June 27, 2001

Los Angeles Times

Educating Deaf Students

To the editor:
Re "Controversial Head of School for Deaf Removed," June 21: As one who, after a lifetime with hearing keen enough to work as a
professional musician, must now rely on state-of-the-art hearing aids to pick up on ordinary conversations, I find the California School for the
Deaf's efforts to lump all of its students (both actually deaf and merely hard of hearing) into one group puzzling, insofar as their education is concerned. Whatever happened to the old-fashioned idea that each student is an individual whose individual needs and capabilities must be taken into account? Otherwise, a one-size-fits-all approach (based either on spoken English or American Sign Language) would constitute a truly Procrustean bed in which all students would suffer.

Horace Gaims
Los Angeles

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