The object of this paper is to consider the experiences in education of a group of blind and partially sighted persons who attended school in the 1940s and 1950s in the English semi-rural county of Northamptonshire. The blind are perhaps unique among disabled groups in the very limited space they fill in the educational literature. What little there is tends to consider them alongside other disabled groups as if all shared similar needs and aspirations. What remains tends primarily to medicalise blindness rather than treat it in socio-cultural terms. It objectifies blind and partially sighted people and reduces them to a category. In sum, it denies them voice. The 1940s saw the end of the Second World War and the generalization of secondary education in England with the arrival of the 1944 Education Act. It was a time when previously unquestioned values were being challenged and new ones put in their place. The War itself had occasioned whole- scale evacuations of children and brought them into contact with parts of society they might never have encountered. In their own way, for 1950s were almost as momentous. The Welfare State became embedded in the consciousness of the people, as did the arrangements for secondary schooling which the 1944 Act had introduced. Famously, the 1950s saw the invention of the teenager and the arrival of Rock n Roll. The manner in which these events impacted on schoolchildren has been much discussed in the literature both academic and popular. The manner in which they impacted on blind and partially sighted schoolchildren has been virtually ignored. The present research attempts to give voice to a group of blind and partially sighted persons, to permit them to express and explore in their own terms their experiences of schooling at a time of major social upheaval across multiple fronts. These experiences are compared and contrasted with each other and with what was held to be happening in 'mainstream' schooling at the time. It examines what they learned, how they learned and where they learned and how they felt about the whole thing.The research also explores the perceptions of blind and partially sighted learners in England in general, and in Northamptonshire in particular, as expressed in County Council documents of the time. The experiences of the participants will be set against these 'official' positions.