The Handicap of Deafness
- Author:
Irene R.
Hwing, M.bc., .tLllis l^lwydd Jones Reader in the Education of the Deaf, and Alexander W. G. Ewing, M.A., Ph.D., Hon. Special Lecturer in the Education of the Deaf, University of Manchester. Longmans Green, 12/6.
The publisher’s caption on the outside of this book gives a very fair idea of its content, and on the whole what is said on the inside of the wrapper is justified. The claim, however, that the book will be of great interest to the ” general public ” is hardly, in our opinion, likely to justify itself, and indeed that is where the weakness of the book appears to lie. Much of it is emphatically for the specialist who will be somewhat irritated at matter which to him is self-evident, while the ordinary reader will find much which is technically outwith his judgment and will have to search through this to find what he really wants?a description of what deafness means to a deaf person, and what the possibilities of alleviation and education really are. The need for this is so crying?as indeed the writers realise?that it is the more disappointing to find it only among very much technical matter; and even when it is found, it assumes a knowledge which the ordinary person does not possess, or it makes its point by rather wearisome iteration instead of by description.
Furthermore, the subject matter is limited to the completely deaf, and to the ” severely deaf “; nothing is said of the needs or the treatment of the large class who are deaf enough to miss most group conversation and who cannot hear in a theatre, or who are handicapped in business life by failure to hear adequately. Much that is said of hearing ” aids” no doubt applies to them also, but one would like to know more about the possibilities of learning to lip-read, and more, too, of ways in which their very real handicap can be dealt with by appropriate education. Or is it that such cases are as yet left to chance and the interests of the schools and clinics are meantime concerned only with the severely deaf?
The chapters on the detection and assessment of deafness seem to be very thorough and very careful. The tests of intelligibility of speech as such, are of real importance and the measurement of the specific benefit from hearing aids are carefully and completely worked out. The insistence on the need for language, not merely as a means of access to the minds of other human beings and a mode of organising their own experience, but as a necessary factor in individual development which carries far beyond mere absence of means of communication or vocabulary for self-expression, strikes one as a factor in deafness seldom realised. The comparison with ” educated ” deaf persons with normal?in the chapter on the ” Educational Attainment of the Deaf ” are extremely interesting, as are the tests quoted.
Throughout, the importance of lip-reading is emphasised?indeed the whole book is a plea for the hearing-lip-reading method of education for the deaf. ” For the first time in history, powerful and reliable apparatus is available by means of which 70 per cent of the children who are born deaf, or ivho acquire deafness during infancy, can be enabled to use their cars, although in many cases only to a very limited extent, in learning to talk.
Throughout the book, a good deal of insight into the social and intellectual handicap of deafness is to be gathered, and the educational principles based on the psychological understanding of the deaf and of their problems, seem very sound. The chapter appended on the Vocational Education of the Deaf, by the Headmaster of the Royal Residential Schools for the Deaf, Manchester, is extremely interesting and raises a number of problems, not confined to the vocational training of the deaf only. It would appear to us that the book contains most valuable material for all who are interested in the teaching of the deaf, and in their relation to the social and economic life around them; further, that out of it?with some considerable simplification, even omission, of a number of the more technical sections, a different kind of emphasis, and a fuller description of the concrete problems of the deaf person? might come a book which would really interest ” the man in the street” in the handicap of the deaf person and secure for him that kind of sympathy and understanding that is usually given to the blind, and possibly also the awakening of the imagination and the conscience about forms of deafness less severe but also handicapping and isolating the unfortunate sufferer. A. M. McK.
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