The evidence grows daily that much learning failure results from undetected early childhood hearing problems (Gordon 1977). This is because the child is deprived of the state of acute hearing sensitivity normally present at birth which makes it possible to recognize the loudness levels and duration of each individual sound. This is how a child learns the signifi cance of the slightest variations in the quality of each sound as he collects information from the environment through all his senses, and the meaning of these changes is experienced and understood. As a result of normal sensory...