Omsorg och Kontroll En handikapphistorisk studie 1750- 1930

Care and Control
arranged a tour of central Sweden where male students visited industries and
factories. Analysis of his diary he kept on this trip shows that Borg was an
empathetic, relativistic individual. Better than most of his non-hearing impaired
countrymen, he understood what like to be deaf in society.
In the classroom Borg demanded loyalty toward the teacher, eschewing
corporal punishment in favour of positive reinforcement in the form of rewards.
He lost control of the institute for several years after a conflict with
its board of directors, being replaced by Professor Per Atke Castberg from
Copenhagen and Gabriel Guldbrand, M.A. The latter in particular soon
ran afoul of the older members of the student body by regularly administering
physical punishment. The pair also harbored a much less sanguine
view of the deaf as sentient beings, which motivated their heavy hand and
demands for obedience. Fortunately their time at the institute was short
and soon Pär Aron Borg returned to run the school until his death in 1839,
after which the reins were passed to his son Ossian Edmund Borg.
In Chapter Five, I describe and analyze the introduction of an organized,
countrywide inspection tour, following up on the lives of blind men
and women after having completed their schooling. The study was conducted
between 1903 and 1930, during which time twelve inspectors, including
three women but only one individual who had been directly involved
in teaching the blind, visited the blind in their homes. These inspections
can be interpreted as the result of society´s ambition to increase its control
over certain sectors of the population. Separation and categorization had
become increasingly common elements in the order and machinations of
power in society and politics during the early years of the twentieth century,
which reproduced normative forces.
Government inspection was justified by the need of the cause to know
just how successful it had been teaching people to support themselves through
the special skills they had learned, like brushmaking and basketweaving
for the men and needlework for the women. The instructions
with which the inspectors were dispatched included ideas about care and
control, meticulously describing what they were to be on the outlook for
and what measures were to be undertaken in order to improve conditions
for the blind citizens of Sweden.
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