necessitated the opening of a school for the five to twelve years-of-age group at Milton, Ontario. With the completion of an extension at Milton, it's anticipated that all junior students will find accommodation here, and the school at Belleville will be predominantly for those in the intermediate age bracket. Teacher Training T TAKES a very special kind of teacher to understand the needs of the deaf child. Besides possessing the necessary qualifications their teaching technique must transcend academic training. They must have a compliant yet welldisciplined rapport with their students. Patience and objectivity are two virtues needed to deal with individual problems. These are the qualifications of a unique educator and in this day of specialization the school board can be selective in choosing a superior staff. During the year, Mr. Demeza and other members of the staff visit various teachers' colleges across the province acquainting potential graduates with the specialized work being done at Belleville. Although the school prefers a teacher who has had several years ordinary classroom experience, it has hired teachers directly from teachers college and they have happily fit into the school's general scheme. When graduates or experienced teachers come to Belleville, they must take a one year's training course or an equivalent one-year in-service course, adopted because of a shortage of teachers in 1957. When they have completed this course they receive a Specialist's Certificate. One teacher confided to me over lunch that although the training program was rigorous and sometimes discouraging the reward of achievement was certainly worth it. Mr. Demeza revealed that many young people were becoming more concerned with the problems of the less fortunate handicapped child and were enthusiastic about I Junior students feel piano's vibrations through fingertips. contributing their teaching talents to the school. Education of the Deaf BRE is approximately one deaf school child to every 8,000 people in the province of Ontario. In the past few years there has been an imperceptible increase in children born deaf. It is significant that this slight increase is attributed to the fact that with today's advanced medical mehods, more infants, who would have died in the past, are now being saved. The tragedy here, is that although more newborn babies' lives are being saved, they are afflicted with severe disabilities usually resulting fcom brain damage; deafness is one of these handicaps. As one doctor aptly put it, "The ability of medical science to save lives of infants has outrun the ability of the impairment of those saved." Modern educators of the deaf try to encourage parents to familiarize their children with the spoken word even if the result is only visual. "Deafness is the greatest educational handicap." The hearing preschool child at the age of five has a vocabulary of about 2,000 words but the deaf child has little or no knowledge of language. In his silent world he learns to communicate his needs by using his hands in an improvised sign language. The lack of initial communication between teacher and pupil is the first and biggest problem that must be overcome. The deaf child has the same intellecual capacity as that of the hearing child but his inability to hear or speak slows down the learning process by several years. First the child must learn the fundamentals of the language. He must learn to understand others and be able to make himself understood by speech. One can only imagine the tremendous difficulty involved in forming sounds without being able to hear them and without knowing if they are correct. In the classroom oral teaching supported by the written word is stressed although students are not restricted from using sign language outside of school. Each child is supplied with a headset through which he can hear the teachers voice by means of vibrations; it would almost be more accurate to say feel the teacher's