Blind and Deaf Series

Documentarian Frederick Wiseman highlights the educational programs and daily life of all levels of students at the Alabama School for the Blind, where the effort is organized around educating blind and visually impaired students to be in charge of their own lives. Sequences include mobility training, braille instruction and orientation, as well as traditional classroom subjects such as English, history, science and music, as well as psychological counseling sessions; vocational training; staff dealing with disciplinary problems; and the wide variety of recreational and athletic programs.

The School for the Deaf at the Alabama Institute is organized around a theory of total communication, i.e. the use of signs and finger spelling in conjunction with speech, hearing aids, lip reading, gestures and the written word. Sequences deal with various aspects of this comprehensive training such as teaching students and parents to sign; speech therapy; psychological counseling; regular academic courses; vocational training; disciplinary problems; parents visits; sports and recreational activity; training in living and working independently; and developing skills in home and money management.

Wiseman enumerates the sights and sounds of Talladega, Alabama — the railroad tracks, quiet streets and homes, a few shops downtown — almost as if to list those things most of us might take for granted. Of the four films in this series, Adjustment & Work focuses entirely on adults—specifically those who have recently lost their sight (and hence are adjusting to this change) and those without sight or hearing who are learning skills in order to enter the workforce.

The day to day activities of multi-handicapped and sensory impaired students and their teachers, dormitory parents, and counselors at the Helen Keller School, whose primary mission is to meet the total and living needs of deaf and/or blind children, some of whom also have other impairments. Frederick Wiseman presents situations involving personal hygiene, mobility training, concepts of time and money, self help and independent living, dormitory life, recreation, sports, vocational training, and psychological counseling.