| dc.description.abstract | This study deals with the functioning of the two schools for the blind in Helsinki and Kuopio during the period 1865-1917. It also deals with the 573 pupils who attended the schools during the same period. This account of the early decades of the education of the blind has been made with aid of sources such as records, writings, and interviews etc. The topic is examined from the perspectives of administration, pedagogy, and social history. The teaching of the blind in schools began in Finland in 1865 when the Helsinki School for the Blind was founded. It was part of the beginnings of general elementary education in Finland and occured one year before the Statute providing for the same. The principals of both the Helsinki school and the Kuopio school, which began in 1871, made extensive study trips abroad before commencing their duties and returned with models from blind schools in Scandinavia and central Europe. The later development of Finnish blind schools was furthered as a result of teachers making visits to blind schools and attending international
conferences. The pupils of the blind schools came initially from middle-class Swedish speaking families, but with the coming of teaching in Finnish they also came from eastern and northern Finland and from northern-most Lapland. Pupils thus came in large numbers from areas in which simple chimneyless huts were dependant lodgers' children from eastern Finland whose blindness was often the result of inflammation sicknesses, poxes, or trachoma. Later, around the beginning of this century, many of those attending schools had been blinded in accidents. Many also suffered from disabilities related to their visual handicap or from other maladies. The schools inculcated Christian principles and provided a general education. Important subjects in the curriculum were religious instruction, mother tongue with teaching in different writing systems, and handicrafts. From the 1870's onwards handicrafts accounted for about 50 % of all teaching hours as training for an occupation was held to be a central task of the blind schools. Pupils were taught to make brushes, baskets, rugs, and rope as well as women's handicrafts. Most of those who found employment ended up practising a handicraft. Others became masseurs, teachers or overseers in schools, businessmen, and musicians. For all these occupations preparation was given in the blind schools. A number of ex-pupils were later proved unable to earn a living. | en |
