Media Quote – Living A Life Less Ordinary

IDK is cited in the “Living A Life Less Ordinary” feature in the ‘Living’ section (p.15) of the Independent, a broadsheet newspaper in Ireland (28/9/2013).

Context Is Everything

The context derives from Sound Advice’s post on Andrew Solomon’s book, “Far From The Tree”, with a critical review of the issues it raises on personal identity.In identity terms, the students mentioned in the quote know they are verbal deaf, and they have adapted to life in the hearing world with its challenges.

Early access to hearing-aids and family-based speech teaching in the 1970s was central to their mainstream education at local schools and significantly, teacher-training courses in the US and in Qatar, are adopting this approach.

What everyone needs to remember is, today’s newborn hearing tests (when available) and early digital hearing devices with infant language-teaching, create even better outcomes than for the cohort of deaf pupils who were mainstream-educated in Ireland from 1946 to 2004 (when EPSEN came in).

More Reading

• Listening And Speaking: A Refocus For Teachers
• Newborn Hearing Tests And AVT Give A Solid Start
• School Awareness Poem: I am deaf, and it’s okay
• Classroom Technology ‘Has The Children Talking’
• Listening And Speaking: A Link To Reading And Writing?
• A Critique on Deaf Identity In “Far From The Tree”
• Biographies And Novels With Deaf Characters
• Youth Attitudes To ‘Being’ Deaf, In The Media