LA PEDAGOGIA DEI CIECHI TRA PASSATO E FUTURO

Abstract

This contribution reconstructs the history of educational practices and theories for the blind, highlighting the difficulties and the prejudices, but also the achievements. If from the ancient age to the modern age the blind person is mainly excluded from society and placed on the margins of it, in the Age of Enlightenment the first institutes are created by some benefactors to assist and to educate the blind. But two events change the history of the education of the blind: the alphabet created by Luis Braille in the 19th century and the diffusion of Augusto Romagnoli’s typhlopedagogy in the 20th century, that decree the end of exclusion and the start towards inclusion of the blind. The history of the education of the blind presents two constants: on the one hand the battle, lasted for centuries, to affirm the right to education, based on the principle of the educability of subjects with visual impairment; on the other hand, the presence of a dialectic between normalization and specialization. Today we need to take care of both aspects to achieve the goal of educating blind or visually impaired subjects, so that they have the same opportunities as everyone else while maintaining their specificity.