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The future of deaf educationGoing mainstream | Deaf schools | Compromise? | Help and info What kind of education do you feel is best for you and for the next generation – the mainstream system or a deaf school? The Government seems to think mainstreaming is the way forward, but is this the best option for deaf people? Deaf education has been in the news quite a bit in the past few months, with some deaf schools threatened with closure. This summer, Derby College for Deaf People will be forced to close, due to criticism of its facilities. But what will happen to the 60 students who’ve relied on this school’s methods? And they’re not the only ones facing an uncertain future. Newcastle’s Northern Counties School for the Deaf has also been on the verge of closure. Fortunately, it was kept open by campaigning parents who argued that their children would not be able to cope in mainstream schools. Going mainstreamIn the mainstream system, a deaf child takes lessons with hearing pupils and gets support from a childcare assistant, a note-taker, or a communication support worker. Mainstreaming works for some deaf children, making them push harder to succeed academically in order to prove they can survive, but they still miss out on a Deaf culture. Others find being the only deaf person in a school an isolating and lonely experience which can cause some children to become withdrawn or drop out early. The teacher’s union NASUWT has argued that mainstream schools are being turned into ‘enormous special schools without any of the benefits of true special education’. Deaf schools – worth fighting for?At the moment there are still quite a few to choose from, both oral and BSL. There are day schools (for example, Frank Barnes school or Oak Lodge in London), boarding schools (Ovingdean in Brighton or Mary Hare in Newbury) or colleges (Donaldson’s in Edinburgh). There are however no deaf universities in this country. (In fact there’s only one deaf university in the world – that’s Gallaudet, in Washington DC.) BSL is generally considered a more accurate form of communication to teach deaf children. It’s also often thought of as the most culturally appropriate. The oral method is all about using as much residual hearing as possible, along with lipreading, in order to be more involved in the hearing world. However, speech may not always be clear enough to be understood by hearing people and lipreading is not always 100% accurate. Deaf schools encourage children to explore their Deaf identity and not feel like the ‘odd one out’ as they might in mainstream schooling. This can give them the vital confidence they will need in the hearing community. On the other hand, some deaf-school graduates can experience difficulty adjusting to life in the outside hearing world. There’s also some speculation that deaf schools cannot get the best academic achievement out of pupils, although this is difficult to prove. Tony Winstanley, director at the soon-to-close Derby College for Deaf People, says: ‘Closing down deaf education only says one thing – restricting choice of selecting what is most appropriate for each deaf person. Each deaf individual has a different learning profile according to so many different factors. A local mainstream college or school cannot hope to provide everything for everybody.’ Compromise?What about a bilingual approach? This would mean placing deaf children in a mainstream environment but teaching them BSL as a first language, and English as a second language. The problem with this plan is that there aren’t enough interpreters and BSL-fluent teachers to make this possible. So having read more about it, what do you think? How have you got on your education? What do you think should happen in the future? Let us know on the message board. Help and infoOrganisations DEX (Deaf EX-Mainstreamers Group) Deafax Trust Links DELTA (Deaf Education through Listening and Talking) Futurika ALLFIE (The Alliance for Inclusive Education) BATOD (British Association of Teachers of the Deaf) Parents for Inclusion DEE (Disability Equality in Education) Books Issues in Deaf Education edited by Susan Gregory, Stephen Powers, Linda Watson, Pamela Knight and Wendy McCracken (David Fulton Publishers, 1998) Raising and Educating a Deaf Child by Marc Marschark (Oxford University Press USA, 1999) Closing the Inclusion Gap: Special and mainstream schools working in partnership by Rita Cheminais (David Fulton Publishers, 2003) Deaf and Hearing Impaired Pupils in Mainstream Schools by Linda Watson, Susan Gregory and Stephen Powers (David Fulton Publishers, 1999) Articles Education Guardian: A world of their own Education Independent: There's something about Mary |
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