| Description | Interview with John Watt, Edinburgh. He talks about his love of football, the system in Scotland where a commentator for the blind attends football matches, and attending matches with sighted relatives who commentate on the game for him and have to be accurate in their descriptions of the game and of his position in the ground. He talks about supporting Glasgow Celtic and deplores the rivalry between supporters of Celtic and Glasgow Rangers. He discusses his childhood in Musselburgh, how he lost his sight in a childhood accident, his education at the Royal Blind School at Craigmillar Park, Edinburgh and the school's re-location during the Second World War. He talks about the development of the braille press in the school grounds, his desire for schools for blind children to be located in more rural surroundings with greater recreational facilities, and his acknowledgement that children need to get used to living in an urban setting. He thinks that there is a strong case for blind children to be integrated into mainstream education for certain subjects and speaks about his own experience of mixing with sighted children, the disadvantages of attending a residential school, and the benefits of co-educational schools. He discusses nineteenth century attitudes towards blind people, talks about his training at the Royal Blind Asylum in Edinburgh and expresses his views about the employment and further education opportunities available to blind people in the 1960s, comparing the situation with his own experiences. He talks about opposition to blind teachers and mentions the names of some of the blind teachers and university lecturers he knows of (tracks 1-10).
Total: 32.56 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF565D0769480 |