ABSTRACT
This chapter explores participant visually impaired musicians' perspectives on their schooling, covering different experiences across the historical time of respondents' lives. It looks into themes encompassing school choice, or lack of choice, participation and access. Linden Lodge opened as a residential school for visually impaired children by the London School Board in 1902. Scanning across the world, philanthropy, policy, public health, and war have all shaped the early history of special schooling for the visually impaired. In the UK, the College of Teachers of the Blind (CTB) was established in 1907 where specialist teachers needed to gain the CTB diploma within three years of commencing their work in special schools. Isolation in special education could be alleviated, some of our respondents felt, by special schools engaging with the wider musical community, or through placements or concerts with mainstream schools.
