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The MP for persons with disability in the central region, Alex Ndeezi, has disagreed with parents of deaf and blind children over the level of education at which the children should stop.
Some parents said they would be happy if their disabled children acquired handcraft skills but Ndeezi said such children can also attain degrees.
This was during the commissioning of a multipurpose building for deaf and blind children at St. Mark’s VII School for the Deaf in Bwanda, Masaka district. The sh220m building was donated by Sense International, a non-governmental organisation.
The parents’ leader, Olive Bwana, said she could not believe that her deaf and blind child could get a university degree.
“We don’t expect our children to get degrees but want them to at least do something for themselves,” Bwana said.
She added that some blind and deaf children had multiple physical disabilities, which made their lives more complicated and, therefore, cannot get formal education.
Bwana said the Government needed to establish schools for the deaf and blind in every district to enable parents visit them regularly.
However, Ndeezi urged the parents to stop undermining their children, saying this would demoralise them.
“A deaf and blind child can go to university and be a graduate. I look forward to seeing a deaf and blind person going to Parliament one day.”
Ndeezi said negative attitude towards disabled children closes opportunities for them.
The head teacher of the school, Sister Rose Immaculate, commended Sense International for the donation.
She said the school lacked teachers, adding that each student needed a personal teacher.
“We have six full time pupils and 14 part timers with mild impairment,” Immaculate said.
She added that the school also lacked money because the students come from poor families and cannot pay school fees.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From New Vision in Uganda:
