Newport Girl, State Appointee, Faces Unusual Opportunity To Aid Those Sightless As She
The blind leading the blind - the words are usually used in derision, but Rhode Island is about to open the phrase to a new interpretation, and a wholly admirable one. It is all a question of where the blind are leading other blind. In this case it is without the sense of error.
Mary Cherlin, a Newport blind girl, will this month join the staff of the Rhode Island Bureau for the Blind as a worker amoung those who are afflicted as she was. Her appointment has been approved by the State Public Welfare Commission, under whose guidance the bureau operates.
Assignment to her new post is the fulfillment of an ambition Miss Cherlin has long cherished. And it follows long hard study to prepare her for the work. She was graduated last June from the Pennsylvania Institute for the Blind, a division of the University of Pennsylvania.
You have to be born a teacher in order to be a good teacher, Miss Cherlin believes, especially when you are going to teach the blind. When she was but a child in the public schools of Newport she seemed to find her chief delight in helping children who were less forward than herself. And then, when a series of ailments deprived her of first one eye and then the other, she found herself in need of the sort of help she had been giving others.
Mary lost her sight when she had reached the seventh grade in school. Born in New York, she had been brought by her parents to Newport, where she soon made new friends and joined other children of her age in school. Then, when she was about 12 years old, she caught scarlet fever, and the attack took from her the sight of both eyes.
There followed the four "lost" years of her life, for she sat in darkness all that time. Her parents knew nothing of the existence of facilities for educating blind people, and the child's mind was allowed to lie idle. There was nothing, in fact, to indicate that she would ever become anything but a care and a charge to her family.
Then she learned through friends of the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, to which blind children are sent from here by the State of Rhode Island. The world was beginning to open anew then, for she was entered as a student. Hardly had she become enrolled when her family moved to a Connecticut town (New Haven), with the result that she was transferred from Perkins to Connecticut's own Institute for the Blind at Hartford.
Her three years' course there gave her training of high school standard. After that term the Cherlin family returned once more to Newport, so that again, with the State's assistance, Mary went back to Perkins Institute.
Three years ago she attracted the personal attention of Jarvis C Worden, who had taken over the work as director of the Bureau of the Blind here. Looking ahead to the time when an addition would have to be made to the staff of home teachers for the blind in Rhode Island, he set out to aid her in getting the training she would need for this service.
The Pennsylvania Institute seemed the ideal place for her to learn her profession, but she could hardly be sent there at state expense. Public funds are not available for this purpose. The State Bureau, however, has some loyal friends who can occasionally be called on to lend their aid in such exigencies. From some of these Mr. Worden was able to obtain personal subscriptions, readily in this case because they were sympathetic toward the girl's ambitions and the general project as well.
The Lions Club of Newport lent its support as did the Jewish Council of Women and other organizations who had special interests in Mary's progress. Mr. Worden's confidence in her, whom he regarded as a "find" made the raising of the funds comparatively easy.
In June she came home form Pennsylvania a full-fledged graduate despite her handicap. Mr. Worden immediately sought to have her appointed to his staff, and now she will be one of the three teachers of the blind, along with Miss Mary T. French and Mrs. Hilda N. Huber.
Miss Cherlin is 27 years old. To a visitor to her home at 42 Poplar Street in Newport the other day, before she came to Providence to live, she revealed all the traits of an ordinary college girl - poise, self-confidence and ambition. She talked fluently of current topics and, unless he had been told, he would scarcely have been able to tell that she did not see as well as any one.
As a matter of fact, she is entirely sightless. Through her familiarity with the raised letters of the Braille system she reads books, magazines and papers regularly and receives frequent letters from her friends, who write in that language.
While it is possible to use a Braille pad and write in that way very nearly as rapidly as an ordinary person can in longhand, Miss Cherlin prefers a Braille typewriter. She can also use an ordinary typewriter and doesn't care whether the letters are on the keys or not, for she was taught the touch system.
The State Bureau for the Blind has records of 650 blind persons in Rhode Island, nearly three times as many as are shown by the last Federal Census of 1930. These persons are in all kinds of social circles and in nearly all degrees of worldly station. Naturally, many of them are not in very wealthy families and need the welfare work of the bureau.
The work of Miss Cherlin and the other two home teachers will be to visit these persons, instructing them in ways in which they can occupy their time to advantage. Many of them have been taught to read, by the Braille raised letter system. The quality of their handicraft, too, is remarkable. Much of this work is kept on hand in the storeroom of the bureau at the State House here, ready for sale whenever the opportunity offers.
In order to reach blind persons and bring them the benefits of the bureau's program, the teachers must overcome many obstacles. They must be equipped to impart instruction in the rudimentary fields of knowledge along with teaching the Braille that serves as a fundamental means of communication.
Persons afflicted with blindness are often the most difficult of all students. They present difficulties of approach, partly as the result of old-style traditions which have made it impossible for the blind to feel anything but misfits. The idea that a blind man had no career open to him other than that of selling lead pencils or holding a tin cup for alms handicapped the workers with the blind through the psychological attitude it built up in the handicapped. Miss Cherlin knows how they feel, for she suffered keenly through her first four years of darkness before she was able to resume her education.
Teachers of the blind, then, have to be adept at the technique of winning confidence. Often a blind person will show signs of discouragement, which must be broken down until he or she is given a new outlook on life.
For this reason blind teachers are successfully employed, for a blind teacher, who has himself mastered a given problem, can say to another blind person, "See? I did it, and I am blind. Surely you can do as much. You are as able to do it as I was."
The results which have been attained through this method are said to have been truly amazing. Sometimes the blind have used their blindness as an excuse for not doing what they were capable of doing. With an example before them of what other blind ones have accomplished, they take heart. In this way, the blind lead the blind.
Apart from being an object lesson - and an excellent one - Miss Cherlin has other qualifications which fit her for the post to an unusual degree, Mr. Worden believes, and he was gratified by her appointment.
"We shouldn't take promising blind children out of the State and away from home, nor am I thinking especially of spending money for their education in other states when it could be spent here. Every child who is unfortunate enough to be deprived of his eyesight should have still the advantage of a home environment. No institution in the world can supply for him the care that can be given to the child in his own home.
Mr. Worden says he firmly believes that the day will come when special classes for blind children will be instituted in the public schools similar to those already formed for boys and girls with other physical and mental defects.
He believes Miss Cherlin will be a valuable assistant in furthering such a program, for she is to work with the blind right here in Rhode Island.