Special Education for Deaf People
As we have indicated above there are two ways to guide education in deaf people, and this creates a controversy between oralists and manualists. It is usually a recurring theme in the education of the deaf.
There is a certain degree of consensus in which the deaf child must have access to an unrestricted and balanced curriculum during his years of schooling, in addition to having the same opportunities as the rest of his classmates to develop as a full member of society in thethat lives.
For most people they prefer speech as a means of communication. Spoken language, which is usually acquired quickly, is a system of enormous complexity. This oral language can be a very difficult goal to achieve in deaf children, and it is obvious that without it the access to culture, socialization and obtaining educational results will be very hard. Language is the key to the construction of deaf literacy and it is through literacy as deaf can access human knowledge.
The different communicative options in the education of the deaf have meant huge controversies. The extremes of this discussion are represented by the oralists, who defend that the sordo must be taught oral language, and by manualists, for whom the community must be based only through the sign language.
One of the most living controversies today is what should be the educational modality in which deaf people must live together in an integration center in front of a special education center.
Until recently the deaf have been educated in the Center for Special Education. This began to change with the promulgation of Law 94/142 in the United States by which the right to appropriate education of ‘abnormal’ children, and the second, in the United Kingdom, was recognized, with the Warnock report, in whichIt highlights the need to carry out different forms of integration of people with physical, social and functional capacity.
Some studies have been carried out on the benefits provided by integrating education and the conclusions of these studies agree that the performance of deaf students is better in integrative schools than in special education centers. However deaf children in these schools do not reach the necessary self – esteem when they live with listening students and are generally shown as little adapted.
Reality shows us that the appropriate responses are not offered in schools. It is very common to observe the existence of communication barriers: teachers speak in their classes, they establish conversations, they write on the board … in which the deaf it costs a lot to participate.
As a consequence, an integration center for deaf students must have educational, material and human resources such as:
- An educational project of center that incorporates the education of the Sordo child.
- Collaboration between teachers and audition and language specialists.
- Participation of a specific team of teachers who make curricular adaptations and evaluation work.
- Need for all teachers to know the characteristics and problems of deaf children.
- Logopedia classrooms.
- Classrooms with amplification systems.
- Presence of an interpreter.
Every day the acceptance of considering deaf people as people with their own language and culture is greater, this has favored the idea of the need for the child to reach an identity as deaf through their relationship with others such as those of the communityDeaf or deaf identity or culture.
To achieve inclusive education, it is necessary to determine how deaf people should occupy that space. The biggest problem they present is a communication problem, and without being able to communicate and access school information it is impossible to access an ‘Equity Education’. So we must think about the environment through which children can learn better.
In this environment there must be a common language for communication. So the problem is not that deaf people have no audition but that there is no common language, a native of the deaf child, with which they can communicate with their teachers and classmates to be part of an environment that promotes mental activity so thatThis is developed in a normal way.
The concept of deaf people must be understood worldwide, since they are part of all societies in the world, but must be especially understood by educators and those who have the power to decide which is the best way to educate thisPopulation section.
Therefore, the environment in which the child unfolds, and the human beings around them are a fundamental part of the child’s world, and it is with these human beings that the child makes contact. The process of knowing the world is carried out through symbolic resources, such as the use of a common language with other human beings and with which we relate. For most people this is a natural process, since they are born in a linguistic community that can access from birth. On the other hand, deaf children of deaf parents, with whom they share their linguistic characteristics, access the world through the sign language of their community.
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