From Tim Lyons, an 11-year-old boy with normal hearing attending the Sumner School for the Deaf on exchange from the Sumner Primary School, comes the message the school has been trying to put across since it began 100 years ago.
Too many people equate deaf with dumb says Sefton Bartlett, principal of the school.
“Here we are trying to do away with the old stereotype by ensuring the children get the educational diet best suits their particular needs, and by asking the community to accept that hearing handicapped boys and girls are entitled to share themselves in the normal pattern of society.”
Since the school opened, about 1600 pupils have passed through its doors and at Easter 600 ex-pupils, staff and parents returned to Christchurch to celebrate their school’s anniversary.
There have been many changes since Gerrit van Asch founded the school on March 10, 1880.
Van Asch College, as it will now be known, is no longer used exclusively for the deaf.
Standard One and Form One children from the local primary school, like Tim, now receive their education here.
Deaf units in normal schools are nothing new but this is the first time that ‘reverse’ has been done in New Zealand. It reflects changing attitudes towards the education of the deaf.
When the school first began the children were taught in isolation from their peers and the rest of the community. Today, the emphasis is on their maximum involvement of children with the rest of the community.
There are benefits on both sides, says Sefton Bartlett.
He gives the deaf children a chance to model their behaviour on that of their hearing peers. It also helps hearing children to understand and appreciate the difficulties of the deaf.
“And once they have been defeated on the playing field or perhaps beaten to the top prize in an art class the hearing children realise that deaf kids aren’t so different after all.”
There are also practical advantages for the hearing children, says Peter Vesty, principal of the Sumner Primary School.
“Van Asch College has a better student/teacher ratio.
“The slow learner can receive more personal attention than we can provide and the greater resources of the college give the children a chance to experiment in film making and learn technical skills.
Both principals agree the Sumner community as a whole has benefited.
Previously, the school was seen as a place apart.
Today, clubs use the school’s field on Saturdays. The deaf children are often invited home by their hearing friends and this contact has helped to spread understanding of the problems of the deaf.
The school at Sumner is responsible for the education and welfare of all hearing handicapped children south of Taupo.
Of the school’s 1100 pupils, 77 are boarders, a similar number attend as day pupils, and the rest are catered for in their home districts.
The ages of the children vary from five to 18, says Mr Bartlett.
“If they have a really severe handicap they may come as boarders at age five but we try to leave the children in their home districts until secondary school age provided their needs are being met.
“We have a resource centre which supplies teachers of the deaf in unit classes, or resource teachers serving in regular schools, with a range of supportive material.
“We also provide support for the parents of deaf children.
“Our advisory service caters for the pre-school deaf and we have night classes for parents in total communication and weekend workshops for parents living out of town.”
This emphasis on total communication is an innovation.
Van Asch used the oral method of teaching, communication by lip reading and natural gestures but in 1975 Sefton Bartlett began a programme using the signs and gestures of the deaf to reinforce the oral-aural and written methods of instruction.
“We suit the teaching method to the needs of the individual,” says Mr Bartlett.
For the early graduates from Van Asch college there were very limited job opportunities. Girls were taught to be domestics while boys usually ended up as unskilled labourers.
Today’s graduates are found in a variety of occupations ranging from the trades to clerical work, in fact in any occupation where oral communication is not a central part of the job.
Many of the senior pupils attend the Christchurch Polytechnic and the school has a technicraft centre to give the students experience in woodwork, metal craft and home science.
The emphasis of the school is on helping the children overcome their handicap to the greatest extent possible so they take a full part in society.
“We build up their confidence by working to their strengths whether these lie in the academic, technical or sporting fields,: says Mr Bartlett.
Out of school hours Van Asch College is run as closely as possible to a normal home situation. “Over the last six years we moved the boarders from the main building with its dormitory-style bedrooms into small residential flats.
“Each flat has 15 students and staff are rostered to give under 24 hour-a-day supervision.”
The flats allow the children to relax and enjoy themselves away from the discipline of the school in an atmosphere which in the words of one of the pupils “is just like home.”
