Rights, Roles and Responsibilities in the Orientation and Mobility Process
Joe Cutter
Reprinted from the Braille Monitor

From the Editor: One of the most respected—perhaps the most respected by parents—early childhood orientation and mobility teachers in the country today is Joe Cutter of New Jersey. He addressed the 2000 seminar sponsored by the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children in Atlanta. As always his remarks were sensible and comprehensible, and for all of us interested in cane travel or blind children, they are worth reading and thinking about. They first appeared in volume 20, number 1, of Future Reflections, the quarterly magazine of the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children. Here they are, beginning with Barbara Cheadle's editor's note:

Joe Cutter, Early Childhood Orientation and Mobility (O&M) Specialist, New Jersey Commission for the Blind, is a professional in the best and most noble sense of the word. He is also one of the most truly humble people I know. He never feels he is above learning something new from his students, their parents, blind adults, or fellow professionals. Joe regularly attends National Federation of the Blind conventions and freely shares his knowledge and expertise with parents and teachers. He makes presentations, gives group workshops, and voluntarily consults one-on-one with any parent who approaches him with a problem. The following article is an edited version of the speech he gave at the 2000 Annual Parents Seminar at the NFB Convention in Atlanta, Georgia:

I know of no better place to come than the NFB and the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC) to hear about, be informed about, and learn about your roles, rights, and responsibilities. I know of no other venue that respects and values these three R's more than the NFB.

A Chinese proverb says: "To know the way ahead, ask those coming back." The richness of human resources in this room today and at this convention all week will provide you with much fuel for thought and action in meeting your child's requirements on the road toward independence. The positive role modeling, the rights that have been established by the individual and collective power of this NFB movement, and the personal responsibilities that have been taken by persons at this convention can provide you with comfort, confidence, hope, and skills as you travel the road ahead with your child.

There is an interconnectiveness among these three R's. Your role as a parent gives you rights that come with responsibilities. For example, you have a need to know about blindness and a right to information about it. You have a need for training for yourself and your child on the skills of blindness. This information and training will facilitate your role and responsibilities as your child's first teacher. At this convention a few years ago a learned gentleman from India told me, "The mother's lap is the child's first classroom." No one will have a greater impact on your child's development than you, the parent.

I would like to talk more about your right to information and training. You have a right to clear, reliable, and useful information. As a parent you are vulnerable to reading inaccurate information and misconceptions about blindness in the form of unreliable research about blind children. Much of the time this information will be with a negative perspective. Be careful what you read! It may leave you functionally illiterate about the true nature of blindness. At its worst such material will leave you with less hope and less motivation. At its best it's like a mixed-up math problem from when you were a kid: Mary has three apples and Sally has four apples, so how many miles is it to Detroit? You scratch your head and think, "What?" You're left not knowing what to do with what you read (or heard, for that matter) about blindness and your child.

Therefore you have a right to read about and hear about a positive perspective about blindness. It is my responsibility as an O&M professional never to take away hope, to do no harm by promoting unreliable practices, but rather to nurture your role with your child, to develop, along with you, options and opportunities for your child. And it is my responsibility to advocate with you in what sometimes is a formidable structure of misinformation and misguided practices in the education of blind children today, particularly in the field of O&M (more about this point later).

You have a right to training: the "what" and "how" of O&M—or as I have come to know it through my involvement with the NFB—independent movement and travel. I am talking about training that is concerned with skills and skill proficiency and not the endless readiness and remediation for these skills—training that respects early use of cane travel with the young blind child, training in what I like to call the really long long cane. The best way to learn how to use a cane is not with a pre-cane (you know, those PVC pipe, rectangular, push devices). The pre-cane will only slow down children's movement and make them vulnerable to not learning age-appropriate movement and travel skills. No, the best way for your child to develop cane skills is to hold a cane in the hand and use it.

An unnecessary so-called readiness curriculum serves only the professional who uses it and, I believe, is used only by O&M professionals who haven't learned the techniques for teaching long cane skills to the very young blind child.

My experience has been that the most misguided O&M information parents get has to do with using sighted guides. The practice itself is not the problem but the misuse and abuse of it at home and school. All too often parents and classroom teachers are left with the idea that the child should do most of his or her traveling on the arm of another person. What these children learn, then, is how to observe someone else's movement and not their own. Everything they experience about moving in the outdoor community and in the school is dictated and directed by someone else—the person guiding them—and they never get the opportunity to practice self-directed movement skills with a long cane.

Now this is so, I believe, because the traditional university programs preparing O&M instructors for the field place an overemphasis upon this single skill. It is the first skill taught for indoor and outdoor travel. There are pages and pages demonstrating the technique in the textbook curriculum and hours and hours in the practicum experience for the student learning to become an O&M professional. You will not find this skill overemphasized and over-used at the O&M program at Louisiana Tech under the direction of Dr. Ruby Ryles. Instead, in this program the students preparing to be O&M instructors use valuable time learning about a full complement of independent cane-based travel skills, the real skills of blindness.

My thinking, based upon years of experience in the field, is that the sighted guide technique has become "filler" in the curriculum and practice of the traditionally trained O&M instructors. They do not know how to move forward with the skills of blindness promoted by the blindness community, blind travel instructors, and the NFB. Instead they fill the curriculum with sighted-guide practice, and your child pays the price of sighted-guide overload every day. The blind child doesn't need filler. Feed your child sirloin steak, not hamburger helper!

The next point about training is that, if your child is partially sighted, he or she has the right to sleepshade (blindfold) training. Such training develops confidence in using the alternative (non-visual) techniques of touch, smell, and sound. Children cannot develop full confidence in blindness-based travel skills if they are still relying mostly upon ten percent or less of typical vision. This will produce doubt, stress, and a tentative style of travel. The often-used argument against sleepshade training is that the student will go back to using vision once the sleepshade is off. This is of course true, but what these naysayers don't take into account is that the person will now use his or her vision with greater confidence and with better judgment about when to use vision and when to use the non-visual technique. He or she will have new options and confidence in using these options. It's about developing good judgment.

Remember I told you earlier that you are your child's first teacher? Well, as your child's teacher you have the right to help train the other professionals and educators in your child's life. You are his or her most natural resource. The more clear, reliable, and useful information you have about blindness, the more persuasive you will become in advocating for your child. Your information will be confidence-based. (The word confidence comes from "con-fidos" which means "with trust.")

Along with the other parents of blind children in your state, you can work toward making a better life for your child and other blind children. An excellent example of this is in my own state of New Jersey. A decade or so ago Carol Castellano, Vice President of NOPBC and President of the Parents Division of New Jersey, informed, persuaded, educated, and trained me well. It was a gentle, one-on-one education. She worked with other parents in her state, and together they are making a difference. Some of these parents are here at this convention—Valerie and Ed Ryan, Amy Kaiser, and Donna Panaro.

This September the New Jersey Parents of Blind Children will conduct a teacher-training workshop for classroom teachers. Carol works closely with Joe Ruffalo, President of the NFB of New Jersey, to make these kinds of training opportunities happen. Together they have positively influenced the quality of life in New Jersey for blind people. I have learned much from Joe and Carol. They—parent and blind adult—have taught me to be a better professional, a better person. Truly an educational revolution is developing in the field of education of blind children, and the NFB is leading the way.

Blind children—your children—have the right to freedom of movement, the joy of movement, and the confidence that comes with self-directed movement. They have the right to take responsibility for their own movement and to practice and master the skills of blindness. It is your right, your role, and your responsibility to teach your child; and I—as the professional—have the responsibility to support, facilitate, and join you in this effort. Together we can be very formidable and persuasive in contributing to positive outcomes in independent movement and travel for blind children.

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