by Julie Jumbo
Have you ever met a deaf person before? If you have, what was your immediate reaction?
Undoubtedly, many people are bewildered on their first encounter with a deaf person partly because his handicap is not visible and partly because they know so little about the deaf.
The little they know is often very misleading. I want to correct the many twisted opinions held about deaf people.
A broad classification divides the deaf into two main categories. There are those who were either deaf from birth or became deaf in early infancy.
These are referred to as the pre-lingually deaf because they become deaf before they could learn to talk. The second category embraces those who became deaf later in life and after acquiring speech skills.
Rarely are pre-lingually deaf persons able to talk since speech development depends largely on the ability of a child to hear speech, sounds around him.
But pre-lingually deaf persons are often able to talk.
However, the intelligibility of such a person's speech depends largely on the severity of the hearing loss.
If it is severe, ordinary people may find it difficult to follow the victims speech.
This is because the absence of the hearing sensation causes the victim to lose control of the voice important aspects of voice production such as pitch, rhythm, stress and intonation will not be properly brought under control.
Therefore just as the blind is handicapped by immobilisation of the handicapped by inability to communicate with the world.
Communication is one of the most vital things that binds people together. Ability to communicate effectively with people is important for ensuring the acceptance of an individual into any level of society.
An individual that cannot communicate with the people around him for whatever reason is certain to be ignored as a total bore.
Thus the deaf and dumb in a hearing society; are ignored and left to their fate.
The social implications of deafness vary from country to country.
But they all follow the same pattern, that is the average deaf person is not considered as an integral member of the society. He is expected to stay at the other side of the wall.
For any one to understand the full implications of deafness, it requires nothing short of a sudden transition from a world of gay voices, music and general sounds of nature to a sordid world of silence.
Although the physical hindrances that go with deafness are perhaps the least of all the other types of handicaps, the psychological effect on the victim could be the greatest if not checked.
Dialogue
You will get a slight idea of what it means to be deaf if you turn down the volume of your television set to the minimum and then move away to a distance of about ten metres and attempt to keep up with the dialogue going on.
You will then understand why it is difficult for deaf persons to take part in group discussions.
The inability to join in conversations is the reason why some deaf and dumb persons would appear with drawn or on the defensive when in the company of normally hearing people and is often mistaken for stupidity or absence of ideas.
This creates an embarrassing wall of ice between the deaf and those he encounters in his day to day l ife.
But does society ever lead a hand in breaking down the barrier that separates the deaf from it.
Apart from the feeble attempts by a few concerned people, nobody appears to give a damn.
Deafness is an invisible handicap that is, you can walk right past a deaf person on a quiet street and never know be is deaf.
You can sit next to him in a bus or taxi and never detect his condition unless some one addresses him. But you can know a blind man by means of his stick or escort. You can spot a lame man by means of his crutches and by seeing his affected limb. For this reason the deaf receives the least sympathy from the public.
This perfectly suits most of the dead person I know. Being fairly educated they dislike the least show of pity even from members of their families.
They many people do not realise they are not really as helpless as they are thought to be.
What many people do not realise or refuse to accept is that a n individual though handicapped still have dignity, aspires to great heights and reacts to circumstances in the same way as anyone else.
Inspite of the tendency to appear withdrawn when in the company of normally hearing people the deaf are among the best conservationists in the world.
Among themselves, they could talk on for hours (usually using the American sign language) about the only recognised non-oral language ranging from religion to politics to sports.
One significant aspect of group discussion among the deaf is the quality and liveliness of such discussions.
One cannot dispute the fact that the most frequent subject of conversation in our society today is women.
Personality
The deaf are not exposed to such conversation and therefore, their discussions do not follow that pattern.
Unfortunately, many people today, know next to nothing about the personality of the deaf and therefore, treats them with indifference at times.
Our society needs to learn to integrate not only the deaf but also those handicapped in other ways.
Otherwise, it will be thwarting the government's efforts to provide as much opportunity as possible for the handicapped to find their places in life.
Or how can we be at ease if after government has taken pains and spent money to rehabilitate and educate him to find himself ostracised and ignored in a society that follows strictly the principle of survival of the fittest?
The average Nigeria would thank God for being made perfectly normal' and boost his own ego at the expense of the less fortunate members of society.
I hope that in the not too distant future, our society will learn to integrate its handicapped members keeping in mind that they desire not pity but understanding.
Have you ever met a deaf person before? If you have, what was your immediate reaction?
Undoubtedly, many people are bewildered on their first encounter with a deaf person partly because his handicap is not visible and partly because they know so little about the deaf.
The little they know is often very misleading. I want to correct the many twisted opinions held about deaf people.
A broad classification divides the deaf into two main categories. There are those who were either deaf from birth or became deaf in early infancy.
These are referred to as the pre-lingually deaf because they become deaf before they could learn to talk. The second category embraces those who became deaf later in life and after acquiring speech skills.
Rarely are pre-lingually deaf persons able to talk since speech development depends largely on the ability of a child to hear speech, sounds around him.
But pre-lingually deaf persons are often able to talk.
However, the intelligibility of such a person's speech depends largely on the severity of the hearing loss.
If it is severe, ordinary people may find it difficult to follow the victims speech.
This is because the absence of the hearing sensation causes the victim to lose control of the voice important aspects of voice production such as pitch, rhythm, stress and intonation will not be properly brought under control.
Therefore just as the blind is handicapped by immobilisation of the handicapped by inability to communicate with the world.
Communication is one of the most vital things that binds people together. Ability to communicate effectively with people is important for ensuring the acceptance of an individual into any level of society.
An individual that cannot communicate with the people around him for whatever reason is certain to be ignored as a total bore.
Thus the deaf and dumb in a hearing society; are ignored and left to their fate.
The social implications of deafness vary from country to country.
But they all follow the same pattern, that is the average deaf person is not considered as an integral member of the society. He is expected to stay at the other side of the wall.
For any one to understand the full implications of deafness, it requires nothing short of a sudden transition from a world of gay voices, music and general sounds of nature to a sordid world of silence.
Although the physical hindrances that go with deafness are perhaps the least of all the other types of handicaps, the psychological effect on the victim could be the greatest if not checked.
Dialogue
You will get a slight idea of what it means to be deaf if you turn down the volume of your television set to the minimum and then move away to a distance of about ten metres and attempt to keep up with the dialogue going on.
You will then understand why it is difficult for deaf persons to take part in group discussions.
The inability to join in conversations is the reason why some deaf and dumb persons would appear with drawn or on the defensive when in the company of normally hearing people and is often mistaken for stupidity or absence of ideas.
This creates an embarrassing wall of ice between the deaf and those he encounters in his day to day l ife.
But does society ever lead a hand in breaking down the barrier that separates the deaf from it.
Apart from the feeble attempts by a few concerned people, nobody appears to give a damn.
Deafness is an invisible handicap that is, you can walk right past a deaf person on a quiet street and never know be is deaf.
You can sit next to him in a bus or taxi and never detect his condition unless some one addresses him. But you can know a blind man by means of his stick or escort. You can spot a lame man by means of his crutches and by seeing his affected limb. For this reason the deaf receives the least sympathy from the public.
This perfectly suits most of the dead person I know. Being fairly educated they dislike the least show of pity even from members of their families.
They many people do not realise they are not really as helpless as they are thought to be.
What many people do not realise or refuse to accept is that a n individual though handicapped still have dignity, aspires to great heights and reacts to circumstances in the same way as anyone else.
Inspite of the tendency to appear withdrawn when in the company of normally hearing people the deaf are among the best conservationists in the world.
Among themselves, they could talk on for hours (usually using the American sign language) about the only recognised non-oral language ranging from religion to politics to sports.
One significant aspect of group discussion among the deaf is the quality and liveliness of such discussions.
One cannot dispute the fact that the most frequent subject of conversation in our society today is women.
Personality
The deaf are not exposed to such conversation and therefore, their discussions do not follow that pattern.
Unfortunately, many people today, know next to nothing about the personality of the deaf and therefore, treats them with indifference at times.
Our society needs to learn to integrate not only the deaf but also those handicapped in other ways.
Otherwise, it will be thwarting the government's efforts to provide as much opportunity as possible for the handicapped to find their places in life.
Or how can we be at ease if after government has taken pains and spent money to rehabilitate and educate him to find himself ostracised and ignored in a society that follows strictly the principle of survival of the fittest?
The average Nigeria would thank God for being made perfectly normal' and boost his own ego at the expense of the less fortunate members of society.
I hope that in the not too distant future, our society will learn to integrate its handicapped members keeping in mind that they desire not pity but understanding.
It was posted yesterday
