DEAFNESS IN CHILDREN

Evening Star, Issue 22718, 4 August 1937, Page 6

DEAFNESS IN CHILDREN

A TEACHING EXPERIMENT “ The deaf are among the neglected of medicine. Too often nothing can he clone to diminish their deafness- by medical treatment, and all that remains is to mitigate the disability by means of instrumental help or: special education. Deaf children have long been understood, and educated by, speci-ally-trained teachers. Deaf- adults, misguided by advertisements-, have usually, been left to wander unadvised to purveyors of hearing aids!' Often they become disappointed, introverted,, and bad-tempered. .Both children and’, adults need more help from, medical. science than-has been their share in thepast. ’■ * Such is the situation as described by the Medical Research Council in its preface to the report just issped on the results of two years’ investigation of hearing and speech in deaf children. The aim of the investigation was threefold: to measure defect* in hear-, ing, to express the relation between deafness and speech, and to estimate the benefit of magnified sounds' to severely 'deaf children. A" great deal of the earlier work was technique—establishing the reliability and the meaning of measurements obtained with such instruments as the pure tone audiometer, the gramophone audiometer, ' and calibrated- tuning Observations showed _ that any-ability to hear the human voice at all, either directly or by means of sound-‘ampli-fication, made a great difference to the speech of the children. - • During the second year an experiment was conducted with special classes in the London schools for the dear. in. which half the children were supplied with earphones from a sound magnifying instrument on the teacher’s desk, -and the other -half received the .same cteaohing.Without any. faearing^aid-^ITho children, were as -far As Pf** siblo in pairs of-similar age and intelligence and with similar hearing defects. The teaching was along the usual lines, and was not modified in-any way. for the benefit of the children who .were using the instrument. , By the-end of the year there was little doubt that the use of sound amplification made a great, difference both in the speech of the pupils who used the earphones and in their general educational progress. It Was estimated that only in cases of-very severe deafness—about 9 per cent, of ;tne tot Al —i could no benefit at all be expected from the us© of sound amplification in tho classroom. ■ . There are something like 4,000 children in the country who are deaf enough to require education in special schools at public expense. The apparatus for electrical sound magnification is not cheap, but it is difficult to escape the conclusion that an effort should be made to supply it in all schools for the deaf.