Normal school or deaf school?

Once the child reaches school going age the question is whether to send the child to a normal school or a deaf school.  Normally about half the deaf children attend normal school.  The audiologist and speech therapist will provide guidance on use of hearing aids, training and speech reading with attention to speech correction in school.  A very deaf child will have great difficulty in using a hearing aid with the background noise of a normal classroom.  Hence it is necessary for these children to attend special schools designed to teach the deaf. Their classrooms are fitted with induction loops allowing the induction coil of a hearing aid to pick up the teacher’s voice transmitted over a microphone even while the child moves around. FM systems transmit sound to a combination FM receiver and hearing aid, improving the ratio of sound to noise and providing a strong and clear signal.  This is far superior to the induction loop system.

The consensus emphasis in education the world over is on oral methods of communication whereby the development of language and speech is encouraged with the use of residual hearing and amplification by hearing aids.  The other method known as manual form of communication uses sign language as a mode of communication.  This form of communication has certain disadvantages like the need for long and repeated practice and these skills can only be used to communicate only with those who are similarly trained.  They will not be able to communicate with other normally hearing individuals.  Combinations of oral and manual methods are termed “total communication”.

 In India, the general tendency on the part of the parents of such children, especially when the child happens to be a female is to ignore the problem.  That is because they do not want their child to be branded as deaf, which could affect the future prospects of the child.  What they do not realize is that they are unwittingly causing irreversible damage to the language and speech acquisition abilities of the child by not providing a hearing aid at the right time.  The ability to pick up proper speech and language diminish with aging.  It is very difficult to correct improper speech or faulty pronunciation in a child and nearly impossible when such a child reaches teens or adulthood.  Hence it is very important to act as soon as possible and to plan a proper course of action for the child in due consultation with ones otologist and audiologist.