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BSL Blog 1 – Deaf Education
Education, Education!
We’re now in the 21st century and equality issues in the UK are becoming more and more important. Yet in every Deaf person’s life, whether we were lucky enough to go to a good school or a not so good school, we can see that our education still needs to be equal to that of hearing people. Everywhere Deaf people meet up, anywhere in the world, education is the foremost subject of discussion, often heated. Every Deaf adult, reflecting on their own experiences, would confirm that they want to make things better for the present generation of Deaf children.
But most of us are curious, with ever changing new technology, if Deaf children nowadays are getting much more support than we were in education. As most Deaf children now attend local schools near home, not the large residential schools most of my generation attended, sufficient resources would be necessary to ensure their full access to the curriculum.
The state of Deaf education in Scotland was summed up in a Scoping Study on Linguistic Access to Education for Deaf Pupils and Students in Scotland published in December 2007 by the BSL and Linguistic Access Working Group. You can see a BSL translation of the Executive Summary of the Scoping Study on the BSL UPTAKE website. There is evidence from The Scoping Study that more training is needed to support specialised staff to ensure they can work with Deaf children scattered all over Scotland, rather than focusing on providing resources at a few Deaf schools as in the past.
Earlier this year, in Stirling, I went to my first meeting of a Deaf BSL users’ group organised by the Scottish Government’s Equality Unit. Most of the afternoon was taken up discussing various issues and desires for better opportunities under the theme of education.
The main issue was concern over Deaf children who are currently sent to mainstream schools. Do they have full access to Scotland’s national curriculum, the Curriculum for Excellence? Do they have quality access? Do their Communication Support Workers receive enough of the right kind of training to give Deaf children full access in BSL? Most CSWs have not received the training in how to interpret between two languages and two cultures that a BSL/English interpreter has. Should we be thinking more about properly trained and qualified BSL/English interpreters working in schools with Deaf children? Educational interpreting is a hot topic in the USA. Should we take it more seriously here?
Deaf people know that, with full and appropriate support, Deaf children can have full and quality access to the curriculum, meaning they can be on a par with their hearing peers.
Another subject of importance for the Deaf Community is that Deaf parents of both Deaf and hearing children need more information on how they can help to ensure appropriate provision for their own children’s educational development and achievements. Many Deaf parents are eager for support on how to nurture and support their children’s learning process at home. Most of them would like to know what help they can give, or to have confidence to meet up with school staff to ask for guidance, with appropriate communication so that they and the teachers understand each other.
Deaf BSL users who experienced specialised Deaf School education in the past are aware of how much they are lagging behind in every sphere of life. This includes all five of the Scottish Government’s Strategic Objectives– for a Scotland that is:
- Safer and Stronger
- Healthier
- Smarter
- Wealthier and Fairer
- Greener
Research carried out 30 years ago showed that Deaf school leavers had attained an average reading age of 8 ¾ (Conrad, ‘The Deaf School Child’, cited in ‘Resources: Parent and child sign language’, Disability, Pregnancy and Parenthood International, Spring/Summer 2006, which you can read online.) A review of more recent research suggests there has been little or no improvement.
One thing that has changed in the past 30 years is ‘the strongly held view among the Deaf community that BSL usage when accessing public services is a right and not a support service.’ This was shown in the 2005 ‘Investigation of Access to Public Services in Scotland using British Sign Language’.
One of those public services to which we need access in BSL is education. For Deaf children it’s especially important to see more Deaf professionals in the field of education as role models, raising their expectations for their future contribution to society as equal citizens. This will expose them to a better quality of BSL and increase their confidence in expressing themselves, both in BSL and English.
Deaf adults also need more opportunities in Further and Higher Education, to enable us to ‘catch up’ with our hearing peers, e. g. Specialised English courses for Deaf adults.
One thing most Deaf academics would like to see is a study by the Government to analyse how and why Bilingual Education for Deaf people in Scandinavia, some European countries and parts of America is regarded by many as the best strategy for Deaf Education. These countries have produced well-educated Deaf high flyers, leaders and professionals. Many of them are even competent in using third and fourth languages, such as English – and even BSL, which is actually included in the curriculum for D/deaf schoolchildren in Norway!
There’s a lot more information about these issues in Deafness and Education International and the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education – and you can read a free sample of this journal online!
What do you think? Would you like to share your views on this topic? Is there anything about Deaf Education you feel strongly about and want to contribute? If you want to find out more, you can follow the Links from the English translation of this BSL Blog – then let us know what you think about what you find out. Do send us your views and comments, in either BSL or English, and we will publish and translate some of the best of them on BSL:UPTAKE. If you’re not sure how to send us your comments in BSL, please look at our special ‘How To..…’ Guide.
Technical Note: This video has been encoded using the VP6-E video codex, at an average bit rate of 512kbs. The duration of the film is almost 12 minutes. The file size is 47 megs. The original format supplied by the recording studio was quicktime using the H.264 codec at 640*480 and the file size was approximately 250megs .
Related Posts:
Related posts:
- British Sign Language and Linguistic Access Working Group Scoping Study: Linguistic Access to Education for Deaf Pupils and Students in Scotland
- Scoping Study, Part 8 – Regional variations in provision
- Scoping Study, Part 12 – The need for a centralised linguistic access resource
- Scoping Study, Part 5 – Further and Higher Education (F&HE)
- Scoping Study, Part 13 – Other educational provision
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May 21st, 2013 at 6:57 pm
Hi,
I found this blog really interesting! I think that it is important that we discuss this as our children’s education as after all they are the future.
Recently, my daughter who is Deaf came home from school quite upset and told me that her teacher criticise her signing and showed her how it ‘should be signed’.
As we are aware the majority of teachers for Deaf children signing skills are limited and in my opinion under qualified. My biggest worry is that by criticising our children’s signing will have a major effect on their confidence and ultimately their learning. Fortunately my daughter is from an all Deaf family where we can support one another but what about those kids who are from hearing families? They will not know that the signing from the teacher is not pure BSL and they’re is a good chance that later on in life will struggle to build a relationship with the Deaf community because of this.
Really what I want to do is complain to the school. I do not believe that an L2 user should criticise my daughter or anybody for that matter who is an L1 user. Does anybody have any advice on how to go about this?
Brian