BLIND AND SIGHTED PIONEER TEACHERS IN 19TH CENTURY CHINA AND INDIA (revised edition) M. Miles, West Midlands, UK.
[email protected] Miles, M. 2011. BLIND AND SIGHTED PIONEER TEACHERS IN 19TH CENTURY CHINA AND INDIA (revised edition). This article introduces blind and sighted men and women who developed education and employment for blind people in China and in India from the 1830s onward, and whose pioneering efforts have disappeared from later accounts of blind people's history. This revised and much extended online version is published in xxxx 2011: www.independentliving.org/docs7/miles201104.html and www.independentliving.org/docs7/miles201104.pdf SYNOPSIS Blindness, blind people and blind teachers appear in literature from both Chinese and Indian antiquity. Legal and charitable provisions existed and a few blind characters played a role in epic history, while most blind Asians probably lived quite constricted lives. The 'official' starting dates for formal blind schools are 1874 in China, and 1886 in India, but in fact there was well documented educational work with blind people from the 1830s onward in both countries, and many aspects of it are both interesting and instructive for what came later. Two of the key 19th century special teachers were blind young women. In 1837, missionary teacher Mary Gutzlaff integrated several young, blind, Chinese orphan girls in her small boarding school at Macau. One named 'Agnes Gutzlaff' was then educated in London, and returned in 1856 to Ningpo, moving later to work in Shanghai. Agnes became the first trained and experienced person in China to teach blind people to read, using first the Lucas system, then Willam Moon's embossed script.