The School for the Deaf

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23588, 16 March 1942, Page 4

The School for the Deaf

The need for reassembling the children enrolled in the School for the Deaf at Sumner as soon as possible and in a place remote from danger zones has been recognised by the organising executive of the E.P.S. and was stressed by Dr. T. A. Mac Gibbon in an interview published in “The Press” on Saturday. Last week the members of the executive of the E.P.S. sent a telegram to the Minister for Education urging that the pupils of the school should not be reassembled at Sum-

ner; and later they followed this telegram with a letter in which they pointed out that their anxiety was to keep the pupils of the School for the Deaf, about 140 in number, away from Sumner and all other danger zones, and that they hoped to see the children brought together again as soon as possible in a safe place. Dr. Mac Gibbon, fearing that the closing of the school at Sumner might mean the closing of the school altogether for the duration of the war, said that it was urgently necessary to find a new and safe situation in which the vital education of these children could be continued. Individual teaching, even if it could be given adequately by parents untrained in lip-reading, is largely unsatisfactory for deaf children, who benefit greatly by the constant companionship of children similarly afflicted. The sharing of difficulties and the bond of a common disability encourage confidence in the children. That their training should be en masse is one of the first requirements if they are to develop into useful citizens instead of into pitiful misfits, a burden to themselves and to their fellows. It is therefore urgently necessary for the Minister for Education to find at once a place of safety in which this important educational service may be peacefully continued.