een trained as readers and public entertainers, a
line of work in which eyesight is not an essential factor. Reading aloud
should be encouraged among the pupils, and frequent speed tests given,
thus stimulating in them a desire for reading.

The school at Berkeley has included business methods in its course of
study, and this is an excellent thing, because the day is not far
distant when the ability of the blind to fill positions as typewriters,
stenographers, telephone and dictaphone operators, and salesmen, will be
recognized. And when this time comes, let us hope that our young people
may be ready and eager to prove their worth in these lines of endeavor.
If the students are made to feel that they are blazing a trail, and
making it less difficult for others to follow, their ultimate success is
assured.

Having outlined the aim and purpose of the residential school, and shown
it to be a necessary factor in the education of the blind in every
state, I wish to call attention to some of the advantages to be derived
from coeducation of blind and seeing children.

As early as 1900 Chicago started a special class for blind children as a
part of its public school system, thus inaugurating the movement in this
country, if not in the world. Since that time many large cities,
including Boston, New York, Jersey City, Rochester, Milwaukee, Detroit,
Cleveland, Toledo, Cincinnati and Los Angeles, have started similar
classes, carrying the children from the kindergarten, through elementary
and high school, and preparing them for college. The class in Chicago
was started through the efforts of John B. Curtis, a blind teacher, and
the Superintendent of Public School classes of Cleveland, Toledo and
Cincinnati. Mr. R. B. Irwin, is a blind man, and so it is not strange
that a blind teacher of Los Angeles should be the first to recognize the
need of such a class in this state.

The State Library was glad to further this forward movement in the
education of blind children, and permitted me to devote a great deal of
time to organizing the class, and it provided the books and some of the
apparatus for carrying on the work for the first year. It still supplies
many of the books, though the Board of Education provides its own
apparatus. Dr. Albert Shiels, Superintendent of the Los Angeles City
Schools, was glad to have a class for the blind in the city, since he
has seen how successfully the work was carried on in New York, where
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