Simple as it should be

Last August 7, 2009, we went to the Philippine School for the Deaf to observe children with Hearing Impairment and the environment they’re in. There were around 500 students studying there and vocational courses are mostly offered in Highschool. Elementary subjects are regular but of course, since their students are mostly hearing impaired, they focus more on subjects related to Speech.

The school is more like a regular school setting. It doesn’t necessarily look as if the students there are experiencing difficulties in hearing. They have a library which offers the same set of books with regular students. They also have a cafeteria that serves healthy food and clinic which offers medical and dental services. Their reading center consists of two floors, the upper floor consists of tables and chairs while the lower floor consists of a wide variety of books.

Besides that, they also have a Speech Laboratory where in they can practice their speaking skills and speech of course. They have a lot of workshop rooms in Highschool; they have one for drafting, one for industrial crafts and more rooms especially designed for vocational courses.

The students have normal abilities just like regular students, well of course, except for the fact that they can not hear clearly or they just can not hear at all. And they often make sounds when raising their hands and it can sometimes be irritating for those who can hear. But they are exactly the same with others. They have normal cognitive level and motor skills. They can talk to you and express what they feel through hand signals or finger spelling. They can tell you if you’re pretty or if they feel good meeting you. Their failure to hear sounds or noises doesn’t necessarily mean failure in their school works or goals, it doesn’t also prevent them from speaking and telling people their ideas and thoughts.

Even though a lot of them are children and few are in the secondary level, I was inspired by how they face life. Their hearing impairment doesn’t hinder them from achieving a great life ahead and for hoping towards a better future. They do their best just to keep themselves normal as everybody else is. If you’d really come to think about it, they don’t actually have to adjust for other people but they do. They learn skills to communicate; they try to be the best potential person they can be. And they do this to show people that they deserve to be treated equally in the society, they deserve to enjoy the same rights and privileges. They deserve to be shown importance and respect. They are humans just like us, so that means they can have what we have in life and they can attain the same goals and dreams. And more importantly, they just proved to me that having a disability doesn’t mean they have less ‘cause there are always many ways to fill up what we’re lacking.