Sir, - I believe that Gerry McCarthy's assertions (May 28th) on the situation regarding the education for the deaf in previous decades contain a number of inconsistencies in relation to my own and other deaf people's experiences. I think his assertions and claims deserve to be challenged.
Mr McCarthy's point was that parents' concerns were a main cause of the continual use of the "oral" philosophy in schools for the deaf. This philosophy advocated the total prohibition of signing among children in order to enhance other communication skills such as lip-reading and speech. According to research, and from my personal communication with a number of parents and their deaf children, it is very clear that, while a minority of parents took an active interest in the mode of teaching employed by the schools, the majority were passive in their involvement. Interestingly, such differences were based on class structure: upper-middle-class parents tended to press for their preferences.
Moreover, most parents (including my own) were not properly informed of other available options, for example, the validity and importance of language acquisition through sign language as a basis for receiving education. They were actively discouraged by schools and teachers from learning signing. So much for Mr McCarthy's claims for parents pressing for oralism.The trend towards "individualising" the needs of deaf children in schools is a recent phenomenon and its long-term effects are not known to us yet. However the implications are that the approach is a subtle method of masking inadequacies in teaching. This is not to say that current teachers are not qualified to teach, but to say that they "are committed and very qualified teachers" is missing the point raised by Mr Crean (May 13th). With due respect to their professionalism and ability to teach, one needs special skills to teach deaf children through Irish Sign Language (ISL). Analogously, a qualified, hearing, English-speaking teacher would be regarded as unsuitable for a hearing Irish-speaking school, and even one with a limited knowledge of vocabulary in the Irish language is not an adequate substitute. This is the point that Mr Crean was trying to make.I welcome Mr McCarthy's comment that there "is always room for improvement". To choose a path for improvement, one must first look to independent research results to determine best practices.There are a number of independent research results which suggest that both previous and current education systems for the deaf fall short of adequate. Without trying to scaremonger, it is worrying to note that research on literacy suggests that more than 75 per cent of deaf people have low functional literacy skills, a factor that undoubtedly is directly correlated to 35 per cent unemployment for adult deaf people. Moreover, the majority of deaf people in employment can be regarded as underemployed, given that their potential abilities are not realised by this "oral" system. Fewer than a pitiful 2 per cent of deaf people are educated to university level. This has had long-term effects on the lack of participation of deaf people in policy-making, which has, in turn, contributed to a lack of change in the education system.I feel that real reform must stem from recognition of the shortcomings within the system, leading to a resolve to inform parents of the benefits of implementing a bilingual policy in which Irish Sign Language and written English will be the main languages of instruction. This policy also advocates the idea that once the child's acquisition of languages is satisfactorily achieved, the child would take lip-reading and speech lessons to enhance communication skills. While recognising the right of parents to choose for their children, I also believe they deserve to be informed of the experiences of the past so they can better shape their children's futures. - Yours, etc.,John Bosco Conama, Honorary Secretary, Irish Deaf Society, Blessington Street,Dublin 7.