Silent witness

`Why should one child in a family have to travel so far, all alone, each day? Deaf children don't have equal access to education," says Rita (not her real name). She is speaking about the two-hour commute her son had to make to and from second-level school. "I used to watch heartbroken parents at the train station sending their four-year-olds up to Dublin as weekly boarders from places like Mayo and Donegal - there was no way I could do that. A group of parents where I live worked to get a special unit in the local primary school, but we had no choice with second level." In the face of a disturbingly low literacy rate among deaf school-leavers, issues about the education of deaf children have been simmering for decades - from the need for more special schools spread throughout the State to the value of integration and the most effective teaching methods. Now the debate is opening up. A new book, Breaking the Silence: The Education of the Deaf in Ireland 1816-1996 by Edward J Crean, looks at how education of the deaf has evolved, unravelling myths and fallacies in the process. Since his son was born in 1960, Crean has found himself struggling, he writes, with an "almost palpable ignorance among the general public and the professions regarding some of the most basic knowledge of what the deaf really need in education".

According to Crean, since the introduction of oralism (learning through lip reading) in schools, there has been a dramatic decline in the standard of education among the deaf. Before oralism was introduced in the 1940s, they learned through sign language - and Irish standards were internationally recognised as high. There are now moves to raise awareness of sign language and reintroduce it into the classroom. Fergus Dunne is education director with the Irish Society for the Deaf (ISD). "I went to a school where we learned through oralism. I knew how to sign because my parents were deaf and we used sign language at home. But oralism was considered superior, it was seen as a way to `normalise' deaf people, and signing was a bit embarrassing," he says.

"In fact, sign language is the natural language of the deaf. But it is a language quite separate to English, with its own grammatical structure. Many deaf children arrive at school and suddenly find themselves learning all sorts of new things through what is effectively a foreign language. What we are advocating is bilingualism. Deaf children should learn through their own language - sign language - and should learn English as a separate class."

Learning through sign language was in fact standard practice throughout Europe until 1880 and the second International Congress for the Deaf in Milan, according to Crean. At the congress, resolutions referring to "the incontestable superiority of speech over sign" were carried. Crean argues it was St Paul - "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17) - who clinched it for the Dominicans in charge of educating the deaf here. Oralism took over.

"My memories of school are mixed," Dunne says. `I was very happy, but you couldn't always understand what the teacher was saying, so you just gave up half the time. Learning through oralism tended to stifle our curiosity - it was just too hard." Dunne has seven children, two of whom are deaf. `I would prefer to see my children having a more appropriate education."

Brian Crean, Edward Crean's son, attended a university for the deaf in the United States after experiencing the limitations of Irish schooling. "I would like to see a whole new system for deaf children here," he says. "With a number of parents of deaf children I've formed a committee which is proposing a model school run by the deaf for the deaf, where children learn bilingually." At a conference organised by the ISD last March, Scandinavian academics gave papers on their experience of bilingualism. "In Sweden and Denmark, where bilingualism was introduced in the early 1980s, deaf children are now back on equal footing with hearing children in terms of academic results," Brian Crean says. . "The problem we are facing here is a lack of understanding and awareness."

Rita agrees. "Attitudes are changing slowly, but the resources are still inadequate. A very small percentage of deaf children manage to do the Leaving every year, and if they do their options are limited because of the lack of facilities at third level. "The point is, if everyone made the effort and learned how to sign, deaf people wouldn't have a disability."

Breaking the Silence by Edward J Crean costs £9.99.