Hesperian Health Guides

Good schools prepare a child to make a living

In this chapter:

Many parents worry about the future for their children who are deaf or cannot hear well. How will they be able to earn a living and support themselves and their families?

Some schools for the deaf train their students in vocational skills they can use later to find a job or start a business. Both sewing and carpentry are common trades taught in vocational programs. There are also training courses that deaf children can go to after completing school, in computer skills, motor repair, printing technology, accounting, cooking, agriculture, and art. In fact, it is almost impossible to find a career in which a deaf person has not excelled!

A girl with a hearing aid making a pot.

At a residential school for the deaf in Romania, the children come from all over the country—sometimes from small villages more than 200 kilometers away. The children spend 9 months of the year at school, so it becomes a second home for them.

At school everyone uses hearing aids, learns speech and lip reading, and is taught to work with clay to make pottery. Many of the children leave the school when they are 14 years old and later earn their living as skilled potters.