The acquisition of colours in blind children

Abstract

My essay wants to explore the world of blind people, in particular of some blind and partially sighted children who I met during my internship at the Hollman Foundation in Padova. I will examine some important issues in special pedagogy that offer a possibility to educate men even in some impossible situations, despite of discouraging and impassable existing conditions. My work starts with the most intersting parts from “il principe cieco” , the tale of Rodari, which is well known to the Foundaion, because it underlines the idea of a constant challenge which I saw in the educators that I met, most of all when it seems there is nothing more to do. In fact, the character of Zerbino, personifyes the image of the educator that has the task to lead the prince towards his realization. He brings him behind the medical boundaryes, entering in a physical and psychological relationship with him. Zerbino intrudes upon the scene, revolutionizing medical diagnosis completely. He does not stop at first succeses, he goes behind Medoro’s disability and starts to educate his resources, changing them into a new opening towards the exterior. He sees the prince with his abilities and his lacks and does not stop at the goals which he reaches but keeps to dream what he can still achieve. This way, he creates a vital relationship that is fundamental for the education of the young prince, based on a descriptive language that is the connection between the young blind and the world outside. Zerbino becomes a reality mediator, as it should be for those that are responsable for the education of boys and girls with a sight deficit, creating a “teacher and student” relation which is based on responsability. It was that responsability that every one has, it was the way in which everyone of us decide to stay in front of others in an improved relationship, that inspired my work. Starting from the pure analysis of the eye and its functions, in normal situation and in blindness, I will analyze how learning language is, and in particular, I will analyze it refering to colors, with the strengthening of cognitive processes of our mind and the development of the other senses. The refinements of the tactile sense and the auditive one, help the development of everybody’s own autonomy and the function of the visual thinking, for the perceptive experience must be built gradually with the tactile and auditive exploration that are useful to stratify the images, as the verbal description is used just to reinforce the comprehension, helping the recognition of it. Then, I’ll explore the studying of colors, as to underline how important it is, for these children, the use of a multisensorial didactics in order to learn. Finally, it comes the analysis of a data collection to understand what perception they have of themselves and of the reality surrounding them. A simple music laboratory, for the color comprehension, will sum up all my experience about this internship at the Robert Hollman Foundation, where a group of children experienced the peception of colors thanks to emotions and sounds. To find ourself in front of someone who cannot see us, while we are buried in the cult of the image, can of course disorient us, confuse us, it can create some lack, some silence that we need to cover up in order not to hear it and not to see it. But the best approach to difference, is to recognize it as it is, and to consider it a resource. I conclude with a sentence from Simona Atzori, that sums up my work: "why do we need to identify ourself with what we do not have, instead of watching what we do have? Limits are not real most of times, they are just in the eyes of who is watching us."