Change was very Slow at VSDB in the 1970s

[rodney...@gmail.com]

As someone who attended VSDB from January of 1969 through June of 1973, I must comment on the two previous posts that I have read on the rate of change at VSDB.

Some of the faculty and staff pretended not to notice that most boys in the 1960s and in the early 70s liked to wear our hair a bit longer than usual. They wanted us to walk around with short hair as if we were living in the 1950s. Although I understand why this made things easier for the faculty and staff at VSDB, I always thought that this did not promote freedom of choice.

I did learn how to do math in braille at VSDB. I always enjoyed it when Dr. Bruce substituted for MS Bruce because he challenged us by giving us interesting math problems to solve.

While I attended VSDB, I also learned that life wasn’t fair. I understood that my parents and I   were going to constantly have to advocate for more than a standard education   if I wanted to have better career/vocational opportunities.

I did make some good friends at VSDB. I value those relationships very much.

I also hated all of the emphasis on wrestling. I never wanted to wrestle even though two of my good friends wrestled in high school. When they asked me if I wanted to wrestle, I told them that wrestling had been forced on us when I was in elementary school at VSDB. So I associated wrestling with VSDB. Since I did not enjoy attending VSDB, I didn’t want to wrestle.

Why didn’t VSDB offer any swimming classes or running classes?

There were two other areas that were not emphasized enough at VSDB. These were cane travel and learning to take notes with my slate and stylus.

When I was in the third grade at VSDB, I used to get very bored in study hall because we were not given any homework. If someone had shown me how to use the slate and stylus, then maybe I could have learned to take notes using my slate and stylus since I didn’t get a braille writer of my own until  late in the year that I was in the third grade.

       I had to learn to use a cane when I went to public school because VSDB did not provide any cane travel training for me even though they knew that I was leaving the school.

Many of us in my generation are still not great travelers because we did not learn to travel independently until we left VSDB.

Overall, attending VSDB was not a good experience for me, but I am glad that I did attend VSDB because it prepared me for life because I knew that I would always have to fight harder to be successful in life.

Fortunately, I am happily retired and living a good life in Winchester, VA.

 

Rodney Neely