No Ears to Hear

By government edict, presumably signed off by the Minister (who was probably told there was a consultation, even though there certainly was not a wide one) has decided that St Clement school is no longer the school for the deaf unit so it’s sadly ended. This is the school which had a signed choir which won awards at the Eisteddfod. How can that continue now? The new mood is against it.

Apparently deaf children can now choose which school they go to as technology will help them, no need to have real people in  support! And yet even with cochlea implants, sound is not the same as normal hearing and at some time it will probably be realised that extra support in one place would have been a good idea. (see https://youtu.be/lzgQrHFDNLE for details on how they differ from normal speech). 

All the deaf resources have been cleared out and packed into boxes – 20 years of resources, which I do hope will not be dumped. [postscript - most of them have been]. And sadly the specialist rooms are now re delegated as normal rooms. Such a shame as St Clement was the first school to be specific built to incorporate deaf education. But that, as this poem shows, is “progress”.

Just so it does not go unrecorded....

No Ears to Hear

They cannot listen, and yet they can hear,
Unlike those they forget in quiet despair;
Budget cuts, school policy changes, lost
Amidst this is the very human cost
As St Clement’s School closes its doors
To the deaf. A policy from upper floors
Of an unaccountable civil service here:
But technology can bridge gaps, never fear -
Until it cannot, and a diaspora of the deaf
Now in many schools. A discordant clef:
The notes are musique concrete, off key,
As common sense and compassion flee;
An invisible hand swept support away:
Deaf classrooms closed this very day;
This is a future, and nothing to keep
Of deaf culture. I could surely weep
At what is decided behind closed doors,
Inside office buildings, on upper floors;
But this is how things are done today:
It is "progress" and also “The Jersey Way”;
Cost effectiveness, a calculus of misery,
As the signing class consigned to history,
Without even a historian to record it:
It goes silently, closure, forced to quit;
No more the human touch, reaching out:
Gone without fanfare, without shout;

While teachers protest about their pay,
This is lost in the shadows, in dismay;
And how will the deaf child now cope
As snatched away this means of hope?