Hear Ye

Hear Ye

Shakespeare’s Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s Lost says that ‘A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear/ Of him that hears it, never in the tongue/ Of him that makes it.’ Precisely. The joke is not for he who makes it, but for he who hears it. But what of those who cannot hear? Would the joke be wasted then?

            No need to worry. The Department of Education ensures that the joke will not fall ‘on deaf ears’, as the idiom says. Well, maybe the ears are deaf, but that doesn’t mean they can’t hear, or that this disability cannot be remedied, or that the effects of its impairment cannot be alleviated.

            There is a drive to train public school teachers across the country on sign language to improve mentors’ competence in teaching learners who have hearing impairment. This is because we can better help our students, our pupils, if we know how to help them. Also, this is another move in line with our vision of an Education for All, and we do mean all, especially those who have disabilities, in this case, the hearing impaired.  Luistro says that, “It is our duty as educators to provide equal opportunities to children and youth with special needs so that they can lead productive lives.” For the Visayas, this training will be on April 15 to 24 at DepEd Ecotech Center in Lahug, Cebu City to be participated in by public school teachers from Regions 6, 7 and 8 and will be composed of sign language training and seminars in Special Education (SPED) as well as formal sign language evaluation in the basic and intermediate levels by the Philippine Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (PRID).

            Previously, we have only relied on our teachers who specialized in Special Education for the education of our disabled learners. However, these SpEd teachers are few compared to the learners who need them. And that is why we have to train the majority, if not all, of our public school teachers on what to do when a hearing impaired learner comes under their care. It probably is very difficult for them to try to fit into our world, so we must go into theirs and inhabit it ourselves.

            Moreover, this training will more or less include such crucial matters as how to recognize a hearing loss in the child – this knowledge, if the parents of the child are teachers themselves is very helpful, or if not, the teacher can let the parents know during their meetings. This is because early diagnosis and intervention can increase the child’s chances to live as normal a life as possible. If the teacher knows these things, then there may be no need to go to the specialists anymore except in extreme cases. The teacher can begin to make changes in the child’s environment to make language accessible to the child at a very young age. These environmental changes may include teaching the child’s parents and other caregivers to use sign language or to use cued speech, a system of manually “cueing” sounds that are not visible for speech reading (lip reading). It also might include the use of hearing aids to make speech loud enough for the child to understand it, or surgery to insert cochlear implants, devices for receiving and transmitting information about sounds to the brain. Of course the classroom teacher cannot be expected to have expert knowledge on this field; what we aim for is functional knowledge so that the teacher will know what to do, how to do it and when to do it in situations that do not necessarily call for an expert eye.

But why does the DepEd training focus on sign language only? Might the learners be more benefited by other means like speaking, speech reading, and the use of whatever hearing the child might have? Thomas Jones’s articles in the Microsoft Encarta 2008 entitled Education of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students says that some experts believed that using sign language inhibited the ability of deaf students to learn English. I suppose it really does, since it limits the deaf students to thinking that they couldn’t ever speak, which as Helen Keller’s example proves to us, is not true.

            However, it could also be argued that sign language provided a means to make learning academic content and English easier for deaf students. Supporters of American Sign Language (ASL) instruction believe that it provides the best medium for presenting academic subjects to students who cannot hear spoken languages. In addition, advocates believe that instruction in ASL builds deaf children’s self-esteem and helps them to become successful adults who also are members of the culturally deaf community.

Curiously also, Jones’s article says that about 20 per cent of deaf children in the United States attend special residential schools where the staff and students all use sign language. Many deaf students believe that they have a fuller social life in this type of school, because they can communicate easily with many other students. Our goal, as Sec. Luistro says, is to strengthen teachers’ skills in the teaching of sign language in preparation for the inclusion of pupils with hearing impairment in regular school – what difference does it make if we mainstream our deaf students?

            It does make a difference, and a whole lot of it. We may be able to provide them hearing aids or teach these deaf students how to use sign language and to lip read, but we are not helping them to lead as normal a life as we would want them to have if we will isolate them. Nothing proves that you are different, that you do not belong to the group, than isolation, complete detachment from what happens around you. And this is precisely what we will be doing to our deaf students if we house them in special residential schools designed only for the deaf. Our goal is to help them live normal lives, and we would best do it by letting them in our inner circle, by making them feel that they are special, but they still belong to our group. That all things considered, we are still one and the same.