Mainstream Vs Residential Education For Deaf Children

by DPS Panipat City Education

Children are the best ever gift bestowed by God. The process of bringing up a child is not very easy. It is really a big challenge for parents with differently abled children. Every parent wants to provide a quality education to their children. There is a question which pops up in the minds of every parent whether to enroll their deaf kid in mainstreaming or residential schools in India.

What is Mainstreaming and Residential School?

Most of us are not even aware of what these term mean. There is a lot of difference between these two schools.

Mainstream:

Mainstream is a school where a child with hearing impairment is enrolled along with the other normal students. There may or may not be other deaf students. The school management provides special staffs to communicate with these differently abled kids. The assignment of a deaf student will be similar to those of his/her fellow classmates. A sign language interpreter will help these kids. Sometimes the deaf students will have a self contained class rooms (i.e) a certified teacher will train the deaf children in all curriculum in top boarding schools in India.

Residential:

These schools are exclusively for deaf students. Most of the students stay within the campus during the weekdays and they leave to their homes during weekends. Even the teachers here are either deaf or have problem with hearing. They live like an extended family. All are well aware about American Sign Language (ASL) in the school. They socialize well with their peer.

Which school is best?

Today we find parents opting for Mainstreaming more than Residential schools in India. Since the funding for residential schools are reducing drastically many of the schools are on the verge of closing.

Parents want their children to grow up along with the ordinary kids. This is because they want the society to treat their differently abled kid in the same way they would treat a kid without disability. Most of the students in these mainstream schools will not be aware of American Sign Language. Hence there will be a communication barrier between the deaf and the normal kids. Socializing is really hard. There is a chance of deaf kid developing an inferiority complex in this environment.

Parents are well aware that child is much comfortable within the closed community in Residential schools. But the harsh truth is that the deaf child at some point of time has to leave the school and must get used to the hearing world. The sudden transition to this new world may bring a lot of adverse effect on the kid. Some find it hard to cope up with the new environment.

Hence both the schools have their own advantages and disadvantages. The parents must make a careful decision about their choice of school. They must analyze well before taking any decision. Researchers suggest that Bilingual education system would be productive (i.e) a child must be trained in their own native deaf language like ASL along with the language where a child would reside.