Defending the Right to Speaking for Hearing-impaired Children

Some 30 years ago, Mrs Bessie S M Pang, an English teacher, was invited by a foreign missionary to work as a substitute teacher by chance for some hearing-impaired students. Through this experience, she understands the difficulties and sorrow of these students in learning verbal language. Hoping that these students could get timely assistance, she resolutely spent four years overseas to equip herself.After returning to Hong Kong, Mrs Pang has been advocating and practising her belief of "deaf not equaling dumb", "training early to speak, for changing one's life". She has been training hearing-impaired children to listen, to speak, and to master verbal language. By breaking communication barriers, they can integrate into the world outside the hearing-impaired community easier, and further develop their potentials.

 

Speaking for New Life

Mrs Pang is the Executive Director of the Suen Mei Speech and Hearing Centre, which she founded in 1981. Since then, she has taken up the multiple roles of audiologist, teacher and social worker for her hearing-impaired students, providing each with tailor-made training. "Early training" and "parents' involvement" are crucial for effective training, she believes. Most of her students are seriously impaired in hearing. Yet, after having trained for two years or more, some 90% have learnt to speak and can enter main-stream schools, 68 of them completed or are now studying in universities or tertiary education institutions. She also values students' whole-person development, especially their moral conduct. Therefore, other than language training, the Centre organizes various activities to cultivate students' self-confidence and virtue of helping others. She also offers support to students having left the Centre through different ways, such as setting up the Suen Mei Alumni Association - the first exchange platform for the hearing-impaired community using spoken language. She also runs Christian fellowship, tutorial classes and activities in summer vacation for the alumni.

 

An ardent advocate of integrated education, Mrs Pang has put great efforts to help hearing-impaired children integrate into main-stream schools and the society. She was a committee member of the Government's Steering Group on Integrated Education. She also sat on the Committee on Monitoring and Promotion of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and helped compile the teaching package of the Convention.

Mrs Pang understands well that childhood is the golden period for language learning, and the earlier a hearing-impaired child gets training, the more effective will be. She is, therefore, determined to continue advocating the rights for the hearing-impaired children through all channels, so as to ensure they have timely and suitable assistance.