Visit to Shastri School for Deaf and Dumb children 
US Chapter: Asha Seattle

Compiled by Gayathri and Manohar, 
Asha Bangalore volunteers, who visited the school on Aug. 25, 2000. 

All our conversations with the people we met were in Kannada and 
we have tried our best to translate it in English.

We had called the school about a week prior to our visit and were informed that we could drop in any time. So, we called them on Thursday afternoon and told them of our plans to visit the following day. On Friday, we met Mr. Basavaraju near the ISKCON temple who then guided us to the school. We reached there around 10.30am and the classes had already commenced.

On arrival, we were introduced to Mrs S. G. Vijayakumari, headmistress of the school and we spent a considerable period of time getting to know them, the school and its functioning. 

The school was started by parents whose children were deaf and were finding it difficult to enroll and cope up with the teaching in 'normal' schools. So, the parents came together and formed the Karnataka Welfare Association which runs the Shastry school. Mr. Basavaraju is one such parent and also serves as the secretary of the Association. Mrs Vijayakumari joined the school six years back having worked in a few other places before that. A desire to do serve such needy children is what prompted her to the place, she told. She is a graduate and has completed her D.Ed (Diploma in Deaf Education). Basavaraju along with Vijakumari is responsible with the day-to-day functioning of the school. There's one more person Mr. Chandrashekar (whom we could not meet) who takes care of accounting and other financial matters. 

The School:
The school is in the midst of a residential area. It is actually a house (ground + 1) whose living rooms, kitchen etc are used as classrooms. The living room is partioned into two to house two classes. Each floor accommodates about 4 classrooms. Space is really tight and the 'kitchen' in which Class I classes are held has students sitting on the concrete shelves hugging the walls!


Admission procedure:
Admission is open to all children though all the children in the school are deaf. Mrs Vijayakumari told us that they do auditory tests on incoming children to measure the level of deafness. Most of the time they rely on auditory tests done by external agencies.


Teaching aids:
From what we could learn, they have three types of devices:
- Biopharma Speech Trainer: Its a device which helps to evaluate a child's hearing capacities. There are two sets of headphones, one for the evalauator and one for the child, and it needs a trained person to operate it. We were told that training in using the device is given in the D.Ed. course. They have 4 nos. but 2 were inoperative. We were told that each child is trained for 45 mins each week using the Speech Trainer.
- Group Hearing Aid: This is a cluster of 8-10 headphones, each fixed at regular intervals along a U-shaped table (similar to what one would see in a meeting room with conferencing facilities). There's a microphone and a set of headphones for the teacher. They have two of these (two classrooms). None of them were in use and we were told that they needed repair. (Each GH Aid costs approx Rs 22,000)
- Individual hearing aids: These are regular hearing aids (fit in pocket) meant for individual use. Some of the children were wearing it, but most were not. We were told that the battery had gone out, some needed repairs (apparently the place where they send it to for repairs charges a lot). Mrs Vijayakumari told us that except for 30 all of them had hearing aids.

Most of the children have profound hearing loss (quantitatively it means more than 75% of their hearing capacities is lost; info provided by Vijayakumari). They have a different type of hearing aid which amplifies sound to a very high level as Gayathri found when she tested one out!


Instruction:
The medium of instruction is Kannada and the school follows the State prescribed syllabus/text books. Instruction is primarily done through
- visual - writing on blackboard
- children practicing hand coordination by writing in notebooks
- oral - using the speech trainer to develop auditory skills.

They do not use sign language for instructional purposes; the reason they cited was that they want the children to pick up/develop their auditory capacities and not make the children feel different from that of other schools. 

A report card is maintained for each student which lists the marks scored in each test. There
are 10 tests in an academic year (May - April). The subjects taught are
1. "paDApatti" - verbal way of building vocabulary/pronounciation
2. Kannada
3. Maths
4. Science
5. Social Studies
6. Drawing
7. Speech Therapy - improving speaking abilities
8. Auditory Training - to improve hearing capacities
9. Activity lessons

1,7,8 exam procedures/scoring/evaluation procedures are all internal to the school i.e there are no state prescribed metrics. 7th AND 8th STD EXAMS ARE according to the Prescribed state syllabus,and the children go to other schools to take these exams. Up till now they have had 100% results.the highest last year being 80%. The only subjects tested at the state level are maths,science,kannada and social studies.


Children/teachers:
Most of the children hail from low income families. (The monthly income of their parents were indicated on the copy of project proposal which Basavaraju said has been sent to Asha)
All wore uniforms, except the preschool children. Some of them could communicate well and and were able to tell their names, what they were studying, what they had for breakfast (the school provides breakfast and lunch) etc. It was really heartening to see and get to know that despite their shortcomings, they did what any normal child could do.
There was this orphan, Priya about 5 years of age, who stays with Mrs Vijayakumari. Through actions she told us what she had for breakfast. 
22 orphans stay with Mrs. Vijayakumari while the remaining 18 stay in the school. Other children go home after the daily classes. 
As far as their auditory capacities go, some could hear well and could speak in sentences while some could speak haltingly a few words. We were told that they had started schooling late and at an older age and it was difficult to develop their faculties quickly. 

There are 13 teachers but on the day we went only 5 were present (Jayamma - preschool, Chandra Reddy - VIII Std, P. V. Nagaraj - VII Std, Shashikala Kerur - iv std, Saraswati Kulkarni - III std). About the others, some had reported sick were what we were told. All of them have a D.Ed qualification. 
Teachers are paid according to their work experience and often leave for better opportunities. If the school cannot find teachers with D.Ed certificate, then they go for someone with TCH (teacher's training certificate) degree. There is one instance wherein the school paid for one teacher to get the D.Ed training with the rider that the teacher stays with the school atleast 5 years after completion of the course.



Financials/Assets/Liabilities:
There about 6 'volunteers' who have ID cards, go door-to-door and collect funds. They are paid about Rs 700 per month. Daily collection is deposited with Mr. Chandrashekar who does the book-keeping.
They collect a minimum of 100 per day But of course their collections are very irregular and The school does not have a fixed montly income.

The school does not get any funding from the government. For most part, they are dependent on donations from individuals. Apparently, the govt has a scheme by which each student can get Rs 500 provided s/he is certified (annually) to be deaf but both Vijayakumari and Basavaraju pointed out that to get the certificate, they have to incur atleast Rs 250 towards bribes, conveyance etc, so it does not make economic sense to pursue that funding. It is also a long drawn Procedure. The parents of some of the children Contribute in times of emergency but since most of these children come from lower middle class households the contribution of the parents is very minimum. Only 18 parents make any monetary contributions towards working of the school.

Mr. Basavaraju does not get paid, but other staff memebers do. Mr. Chandrashekar gets paid for the transportation expenses he incurs. 
They have a FCNR # and in the past they have got donations of $ 250 or so, which they have put in fixed deposits. Now, they have a fixed deposit of Rs 2 lakhs.
They presently own a piece of land near Tumkur Road (40 ft x 60 ft) which would probably fetch about Rs 2 lakhs. They had originally planned to use it to build a school but the plan met opposition with the parents who found the place to be very remote and distant from the place of residence. The children at present use public tranport(buses) to get to school. Some children travel by rickshaws that have been arranged by the School.the parents pay a small sum towards transport by rickshaw. 


Their Needs:
We asked Basavaraju and Vijakumari what they felt were their pressing needs. Money to buy land for the school. They have three sites in mind, around their current location, with price range of 11 to 15 lakhs. They have a rough estimate about how much it would cost to purchase property and construct a new building but since they have not consulted a civil engineer or an archtect the estmate may be slightly off. 
Their current place needs to be vacated in about 3 months and next year they will need more space when they start std IX. 


Our Comments:
The people we met seemed genuine and really interested in getting deaf children educated. There are no other schools which provide the same in nearby areas of North-West Bangalore for such children.

They told us that they do interact with other similar institutions (there are atleast 4 in B'lore) on teaching methods for deaf children but were unable to provide details. Perhaps they could try some other teaching methods like using sign language (Let me state that none of us i.e. myself/gayathri have a background in education of deaf/dumb children)

Their infrastructure with regards to auditory aids seem shaky and needs strengthening.

Their fund-raising base is primarily through individual donations. Buying land through such fund-raising will take time. While their intentions are good, they were not clear in their contingency plans in case land could not be bought for construction. 


Notes: 
1. D.Ed : Diploma in Deaf education. Its a one year course which can be done after PUC (Std XII) or graduation. 

2. While we were visiting the school, another person, Murali dropped in to donate 3 hearing aids to the school. He told us that his parents started a trust which does lot of philanthropic services and they regularly donate hearing aids to the school. He had come with names of three orphans to whom the hearing aids were meant for.