One of the first questions a student is asked while joining a school is, ‘What is your mother tongue?’ But for about 200 children at the CSI Higher Secondary School, Santhome, they have an identical mother tongue — the sign language.

“These students have never known what it feels like to be called by someone. The only thing they are familiar with is hand gestures, and we are now teaching them lip reading,” says James Albert, headmaster of the 104-year-old school.

In 1912, when hearing disabilities were considered a disease, a philanthropist of the Zenana Missionary Society from Church of England started a school for seven students who were shunned by their families and society because they had hearing and speech disabilities................Read more

Source: The New Indian Express