There’s been controversy today after a story broke about a 6 year old boy who stopped wearing his hearing aids after a school photographer asked him to remove it for his school photo.
Extract from the Telegraph website:
A six-year-old boy was left “embarrassed and upset” when his school made him take off his hearing aid so he would look “smart” for his school photo.
Alfie Durant’s mother Kerri was puzzled when he refused for the first time to wear the device to school in case his classmates laughed at him.
But she realised why three days later when he brought his pictures home and she saw he had been photographed alongside his little sister Scarlett, five, without the hearing aid, which sits behind his ear and is worn on a black band around his head.
When the school photographer arrived Alfie Durant was taken to the school office to have his hearing aid taken off at Middlesbrough’s Pallister Park Primary.
Read the rest of the story by clicking here.
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queby
June 11, 2015
Ridiculous thing to do. What was the school thinking of.
David
June 11, 2015
Talk about the 21st century!! Are we still in the Dark Ages!?
Tim
June 11, 2015
People sometimes say that medical model terms are a matter of personal choice, but when they encourage attitudes like this, which then affect others, I’m not so sure.
The school should remove its bad attitude instead.
MW
June 11, 2015
I read this news and it is very upsetting. I really hope the family can be supported to take this newspaper to court on the ground Discrimination/Human Rights (by a representative deaf organisation doing badly on this) – to me this is abuse. Limping Chicken might need to be aware to take a look at the other side of the story – the parent view. their reaction as not to emotionally anger us – as often the case, this does happen. Sorry Charlie, it is not a personal thing, but from a human perspective it take three side to a coin to get to the fact and the media like this,and in this way sending out information doesn’t always gives us the truer picture alongside The Telegraph. Nevertheless, thank you for bringing this story to our attention. I would be a very troubled child if this identity was taken away from me and my parent was passive to address this abuse. But sadly, parent don’t quite understand deafness and identity.
RAT
June 11, 2015
The child has discovered he is different, and now embrassessed – it’s really sad if the public feels ashamed of us wearing hearing aids!!
Hartmut
June 12, 2015
An oxymoron, indeed. A public and societal split personality.
In the final analysis, a wrong symbol of being different and anathema of difference is being used.
Instead, using sign language publicly and inside an educational institution has been a problem. Parents of deaf children has been relegated to be enforcer of the non-signing upbringing of deaf children. And HA and CI have been instrumentalized for this policy.
katyjudd2013
June 12, 2015
Nooooo. Plain wrong. Some people I know whip their glasses off if you point a camera at them . . . but then have to squint. Apparently a habit from childhood because people thought ‘when they’re older they’ll switch to contact lenses and won’t like to see a photo of themselves wearing glasses’ but obviously they didn’t change to lenses!
Deaf
June 13, 2015
Nothing wrong with that, The photo is of the person not the hearing aid. When I was a kid I asked to take my phonic ear off and was refused. I was humiliated and this ruined a good school photo.
Now thats disgusting, The photgrapher showed common sense here and should be congratulated.
An hearing aid is an object. You want a photo of it take it in your own time.