Kuh... kuh... kuh ... " The five-year-old boy repeats the sound over and over, frowning with increasing intensity as the teacher shakes her head "No, that's not right." She tears off a strip of paper and holds it in front of his lips while she points emphatically at the phonetic symbol for "g" on the blackboard. He tries again. As the paper flutters, he realizes that he again has aspirated a "k" instead of a "g" sound. On the next try, the paper remains still. He is rewarded with a smile and a pat on the shoulder.
There are seven neatly pinafored children sitting in a row on tot-sized pink chairs. They are in the kindergarten section and will be promoted to the first grade this summer. Miss H. F. Hung, a young woman with a wide smile, is patiently guiding the five boys and two girls through the differences between the aspirated "p, k, t" and the unaspirated "b, g, d".
The children are deaf. They are involved in an experimental project that includes the first and second grades and kindergarten in the deaf and dumb division of the Taipei School for the Blind and Deaf. These are the only deaf children in the school who will be able to read lips and speak in a nearly normal tone of voice. The older children, who have been taught by manual methods only, must rely on sign language and writing, a limitation that reduces almost to zero their opportunity to communicate freely with persons of normal hearing and speech.
The experimental project is being carried out in a special wing of the school that sprawls over a block-long area near the end of Chungking North Road, Section III. It is separated from the rest of the school by a small wooden door. Behind that door, no sign language is permitted.
The no-sign-language rule works about as well as the banning of English in a supposedly French-speaking dormitory at an American college. Pupils are apt to fall into what comes more naturally when no teacher is around or when they are excited.
Miss Hung interrupts the conversation to frown in mild exasperation at a small boy who is pointing to a black-and-blue mark on the leg of a classmate. He uses a pushing motion to ask if the bruise came from a fall. Miss Hung shakes her head and tells him to say "tieh tao" (fell down) instead of gesturing.
"That boy is always reverting to sign language because he has two deaf older brothers at home who never learned to speak or to lip-read," she explains. "It's hard to enforce our rule when a child uses his hands at home and cannot break the habit."
It is particularly easy for a Chinese child to pick up sign language. Chinese deaf-mutes use a system that is almost totally "natural"; there is no manual alphabet to learn. The Chinese deaf-mute points to his nose when he is referring to himself. He taps his forehead with a forefinger to mean "think". To say "Goodbye", he touches the ends of his fingers together and then pulls them apart. When he wants to talk about a book or magazine, he flips through imaginary pages.
The Taipei School for the Blind and Deaf was established as a school for the blind during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. In 1946, just after the island was returned to the Republic of China, the school had only 64 students and 20 teachers. Today there are 132 teachers and 1,009 students -932 deaf and 77 blind; 592 boys and 417 girls; 90 in the senior division, 208 in the junior division, 693 in primary school and 18 in the experimental kindergarten for the deaf. About 50 retired servicemen blinded during military service have been graduated from the school and remain there as assistants.
The Taipei school is considered the leader among the three Taiwan public schools for the blind and deaf. The other two are at Fengyuan in central Taiwan and at Tainan in the south. All use textbooks prepared at the Taipei school, which is the only one experimenting with the oral-auricular method of teaching. There are about a dozen smaller private schools, mostly for the deaf, conducted by missionaries or charitable organizations.
In Taipei, deaf students outnumber the blind by more than 11 to 1. For every 100 applications for first grade admission of deaf children, fewer than 10 come from the blind. The ratio is widening because fewer children are born blind or become so in infancy. One missionary group that decided to open a nursery school and kindergarten for blind children had to give up after a year because so few children applied.
Better knowledge of hygiene and readily available medical care have cut down the occurrence of venereal diseases that used to account for many cases of blindness at birth. Trachoma is no longer so grave a threat as earlier in the century, when it accounted for almost 50 per cent of the blindness in China. Many of the blind of today lost their sight in infancy after contracting scarlet fever or measles or some other infection resulting in a high fever.
As a result of the low incidence of blindness, the Taipei School for the Blind and Deaf now goes looking for students to fill its classrooms. All Taiwan primary education through Grade 6 is free and compulsory, and, beginning this fall, Grades 7 through 9 will be free but not compulsory. The institutions for the blind and deaf are the only public schools that must seek out students. Even after finding them, the schools often have to persuade parents by pointing out that their children not only will learn to read and write, but will acquire a skill enabling them to earn their own living.
Incidence of deafness has remained fairly static in recent years. Few persons are congenitally deaf or become so as a result of injuries. Most lose their hearing in infancy or early childhood as a consequence of illness or diseases. The recent indiscriminate use of antibiotics has led to cases of blindness in the newborn. The drug may have been taken by an expectant mother, or young children may have been given antibiotics unwisely by mothers who hoped to bring down a high fever quickly.
Although the blind and deaf students share the school's facilities and the administrative system is the same, the two groups are completely separate academically and in vocational training. Out of class, they rarely associate with each other.
"All we see is loss of temper or frustration when blind students try to play with the deaf ones," a teacher said. A blind 11th grade student sitting nearby smiled at the comment. "The younger deaf children can't understand why their gestures aren't understood. And the blind sometimes shout themselves hoarse trying to get through to the deaf".
Rope makes it possible for blind girl to run in a footrace. (File photo)
However, at an athletic meet held April 28 to celebrate the school's anniversary, blind and deaf students cooperated beautifully. Mixed team races were a highlight of the day. In one race called "The Centipede", each team was headed by a deaf student with a long tail of blind students holding on behind. Most teams reached the finish line. But occasionally one would end up in a giggling heap after a misstep. Sighted children formed a hand-clapping cheering squad for their blind schoolmates in the no-hands-allowed apple-on-a-string contest.
The school follows less rigid regulations about age than most of the public schools of Taiwan. So it is that Chen Sung-lin, 16, and Chen Chung-shun, 18, are both in Grade 9. Sung-lin is deaf; Chung-shun is blind. Both have been at the school since the first grade.
Chen Sung-lin, a handsome deaf boy with the figure and bounce of an athlete, plans to stay at the school until he graduates from the senior high. He already has his eye on the College of Chinese Culture, where he hopes to major in Chinese art. His special interest is Chinese brush painting of human figures and flowers. In his free time, he reads: "Anything! Even English books" and plays basketball and swims.
Chen Chung-shun is tall and has an ever-ready smile. The oldest of seven children, he lost his sight after a bout of high fever at the age of three. He has no memory of colors. Chung-shun's best academic subject is Chinese but his first love is music. He took up the violin when he first came to the school and hopes to transfer to the Taipei Municipal Normal School to specialize in music education.
Kindergarteners are learning to say words they cannot hear but which are clearly intelligible to those who can. (File photo)
Academically, both blind and deaf students pursue the regular course of study specified by the Ministry of Education. The difference from conventional schools lies in the methods of instruction and in the vocational studies required of all students at the Taipei School for the Blind and Deaf.
Sung-lin and Chung-shun spend their mornings and part of their afternoons in Chinese literature, geography, history, physics, geometry, English, civics, scouting, hygiene and physical education classes. Sung-lin receives his instruction in sign language. Chung-shun reads braille textbooks and takes notes with a stylus and braille dot guide.
It is in vocational training that the two Chens, who are not related, part company. Chung-shun takes anatomy (used in massage, therapy and acupuncture), massage theory and techniques, acupuncture theory and lots of music. Should he stay on at the school for the three senior years, he may take electric therapy as well. Sung-lin takes such extra courses as painting, design, ceramics, barbering, chair caning, weaving and typesetting and printing.
Not all students follow exactly the same vocational pattern. Slow learners are discouraged from taking up electric therapy, which requires more technical knowledge and skill than massage. Sung-lin, whose father died when the boy was an infant, has two older sisters who can contribute to the family income. So he probably will not have to work as a barber and may be able to concentrate on his painting. Another girl who transferred to the senior school from the First Girl's Middle School after she was blinded in a traffic accident has received permission to take more academic subjects and forego the courses in massage and acupuncture.
However, vocational training remains one of the most important contributions of the school. Because of such training, the future is much brighter for the handicapped than 'it would have been in the past. No longer does a blind person have to turn to begging or fortunetelling. No longer does a deaf-mute have to remain mute or turn to Buddhist monkhood for survival.
An informal job placement system has found positions for all blind graduates and about 75 per cent of the deaf. Blind masseurs are in great demand. Some alumni have set up their own clinics or have a long list of regular clients and earn up to NT$6,000 (US$150 and about triple the income of the average civil servant) a month. Even low earners can count on about NT$1,500 a month. Blind graduates have been placed in such industries as electronics, where manual dexterity is prized far above the ability to speak. Artists and weavers have found jobs in pottery workshops and textile plants.
For Pai Tan-ni, 19, graduation this June means a decision on whether she should go on to college.
"We have to have a family conference first," she said in sign language.
The conference is required because both her older sisters are already in college and the cost of her tuition must be considered. Her family knows that she probably will need additional tutoring to keep up. The daughter of a military officer, Tan-ni has been first or second in her class throughout her 12 years at the school. She follows facial expressions alertly but cannot read lips.
Her family is concerned over whether she will feel lonely at college without anyone to converse with. Tan-ni now has many friends, all of them classmates at the school. They can be seen on the city bus with their fingers flying as they chat on the way home.
The school has sent graduates to Japan for advanced study, mostly in therapy, as well as to local colleges and universities. Such schools as Taiwan Normal University, Tunghai University, the College of Chinese Culture, Academy of Arts and the Provincial Physical Education College accept blind and deaf students. Most of them take up music, art, physical education or home economics. Last year three graduates went on to college and one of them, Lee Yueh-chin, a blind girl, is majoring in English at the College of Chinese Culture. Ko Yen-chi is a senior in sociology at Tunghai University, an interdenominational Christian school at Taichung. Although blind, he has one of the highest averages in his class. Recently he had to decide which of several scholarships to accept for graduate work in the United States.
Not all bright students at the school are so fortunate. Tseng Pi-lien, a 20-year-old blind girl, is in her next-to-last year of high school. She is in the middle age bracket of a family of eight children - all boys except Pi-lien. Her father is a construction worker. Asked what she plans to do after graduation, Pi-lien answered realistically, "What else but massage?"
Pi-lien's principal regret is that graduation will mean leaving her favorite pastime behind. She and many of the blind students most enjoy listening to the school's collection of talking books - tape recordings of novels. They prefer the listening to the reading of braille books.
"We have quite a large collection of braille books in our school library, but none of us spends much time there because most of the books are short stories," Pi-lien explained. "We like novels better."
None of the Chinese classics have been translated into braille. A few novels in English are available. But even Pi-lien, whose favorite subject is English and who works hard at vocabulary and grammar, finds them impossible to read. "It's like shorthand; they use too many short forms and abbreviations," Pi-lien complained.
Chinese braille differs from English braille, which uses dots to represent the 26 letters of the alphabet, by combining the dots in various forms to represent 59 phonetic symbols. The symbols themselves are memorized in the first year of primary school. But reading is still difficult because of the tones used in spoken Chinese. In most cases, the context indicates the meaning, as, for instance, whether "chiu" means ball, plead, promontory or autumn. But in the terse writing of classical literary Chinese, where many words are left out, the students need guidance. This adds to the reluctance of the blind students to read for pleasure.
Junior high students are still relying on sign language. Here they are mastering signs for abstract nouns. (File photo)
One of the major problems of the Taipei school is the shortage of braille writing machines and operators. Although charitable institutions such as the Taipei International Women's Club frequently donate radios, phonographs, and tape recorders to the school, no one has ever offered a braille machine to provide for the translation of more books.
The Taipei school has only one machine, which four of the teachers take turns operating. This same machine must turn out textbooks and syllabuses for the other two public schools for the blind. Students need to spend hours each week making up study materials from class lectures or transcribing the notes of older students. This is painstaking work when done dot by dot with only a stylus and dot guide.
A new Japanese machine cost about NT$60,000 (US$1,500). The school has asked funds for four machines and salaries for full-time operators. No word has come down from the Municipal Bureau of Education but the school still hopes to buy at least one more machine.
Lack of funds also affects the non-academic side of school life. A dormitory for 300 students was built last year. Yet boarding students still sleep community-style on woven mats placed on room-length trestles. Just recently the school acquired funds to order double-deck bunk beds.
In theory, all funds for the school should come from the city education bureau. In practice, money must be found where it is available. Funds for new braille machines, for instance, may have to be found in the city's social welfare funds. In 1963, much of the school was condemned as unfit for occupancy because it was flooded under four feet of water during a 1963 typhoon. Flood relief funds enabled the school to build new classrooms and housing for the teachers.
Lack of trained teachers is considered by students to be of more urgent concern than the shortage of textbooks. ''If I had one wish for the school, it would be that we had more teachers who knew the special problems of teaching people like myself," said Pai Tan-ni, the deaf girl.
Taiwan has no special training courses for prospective teachers of blind or deaf children. The Provincial Normal University is the only college-level teachers' training school on the island. It offers only one elective course for teachers of "special" students. This category includes the blind, the deaf, the mentally deficient, juvenile delinquents and others not considered "normal".
Most of the teachers at the Taipei school have picked up their special knowledge on the job. The principal, Chen Hsia, came to the school in 1957 after many years of teaching and administration. He first studied braille and then learned sign language. Today he is adept at both.
Miss Hung, the smiling kindergarten teacher, was at the Tainan School for the Blind and Deaf for two years before she moved to Taipei. At Tainan she began to experiment with teaching deaf-mute children to talk.
"I discovered by chance that some of the children could make certain sounds and so I started teaching some of the brighter ones," she said. Miss Hung had a rudimentary knowledge of how sounds are formed because she had taken elocution and singing lessons at normal school.
Miss Hung brought her hit-or-miss method to the Taipei school. Not until three years ago was a formal system of oral ism set up. Miss Hung and her fellow kindergarten teachers, W. T. Huang and Miss C. H. Ku, have an elaborate set of drawings and paper cut-outs to help them.
Instruction starts with drawings of each child's profile to familiarize him with his own facial and throat structure. Tongue exercises are taught with the aid of a cardboard clown-face. A round hole is cut out where the mouth should be and the teacher uses her forefinger to show the placement of the tongue. The use of colored chalk helps the children to understand the origin of various sounds. Coffee-colored chalk lines represent the nasal sounds and so on.
Vocabulary increases slowly but steadily. Even playtime is taken advantage of. Miss Hung may run and skip with her charges, then stop to teach them the words for "run" and "skip". The children have little trouble learning the words for movements. They play with an outsized set of mama, papa, sister and brother paper dolls and learn colors by identifying the clothes they want to use.
By the time they are ready to leave kindergarten, most children are able to pronounce the 38 phonetics used in the Chinese system. They can string the sounds together to form simple words and sentences.
Principal Chen Hsia has no doubt that his students are as capable of learning as any others. His office is full of silver cups, banners and certificates testifying to the high scores of blind and deaf students in citywide and provincial competitions. Many of the awards are for athletic prowess but some are for essays and paintings. This year the deaf girls of the school finished first in the city-wide folk dancing contest and represented Taipei at the provincial contest, where they came in second.
After 11 years at the school, Chen is still striving for the realization of two dreams. First, he hopes to see the blind and deaf educated at separate institutions. Second, he would like to see a college exclusively for the deaf operated along the lines of Gaulladet College in the United States. These are goals that the government also shares. The problems are the funds and personnel. Both must be solved before Principal Chen's dream can come true.