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REPORT

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON THE BLIND.

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REPORT

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON THE BLIND.

To the State Board of Charities:

During the year the Committee on the Blind and the Board's inspectors made the usual visitations to the two schools for the blind which are in receipt of public moneys. These institutions are passing through a new stage of development. The State school at Batavia has a new principal, Mr. Charles E. Hamilton, formerly superintendent of schools at Newark, N. Y., and to some extent has been reorganized, to the end that greater attention may be given to certain essential features of the curriculum than they have received heretofore. The New York Institution for the Blind, located in New York City, is making preparations for the removal of the school work to a new location, and the managers are endeavoring to conserve its interests and dispose of the property on Ninth avenue to the best advantage in order that the greater institution which they intend shortly to establish shall start under the most favorable auspices.

The number of blind persons of school age in the State of New York has increased during the year, but the efforts made by this Board, by the Association for the Blind and other societies, and by the president of the board of managers of the State School for the Blind at Batavia to educate the people in regard to the perils which beset the new-born child, must tend to decrease the number of blind and be productive of great good in the future. It has been estimated that 80 per cent. of children now in the schools for the blind are there in consequence of blindness contracted in earliest infancy, which could have been prevented had physicians, nurses and mothers taken ordinary precautions in safeguarding the new-born. There can be no doubt that the dissemination of information concerning the causes of ophthalmia in the new-born should be widespread, and

that every physician and midwife should make it their duty to protect helpless infancy as far as possible.

In the New York Institution for the Blind the curriculum now follows the lines which are approved in the best schools in this country. In fact, the institution has been a pioneer in concentrating its efforts upon the mental development of pupils, leaving the acquisition of trades and technical skill in industries to other times than the brief years of school life. The same plan of concentrating effort upon mental development now obtains in the State School for the Blind at Batavia. Although more industrial work is taught there, the students engaged in learning special trades are generally those of older grades. They frequently represent the type which will be more or less dependent through life. In these days, when so much of our manufacturing is done by machinery, the blind workman stands little chance for success in competition with seeing labor in trades which require machinery for rapid production. Fortunately, however, new avenues open to the blind through the use of the typewriter, the dictograph, and the small reporting writing machine known as a stenograph, by which the blind can take dictation to be later transcribed upon the typewriter. Then, too, many mercantile establishments find place for bright blind men and women who can take charge of certain clerical work which can be performed within a limited space and which requires intelligent recognition of location and other details. Several blind persons have proven remarkably successful as telephone switchboard attendants, and in the line of massage, blind persons have a comparatively open field which is recognized in some parts of the country, for attention is now directed to the training of such persons as operators. After all, the well-trained mind is for the blind, as for the seeing, the key that can open many doors, and the schools should give such instruction as is best calculated to arouse and develop all the mental powers.

The statistics of the two schools are embodied in the statistical volume which forms part of the Board's annual report. These show that the State of New York is not niggardly in appropriations for maintenance, and that our schools compare favorably with the best in this country. They own property valued at

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