Rev. Mr. Taylor, of York, in England, for a plan of embossing mathematical diagrams: (5) but even his are larger than they need to be, and many of the problems would be more rapidly learned by the blind student, were the diagrams so small that he could feel the outlines of them with his fingers, without moving his hands.