Through the years Perkins’ historical curriculum and programming have evolved to meet new challenges and goals while continually striving for excellence in education. Learn about the history of education for students with blindness and deafblindness and related innovations that extend well beyond the school.
Curriculum
Learn about the evolution of how students who were blind, deafblind, and visually impaired were educated.
Two female students, with white skin tone, explore the Samuel P. Ruggles tactile globe.
Geography
Providing a geography curriculum, and the tactile tools necessary to learn it, was a priority as the school opened. Founding Director, Samuel Gridley Howe knew that his students would need to understand geography in order to function in the world.
Teaching math at Perkins has evolved since the 1850s, when students used wooden arithmetic slates to show numeric values and to add, subtract or multiply. Today, students can use a tactile graphics pad for complex equations.
Math
Math curriculum has always been a core subject at Perkins and like other subject areas, required the development of tactile teaching tools. For complex mathematical problems, tactile devices take the place of pencil and paper and speed up calculations greatly.
Trio of musicians at the Kindergarten for the Blind in Jamaica Plain, ca. 1900
Music
Music curriculum has historically had a prominent place in the education of children who are blind. Perkins’ founding director Samuel G. Howe considered music as important as intellectual and physical education.
Helen Keller loved reading the plays of William Shakespeare as a child. But when she was an adult, she became a Shakespeare skeptic – and didn’t believe that he actually wrote the plays and poetry credited to him.
Reading and Writing
Reading and writing curricula, systems, and technologies for people who are blind have evolved over many centuries. Perkins has been part of this evolution, since its’ beginning, starting with the design of a new embossed reading system.
Two primary boys in 1929 are conducting a scientific experiment. Two male students stand behind a wooden table. A student who had light-skinned has his hands in large basin. The dark-skinned student to his left is opening a wooden frame-like box over paper.Behind them, two sheets of paper pinned to a cord.
Science
When the school started, the science curriculum at Perkins relied on the tactile exploration of models supplemented with theoretical instruction. Perkins founding director, Samuel Gridley Howe was committed to teaching “scientifically,” requiring his students to learn the theory of each field they studied instead of merely committing facts to memory.
A Perkins student sails through the air during a running broad jump competition between Perkins and Watertown High School in 1913. From its earliest days, Perkins has always been a pioneer in encouraging students who are blind to lead healthy, active lives by participating in sports and athletics.
Sports
Exercise, play, and sports activities for students who are blind have historically been a key component of a Perkins education. Perkins School for the Blind pioneered the first physical education program for students who were blind in the United States.
Like today, Perkins has extended services and advocacy beyond the school. Explore more topics related to the history of Perkins that highlights this work.
Light-filled library at the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind in South Boston, circa 1893. A woman sits at a desk in front of rows of wooden bookshelves. A class case in from of her houses stuffed birds and plants.
Origins of the Perkins Library
The origins of library services for people who are blind and the history of Perkins are intimately intertwined.
Sample pages of a book printed in Boston Line Type, an embossed Roman alphabet for use by people who are blind, titled “The Blind Child’s Second Book”. The book contains educational materials for children. This volume is one of the first books printed by the Perkins Institution in 1836.
History of tactile books
Braille was just one of many competing systems. Boston Line Type was an embossed alphabet developed at Perkins in 1835.