| Description | Interview with Freddie Tooze, superintendent at Royal Sheffield School for the Blind. He continues to talk about new methods of teaching mobility, his view that mobility is only one phase of training to enable blind children to have full movement, and the 'movement training' taught at the school through getting the children to take part in and enjoy different physical and sports activities. He discusses the school's encouragement of the use of touch by blind children to understand the body and functions of their own bodies and those of the opposite gender, the tendency of blind people to use touch in a natural but 'socially unacceptable' way and criticism of the school in not making the children conform to 'seeing standards'. He describes some of the changes he has made since starting work at the school to make the system less hierarchical, to allow the children more freedom and to let parents into the school (tracks 1-5).
Track 6: distorted phrase 0.13 mins
Freddie Tooze continues to talk about the future of schools for blind children, his belief that they should be state-controlled and part of the education system, and the educational standards of blind children. He answers Charles Parker's questions about the repetitive skills taught to students at Harborne and the capacity of blind children to learn more complex skills, discusses methods to measure innate ability, the lack of correlation between the ability to read braille and intelligence, his work on a research committee on the teaching of braille and his belief that there is a need for research into techniques for teaching blind children and creating more instruments to assess their abilities. He discusses the teaching of grade 2 braille to children at a younger age than those in other primary schools for the blind (tracks 7-10).
Track 11: Unidentified man, possibly Geoffrey Reeve, interviews an unidentified woman about her relations with her neighbours, her main social activities, her job with the Ministry of Aviation near Harlow New Town, her difficulties adjusting to life in a smaller town and her opinions on the sort of life that teenagers in the town have. This is possibly part of an actuality recording made for the 'Landmarks' series 4.09 mins
Total: 32.14 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF565D0768980 |