In the Land of Invented Languages - Arika Okrent [65]
That's right. There's no other way to put it: Bliss, self-proclaimed savior of humanity, stole $160,000 from crippled children.
I found out about the details of the settlement when I met with Shirley in the sleepy Ontario town of Guelph, where she lives with her husband in a tidy retirement village. There are Blissymbols throughout their town house, on a mirror over the piano, on needlepoint cushions in the guest room. The kitchen back-splash is formed by a chain of painted tiles that say, in Blissymbols, “People helping people helping people helping people.”
When she told me how much Bliss got in the settlement, I couldn't contain myself. I told her how selfish, how blind, how crazy I thought he was. “Yes, it was difficult,” she said, “but it was all for the good of the kids who needed it in the end. Now I'm around the same age that he was when he first came to us, and I think I understand him better. I see that there's not a lot of time left, and that has made me less tolerant of some things.”
Her biggest regret about Bliss's behavior is that it hurt the reputation of their program. The Blissymbol method is used in scattered, individual schools in Canada, Sweden, and a few other countries, but it never gained traction in the United States, Britain, or any of the places that tend to determine the types of technologies and teaching materials that will be made widely available. Other symbol systems are used today, but they are more picture-like, less abstract, and less flexible than the Blissymbols. They serve for communication, but not as a bridge to full language—at least not for kids with the types of disabilities Shirley has worked with. She sees the predominance of these other symbol systems as “a reflection of how society treats disability—‘pictures are good enough.’ There's no concern with enriching. They aren't worried about the dignity of full language.”
On my last night in Toronto I had dinner with Paul Marshall—a former Bliss student of one of Shirley's colleagues—who now works on projects for the Blissymbol program. His cerebral palsy is relatively mild—his motions are jerky and unbalanced, but he can walk, and he can point and type with one finger. However, he cannot use his voice. He came to the Blissymbol program when he was twelve, able to recognize some written words, but mostly dependent on his mother's guessing. He was frustrated, angry, and depressed. By eighteen, he had made the transition to full English text. Today, he lives in his own apartment, about 120 miles north of Toronto, and works as a Webmaster. He told me, by spelling it out on a laminated alphabet grid, “Bliss is one of the greatest things ever to happen to me.” After dinner he went to catch a bus back home. Later that night, a major snowstorm hit, and the highway he was on was shut down for five hours. He was able to ask his fellow passengers to call his mother and tell her not to worry. He used his own words and spoke his own mind. No vague interpretation, no guessing. He was only as stuck and frustrated as the rest of the people on that bus.
Bliss was fond of saying, “The greatest hindrance to Blissym-bolics is the fact that I am still alive.” Most of the time he meant this as an accusation against society and its inability to notice genius until it no longer walks among them. But sometimes he seemed to mean it as self-reproach, an admission that he was his own worst enemy. He angered and drove away almost everyone who could have done him any good.
And yet, in a few, he inspired a devoted kind of loyalty—partly based on his manic charisma, and partly based on pity. Shirley never expressed more than mild exasperation with him. On his last trip to Toronto, they spent their days together in a room full of