Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1889-09-19
SchOOi for the Blind.

Editor Register-Are there any blind
children in your town or its vicinity?
If so we want them here.
Think about it, please, and induce
your readers t, both think and talk
about it.
1t is important to the State-it will
be great kindness to the child.
The parents in your community
dorsement to the proposition that the
father or mother who denies to any
child a common school education, is
guilty ofuot only a great wrongaga gainst
the little one, but of a serious otfense
against society. In the present state of
popular enlightenment, when at least
an elementary knowledge of such
branches as are taught in our public
schools constitutes an almost absolute
condition precedent to business success,
to keepa child in ignorance is TO cripple
him for life. Applying, as this declara-
ton does, in cafes where children are
possessed of all the natural faculties,
how vastly more forcible is its applica-
ton to the afflicted few who are without
the most useful of all of the senses!
Inasmuch as blindness without ed
ucation of mind and hand means a life
Of constant depenence upon others--a
melancholy life of pauperism unless
that fate be averted by gift or inher-
itance-lt seems incredible that any
father or mother should need to be
urged or persuaded before consenting
to do that which would make a child
measurably independent and happy
throughout its career. Yet such cases
do exist all over this State, and hence
this appeal.
The subscribers hereto are managers
of school which offerr splendid advan-
tages to all the blind children and
youths Of the State, and are desirous
of gathering within its walls every
person whom it was designed to beni-
fit. The Missouri School for the Blind
is just as distinctively a public school.
and just as little open to the objections
which are sometimes urged to institu-
tions of the, asylum character as is the
district school in your own town.
Under our present system of public ed
ucation, every parent has right to ex-
pect the Slate to provide school facili-
ties for his children, and this the State
seeks to do. AS the blind are not so
numerous as to warrant the establish
ment of district or even county schools
for their special education, the State
determined to locate and first class
public school for their uses at some GEN.
trail point, and st. Louis was selected.
AS a majority of the pnpils could not
live and sleep at home, while attend
ing this public school, the State regard
ed it as only right that the appropriA-
ton for maintenance should be such as
to place blind children, as nearly as
possible, OH the same plane with other
children, in so far as the cost securing
an education was concerned; and hence,
provision is made by which pupils are
relieved of all expense except the items
of railroad fare and clothing.
In a large, handsome and substanti, Il
building at the corner of Nineteenth
and Morgan streets, the school for the
Blind has grown from modest begin
nipgs to an institution which is
model of its kind. 1t is provided with
a large corps of teachers, who instruct
the pupils not only in all the common
English branches, but in vocal and in-
strumental music, aud in manual work
which fits them for earning Hveli-
hood. The rapiditJ with which the
blind acquire knowledge of history,