The School for The Blind operates within a splendid Art-Nouveau building in District XIV. Students aged 14 to 26 walk around here freely, without white canes, making baskets and ceramics, weaving rugs and, in recent months, baking tasty pastries.
About 300 people visit the building every day – there is a nursery, a school and a dormitory. We had a look in everywhere, but mostly concentrated on the new baking course. The most surprising thing about it was that it was not surprising at all; regular education happens here, with jokes flying around, but the students listen to their teachers and worry about their exams the same as anyone.
Upon our visit, students in matching shirts and aprons were making pretzels and paprika croissants. This course is the latest and most exciting at the school, with the first semester having started in September. This baking course, unique in Europe, aims to be a step forward in fighting social segregation. Altogether, there are eight students on the course, boys and girls, fully or partially blind. Some make bread, others croissants, brioches or pretzels. They are all doing something different and all are excited.
We watch them make buns and triangles into croissants and keep thinking how difficult it all seems. Weights, scales and the oven are all at the ready – everything seems normal. But if you look closely, you notice the big colourful dots on the wall that help guide the students, as well as the huge numbers on the scales. These are speaking scales, made especially for the school.
The atmosphere is friendly, there is good banter but nobody stops working as there are only two years to learn everything in the curriculum and beyond. The most challenging task of the year is learning how to put the bread into a hot oven with a baker’s peel.
Students even learn how to leaven, which is very challenging. But ever since they tasted the bread they make here they have not eaten any other – they take their loaves home from school.
They always try the pastries together and evaluate them. On Fridays, they feast together on the burgers, hot dogs and lángos they also make.
Most are active outside school, too. One student, Zsolti, says: “I love making things that other people eat. I learned a lot at school – making sponge cake and pizza, and I know how bread is made. I love to bake and others are always happy when I do”.
One of the teachers proudly tells us that the students can now make a piece of pastry on their own without any help: “The aim is to enable all of them to have a job, ideally at a bakery, when they leave school. In the summer they will go on internships”. The group also goes on educational trips and invites professionals to give talks.
This course is not only extraordinary because it is the first of its kind, but also because it helps to educate society. “Outsiders usually think that the visually impaired cannot perform as well as others,” says the teacher. “There is discrimination, even if it’s not that obvious. However, what we have here is ordinary kids living the same everyday life as everybody else.”
