Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1940-10-13
New Methods for
Aiding the Blind
BIZ Frederic J. HdSkir.

awaiting them. For some months past
the American Foundation for the Blind
has been working to enhance lessons to
sightless children with something Of the
stimulation which the average boy and
girl get from looking at pictures and
illustrations.
The novelty which these children
found in more than Is schools for the
blind in various parts of the United
States is a series of school lessons with
audible illustrations which use the
Talking Book as an auxiliary instructor.
Obviously, the pictures for blind school
children must be audible. They can
never see brightness of color or strength
and beauty of line. but they can have a
scene pictured indelibly for them through
the sounds which that scene projects.
The Talking Book consists Of long
playing photographic discs played on a
special reading machine 50 simplified
that the blind can easily manipulate 1t
by touch. The present instance is the
first time in which the Talking Book
has been utilized for classroom use with
blind children.
For months past, DR.. Berthold Lowen-
field, in charge Of the education project
of the American Foundation for the
Blind, has been working to prepare these
special photographic discs for classroom
use. This research was made possible
through grant from the Carnegie Foun-
dalton. Dr. Lowenfeld has based his
work on the knowledge that the blind
child relies almost exclusively on the
senses of touch and hearing, and he has
accordingly endeavored to bring to blind
children through these two senses as
much concrete experience as possible.
The photographic discs which the
sound studios of the foundation have
now prepared consist of Talking Book
records with alternating bands of sound
and silence The sound band projects a
short lesson. Sometimes this lesson
comes from the discs in dramatic form,
sometimes as a story told with sound
effects and sometimes as straight mar
rative. When each lesson ends, the band
of silence follows, and in that interval
the instructors test questions on the
recorded lesson are given to the young
blind listeners.
Each band of sound has been recorded
for very definite purpose. In one in
stance, the lesson tests the child's power
of observation. 1t is a visit to a sawmlu.
The narrator tells what the seeing child
onl ,po rannr1
tells, with its rasp of saws and buzz of
machinery, what both the seeing and the
blind child would hear. The illusion pro-
duced is lifelike and almost perfect. All
that is needed to complete 1t Is the smell
of new lumber and fresh sawdust. COM
bined with the acrid odor Of oil. The
Talking Book has yet to adventure into
smells. but this is said to be not i'm
possible.
Another sound band tells in a dramatic
form a kindly anecdote of the life Of
Oliver Goldsmith, and still another, also
in dramatic form. gives information on
Iceland and its hot springs. There is
a lesson to test the child's emotional re-
spouse, another which has to do with
the escape and capture of canary, the
aim being to test the blind child's under
standing. Other techniques and tests
are in process of development.
The discs are guaged to the attention
span of grades and 6. BY means OF
data already available, the instructor can
compare the answers which the blind
children make to those made by sighted
children on the basis of the same tests.
Comparisons are remarkable, illustrating
forcibly how blind children can under
stand in the absence OF sight.
For more advanced blind children there
is a historical lesson so alive and inter-
esting that seeing children might for
once envy their sightless contemporaries.
1t is a lesson on the Panama Canal
which utilities new technique in class
room instruction. This technique COM
bines narrative and dramatic sequences.
The voice of the narrator tells OF some
event in connection with the background
or construction of the great canal. The
voice fades, and in moment the scene
is re-enacted as in life. Through this
IledIlS IIic llSlcllcI 1AAlSAo I4AC iAoi iAioIAO
doubly impressed on the memory. For
instance, he listens to the narrator tell
what Theodore Roosevelt did or said at
a cabinet meeting in Washington but he
listens with keener zeal when he feels
himself within the actual room, hears
people entering and arranging their seats
around the table, and Theodore Roose-
welt himself talking and laughing or
arguing as the scene progresses.
Other recordings which lend them
selves admirably to high school use in
clude a volume entitled advancing
America" and one on the life and works
of Mozart, in which narrative and
analysis alternate with sound reproduce
lions of the composers compositions.
illustrating Immediately the points
brought out in the text.
These books take advantage OF the
fact that they are written in sound
rather than in imprint, and in that
range give a variety of voices, infections
and effects impossible to achieve In the
ordinary classroom without dramatic
cast or a proproom with stage noises. In
these Talking Book records, listening and
learning 60 hand in hand, and 1t will be
interesting to watch the results achieved.
This novel form Of instruction was
planned to supplement rather than to