Category: The Rave Board
Europe's most advanced school for blind/vi & multi disabled children will be built on Glasgow's south side.The new school in Dumbreck ,has been designed to allow children to navigate around the school without supervision.Some of the 50 plus pupils aged from 4 to 18, have hearing and/or mobility problems.However ,they will benefit from the pioneering design which allows them to feel their way through the building by touch and an arrangement of the walls.Traditional school corridors have been replaced by revolutionarydesigns and tactile materials .Designed by award winning architects Gordon Murray and Alan Dunlop,the school will be sety in parkland which will give the children a feeling of peace and space.New internal streets have been created with areas specifically designed to provide sesory clues to help the children orientate themselves within their immediate enviroment...
...work will commence in the summer and the school will be open in 2006
this is not a new thing, there are plenty of schools which allow students to navigate around them, minus cane, through tactile clues.
maybe so but it's the 1st of its kind in Scotland ....
Hi Goblin. Mate, I'm sorry to say that I strongly disagree with the concept and design of that school. I mean, a building like that is just protecting blind children from the real world. You and I know that when those children graduate from that school, they will expect to have the same adjustments, acomodations and/or adaptations in the real world, and that is just impossible. I mean, does buildings out there have special designs for the blind? No they don't. Are the walls arranged in such a way that the blind can
Hi Goblin. Mate, I'm sorry to say that I strongly disagree with the concept and design of that school. I mean, a building like that is just protecting blind children from the real world. You and I know that when those children graduate from that school, they will expect to have the same adjustments, acomodations and/or adaptations in the real world, and that is just impossible. I mean, does buildings out there have special designs for the blind? No they don't. Are the walls arranged in such a way that the blind can feel their way through the building? No, they aren't. So, I see no point in designing a school for the blind that will only protect children and will make them have expectations of the real world that will not be met when they graduate from the school. For me, a school for the blind that embraces an overprotecting philosophy should not exist in the first place. For me at least, a school for the blind should be a school where children learn how to coap with the real world, not a school where everything is adapted to suit the needs of the blind with accommodations that will not be found anywhere else but in the school. You all take care, Joaquín
I agree with latino on this one. One of the biggest criticisms of special needs schools of any types, is that they are not "real", and often children there are too institutionalised and not leave with a picture of ho things ar in the real world. this will only server to make things worse.
Alex, appreciate it I do for you posting this information. I have made a copy of this location and plan on making contact with this facility when completion is scheduled to take place. Sounds as if this is a location that could teach me what it is I desire to attain to in knowledge of. What is discussed here is what I desire to attain to in the design and construction of The Life-Flo Woodland Trail for the Blind/VI/Special Needs Persons work that I am personally involved in, that at previous times we shared in conversation. When I made the trip North a few weeks back I noticed that the yellow plastic roping that had been laid and attached to trees as a guide out the previous Autumn through the Woodlands was perhaps trespassing a few feet of the way onto neighboring acreage and Aaarrrgh it seems I may need to now reroute a portion of the rope before going forward but it needs to be as right as it can from beginnings. As you receive more information on this school I trust you will continue to give out the info. Connie
I guess that school would be OK if it were for small children, as I think it would encourage them to explore their environment safely at first. But after that, I would say to move them to mainstream if possible, or maybe make another campus that's more realistic so that they can get used to dealing with a more natural environment that they'll need to be aware of when they start traveling in the community. I used to be against special schools, thinking that it segregates special needs students from their peers. But I think if they can't get a proper education in mainstream or even in a self-contained classroom, then the special schools are OK because the teachers and the school would be better equipt to deal with students' special needs, mainly for students who have severe behavioral or multiple disabilities, or if blind students might need more one-on-one work on subjects like math or blindness skills. The school wouldn't have to be a residential one either, and the students can still spend a lot of their time outside school like with community-based trips. Although it's cool that the school is totally adapted to blind children though, I would agree with most everyone else that physically the school is unrealistic and might not help when the older child wants or is expected to go into the community and finds that things are totally different. But, as I mentioned, if it's just for smaller children, that would be fine since they can safely explore, but I don't think it's good for older ones.
Leilani
Latino the school will be aware of this fact, and they will teach the children to be independent in the outside world, there would be little point in cocooning the children away in a permantaly safe enviroment then letting the blighters lose to struggle around a large and dangerous city...They will have O & M and cane travel ect,the schools here teach life skills ect, as well as the cirriculum, and many of the children go on to do excel in whatever they do...
Tinkerbell believe me with the esculating violence, and discipline problems in mainstream Glasgow schools, you wouldn't want a disabled child educated there.The teachers are routinely assaulted, female pupils are sexually harrased, the majority of schools here are something akin to a war zone....