A teachers' school focusing on training hearing-impaired children
opened in Beijing Friday- the first of its kind in China.
The Hearing and Language Ability Rehabilitation College, a new
branch of the Special Education Institute for the Disabled under
the Beijing United University, is expected to enroll more than 100
students nationwide this year.
It
is using more than 136 professors as well as state-of-the-art
teaching equipment and facilities for training deaf children.
The founding of the college will help protect the rights of
disabled people, who are at a disadvantage in society, Deng Pufang,
chairman of the
China Disabled Persons Federation, said at the college's
opening ceremony.
The college was jointly founded by the China Disabled Persons
Federation, the Beijing municipal government, the Beijing United
University and the China Rehabilitation Research Center for Deaf
Children.
Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing donated 6 million yuan (US$722,000) to
the new college.
The China Rehabilitation Research Center for Deaf Children is
serving as a training base for the college.
China has more than 20 million hearing-impaired people. About
80,000 of them are children under seven, according to statistics
from the China Disabled Persons Federation.
About 30,000 Chinese go deaf each year because of bad medicines,
heredity, infection, noise pollution and accidents.
Proper training early on can help people regain some hearing or
language abilities, said Sun Xibin, vice-director of the
center.
(China Daily
09/23/2001)