A STUDY OF FACTORS AFFECTING THE EDUCATIONAL STATUS OF THE HEARING HANDICAPPED

Abstract

The rehabilitation of the handicapped is a major socioeconomic responsibility of every nation. However, the problem of rehabilitation of the handicapped is so gigantic and difficult that no nation has been able to tackle it totally and successfully, including even the most advanced countries of the world. Deafness in childhood is a serious barrier to the normal educational process. However, this problem is a multifaceted one that is related to not just one or two but a large number of interacting variables. There are very few schools in India which can ensure quality education to the deaf children. Even in the best of the schools, it has been observed that inspite of imparting quality education to the hearing handicapped children through trained and dedicated teachers, the educational output of the students does not always correspond to the inputs given through the educational process. It is because of the fact that, the education of hearing handicapped children is very complex and several factors influence their educational status. Therefore, the need was felt to probe into the important factors that are responsible for the educational output of the hearing handicapped children and understand as to how these factors affect their educational status under Indian conditions. Though some studies have been undertaken in the western countries, these are not applicable directly to our country because of socioeconomic, cultural and environmental differences. In India, most of the studies done on the hearing handicapped are focussed on clinical studies and there is very little research that has been conducted on the factors related to the educational status of the hearing handicapped individuals. As a result, there exists a gap in our knowledge and therefore, it was proposed to undertake an in-depth and systematic research in this direction to bridge this gap. The main objective of the study was : The major objective of the research is to conduct a survey to explore the influencing factors and their relationships with the educational level and educational status of the hearing handicapped. The following variables have been studied: (1) Educational Level of the Cases (2) Educational Status of the Cases (3) Demographic Characteristics (4) Educational Level of Parents (5) Income Level of the Family (6) Parental Attitude (7) Parental Inputs (8) Availability of Educational Facilities (9) Quality of Educational Inputs (10) Age of Onset, Detection and Intervention (11) Severity of Deafness (12) Use of Residual Hearing (13) Intelligence Level of the Cases. In addition, the Parental Opinion Poll was also conducted. The study was conducted on 221 prelingually deaf children who belonged to 10 towns and 38 villages (141 urban and 80 rural) around Roorkee town in North India. The sample consisted of deaf individuals ranging from 5 to 20 years of age comprising of both boys and girls. A structured interview schedule was specially designed for this study which contained about 120 questions about the case and his/her problem such as personal details, medical history, socioeconomic status, educational background etc, of the deaf individual as well as his/her family. The parents or the guardians of the cases were interviewed and the details recorded on the questionnaire. Assessment of the deaf children were also carried out in 6 abilities namely, Reading, Writing, Mathematics, Speech and Language, General Knowledge and Special Skills to reflect their educational status. The scoring was done on the data collected on 221 sample cases and the data was fed to the computer to form the data base. SPSS for Windows (6.0 version) software was used for various statistical analyses. Tabulation of data as frequency and percentage distribution, bivariate frequency distribution, descriptive measures- mean, mode, standard deviations and coefficient of variation were calculated. Karl Pearson's correlation coefficient Y was calculated to find the relationship between the variables. To explore which factors cause variance and what amount of variance, Factor Analysis has been done using the correlation matrix. The results of the study reveals that out of 221 sample cases, 134 (60.6%) deaf children had never gone to any school and are found to be illiterate. Out of 87 school going children 60 (69%) children received education only upto Class IV reflecting the poor level of education of these deaf children. The educational status of a large percentage of the cases studied is found to be poor as reflected by their performance in all the 6 abilities tested - i.e., Reading, Writing, Mathematics, Speech and Language, General Knowledge and Special Skills abilities. Among the various abilities assessed, the performance of the deaf children in Reading and Speech and Language Skills have been the poorest. In the sample studied, the younger children are higher in percentage than the older children. It was found that several demographic characterstics such as occupation of father, type of family, habitation , educational level of parents and the income level of the parents have an influence on the educational level of the case. ii It is seen that a considerable number of parents have a low positive attitude towards their deaf children. Analysis reveals that a majority of parents did not take proper action after noticing the problem of deafness in their children. Highly insufficient time has been spent on home training by the parents on school going children which is otherwise very essential for the education of the deaf children. Analysis further highlights that 69.2 % parents provided very low parental inputs or support to their deaf children in education. It is found that the number of schools for the education of the deaf children are very few and the level of education available therein is low. The number of trained teachers and speech therapists available in these schools is also found to be inadequate. It is found that there is lack of specially trained manpower, infrastructure, equipment, resource material etc, in the schools for the deaf. Obsolete methods are used for teaching and very few schools use modern educational technology and latest gadgets in the classrooms. This implies that the overall quality of educational inputs given to the deaf children in the existing schools is poor. In a large majority of deaf children the deafness was not detected before 2 years of age and there was a long time gap between noticing the problem and consulting a doctor. Early identification and intervention did not take place in large number of cases. Over 3/4 of the cases are found to have bilateral sensorineural hearing loss of 90 dB. It was found that 62.4 % of deaf children do not possess hearing aids. Among those who have hearing aids, very few deaf children are using them regularly. A majority of cases are found to have an average intelligence on non verbal intelligence tests in the I.Q. range of 80 to 119. In general, the correlation analysis between various factors and educational level/ educational status show positive correlations (of varying degrees from low to high) except in the case of severity of deafness where it is moderate and negative. Lastly, the parental opinion poll regarding various facilities provided by the Government indicates that they are generally far from adequate. It can be summarized from the factor analysis of the current study that among the various factors that influence the educational level and educational status of deaf children, the following factors have emerged as major factors : Availability of Educational Facilities, Quality of Education, Speech Therapy, Schooling at an early age combined with proper Home Training by the Parents. These factors are related to the education and training environment to which the deaf children are exposed to and hence these are very important factors as far as their education is concerned.