THE deaf are often mute as well. Thus when the deaf learn to speak they get rid of a critical disability — speech impairment. And if you can hear deaf children singing, and they know what they are singing, the experience can be truly electrifying.

I had this wonderful experience last Thursday at a little known school for the deaf and hard of hearing; the Lahore Speech and Language School.

The opportunity was provided by the school principal Zara Husain’s request to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan for help in getting the rights of the deaf recognised. She wrote that she was completely deaf but thanks to speech therapy she could speak two languages, had obtained two Master’s degrees and been enrolled as a PhD candidate at a US university.

Unlike other physical handicaps, the disability of the deaf (and mute) is not visible.

Her grievance was that there was a lack of awareness of the rights of deaf children. They were severely discriminated against in matters related to communication, schooling, medical treatment and employment. She had been running her school for deaf and hard-of-hearing children for eight years but needed help to change the public attitude.

Pakistan had ratified the Convention on the rights of Persons with Disabilities but had taken no notice of the draft convention for the deaf. The school had therefore decided to adopt for its annual graduation ceremony the theme, “With human rights, deaf children can!”

Thus, the students of the school, boys and girls between the ages of four and 18, some wearing hearing aids and others without, appeared on the stage. They used their ability to speak as well as use sign language to recite a few lines from the Quran, sing the national anthem, stage a short play and present a song-dance number. Everything was as it should be.

Worth recalling is the struggle of the persons responsible for running this school, where children of poor citizens can also get admission as it claims to have no fee structure and accepts whatever the parents can pay.

When the parents of Zara Husain, both with Master’s degree in English literature from Lahore’s Government College, discovered that their first-born could not hear, they decided to send her to a school for normal children, but her mother taught her and the other children at the same school as an unpaid volunteer for five years. The family’s transfer to Washington made it possible for Zara to join an American school and she went on to get a Master’s degree in speech and language pathology. She was preceded by her mother, who also obtained the same degree from the Gallaudet University and worked with the Graham Bell Association for the Deaf in Washington. Thirty-five-year-old Zara Husain hopes to complete her PhD in 2018.

Zara and her parents deserve to be admired for their efforts, especially for offering students courses adopted by Lahore’s prestigious schools, which gives them an edge over other institutions where children are also trained in speaking. But it is for the state to take appropriate and effective steps to ensure that the country’s deaf children are able to lead normal lives and make their due contribution to the national effort in all fields of activity.

What adds to the plight of the hearing-impaired is the fact that unlike disabilities such as blindness and other physical handicaps, the disability of the deaf (and mute) is not visible. Like most mentally challenged people they are seen as normal human beings. It is doubtful if the 90pc of the children with disabilities in the developing world that do not go to school, according to Unesco, include the deaf.

In her foreword to Zahid Abdullah’s remarkable study of the suffering of persons with disabilities, Disabled by Society, Zubeida Mustafa, the well-known advocate of education for all quoted from Indian poet-columnist Badri Rain’a verses on the subject:

Disabled we may be / In eye, hand, leg, or feet, / Our able minds wish nothing

But well / We have no hand but write / with our toe; / We have no legs but run miles / Every day in what we make / With our hands; / We have no eyes but see far, far / Beyond your black-hearted blindness.

It has taken the people many decades to realise the duty of parents, welfare bodies and, above all, the state to find out what a physically challenged child is good at.

Traditionally, society and government authorities both concentrated on providing vocational training for the physically handicapped. I can recall seeing schools for the blind in many cities in the 1940s and 1950s — Delhi, Aligarh and Lahore, to name only a few — where children, and adults too, were taught to knit cane to make seats for chairs and other pieces of furniture.

Deaf children suffer a great deal because their parents, especially in the rural areas, are not aware of the possibility of providing for their education at schools for normal children. The educational institutions too are not interested in taking in deaf children (or those with other handicaps) as they would need a bit more attention than other pupils.

Today it can be said that if a deaf person is able to learn to use computers and the internet he has the entire road to progress open to him. However, the development of human personality means acquiring the capacity to benefit from all the functions of the body. A deaf child may not be able to overcome the handicap of impaired hearing but he/she can get rid of the curse of muteness. He/she has a right to the freedom of the tongue. And it is the duty of the state and society both to help the child achieve this distinction.

All provincial governments must conduct a survey of the schools for children with disabilities and oblige their special education departments to help these institutions in every possible way. The non-official sector is already ahead of the formal sector in this field and, with some state help, it can improve its performance further.

Ultimately, the matter is linked with the state’s obligation to adequately implement the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. But that subject needs a separate round of discussion and analysis.

Published in Dawn, April 21st, 2016