An article from Le Petit Prince, which was published in the Straits Times today.. A rather long one but something worthy of reading. Hope it will help people reading this blog understand more about the hearing-impaired.
I refer to Mr Malcolm Lim’s letter, ‘Hearing impaired need more help in school’ and Assoc Prof Low’s letter “Many issues need addressing in helping the hearing impaired”.I wish to applaud them for bringing these issues to light. In the same spirit, I would like to raise public awareness and appeal for public understanding of the problems of the deaf by recounting my own experiences. I was a hearing-impaired child who was mainstreamed throughout my schooling years, and am now a special education teacher with XXX.
Deafness is one of the most misunderstood, isolating disabilities and the seriousness of its impact–social, psychological, educational–often underrated. As Helen Keller succinctly and poignantly put it: “Blindness cuts you off from things, deafness cuts you off from people.” Hearing loss is irreversible and incurable, and technological devices like hearing aids
and cochlear implants are partial solutions at best; a hearing-impaired person will never be able to hear as well as one with normal hearing.
My hearing loss was diagnosed when I was in primary 2 and I was later fitted with hearing aids. It would be no exaggeration to say those years as a deaf student in mainstream schools were, for the most part, the most miserable of my life. I could not understand lessons as I could not make out teachers’ speech; group activities and discussions were impossible to follow for the same reason; teasing and mocking of my disability by peers (as they say, children can be the most cruel) and even a few insensitive teachers was a feature of daily life; teachers had no idea how to handle a hearing-impaired student like me or already had too much on their plates to give special attention to me. The sense of being ‘different’ and abnormal, and of exclusion, was overwhelming. Being deaf is also physically draining due to the intense level of concentration needed when using hearing aids to even have the remotest chance of following others’ speech.
Of course, there were kind-hearted classmates, friends and teachers who made the time and effort to help me, but they were the rare exceptions. So I can easily empathise with those in similar situations; it is too easy for them to simply give up on themselves and their studies because of the pressures they face so young and so early in life.
As I grew older, I was fortunate enough to learn, gradually, to cope with my condition and take things in my stride. I also got to know other hearing-impaired individuals and found that what I went through was not unique, that their school and social experiences largely mirrored mine.
My account here is not to evoke sympathy or pity. Neither is it to ask for charity or special privileges for the deaf. Rather, it is to give the hearing majority an idea of the very real difficulties deaf students face in school, as well as to ask for that bit of patience, understanding and decency when communicating and interacting with those with deafness and other disabilities.
My students still have a long way to go, and I often find myself worrying and wondering about their future. Will they find a more receptive, more understanding and a kinder world awaiting them after they leave their sheltered deaf environment in the school? Or will they encounter more of the same ignorant, indifferent, intolerant masses outside?
Yes, more can be done on the part of the ministries, the hospitals and VWOs. But each of us–the person-in-the-street–can make a difference too. Ultimately, the human touch does count. How we treat the most vulnerable among us–the disabled children who are blind, deaf, spastic, intellectually disabled–says much about us as a society, and as individuals.
I hope to see the day when the wheelchair-bound are a common sight on our streets and buses, our blind graduates find jobs worthy of their hard-earned degrees, the news on television have subtitles for the deaf and people no longer stare or cringe at the sight of a Down Syndrome child in public.
That, more than soaring GNP per capita figures, will show that we have finally arrived as a society.
