A CASE AGAINST SPECIAL NEEDS ANDFOR VERY DEAF SCHOOLS IN SWEDEN
ERNST D. THOUTENHOOFD | DEPT OF EDUCATION AND SPECIAL EDUCATION
Who does education belong to? A gentle reminder
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About deaf people and sign language
The one language to which people, deaf or with a significant hearing loss, have natural,
unimpeded, unfrustrating access is sign language. Decades of sign linguistic study confirm this
by now unremarkable observation.
In Sweden, the right to be educated on the basis of clear sign-bilingual principles in pedagogy
and recorded in the curriculum was first established in 1981 and implemented in 1983.
This pioneering change in national policy followed a century of deaf pupils world-wide being
denied sign language learning and instruction.
In many countries such structural oppression and social exclusion has been—and still is—
excercised through (special) education.
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Organised oppression of deaf people’s collective linguistic heritage seems to have returned.
And yet again, (special) education is the heart of the debate.
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Deaf pupils in Swedish education 2016
—Min drom skola, det ar att alla lararna skall kunna flytande teckensprak.
Elev, Manillaskolan
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—Jag blev tvingad av en larare att prata pa lektionen! Det var det varsta jag har varit med om.
Elev, SPSM-skola
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—Vi kanner att vi kommer inte fa alls bra betyg pga lararen inte kan sa bra tsp. Vi tycker att
detta lararen bor byta ut till en annan som kan teckensprak.
Elev, SPSM-skola
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—Min larare har sagt till mig oga mot oga ”Flytten kommer att hjalpa er in i samhallet och hjalpa
er att fa horande kompisar och hur det ar att vara i samhallet” - Jag blev chockad over att
lararen sa sa till mig.
Elev, Vanerskolan
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—Min dromskola: Omgivning100% teckensprakig, larare har dovkompetens, skolledning ar alla
dova och vet i detaljer hur man ska bemota dova elever. Kampar for teckensprak och dovkultur.
SPSM gor allt for att behalla skolorna och inte integrera med horande. De representerar dova
pa ratt satt i sociala medier och gor allt for elevernas basta. Elever ar som jag, teckensprakig.
Elevhalsa: alla ar dova.
Elev, SPSM-skola
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BO riktar hård kritik mot specialskolorDN.se, 22 March 2016
Barnombudsman (BO) Fredrik Malmberg
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Special schools do not live up to expectations
Staten driver genom Specialpedagogiska skolmyndigheten åtta specialskolor. Skolorna
vänder sig i hög utsträckning till döva elever, och elever med kommunikationssvårigheter,
hörsel- eller synnedsättning. Trots det vittnar många av barnen som BO träffat om att inte ens
personalen på specialskolorna lever upp till kraven.
– Det finns specialskolor med döva elever som upplever att deras lärare inte kan teckenspråk, i
stället får deras klasskamrater agera tolkar. Det är i grunden en oacceptabel situation, säger
Malmberg som är särskilt kritisk till att barn med funktionsnedsättningar i hög grad berättar om
hur de blir kränkta i skolan, även av vuxna.
Mikael Delin, dn.se 2016
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Öppet brev till Specialpedagogiska skolmyndigheten (SPSM)
Two young deaf activists have written an open letter to SPSM, the government
organisation responsible for running special schools in Sweden. The following citation
is taken from that letter:
Dova och horselskadade har ratt till undervisning pa teckensprak och att fa vistas i en skola dar
det rader full teckenspraksmiljo. De har ratt till egna skolbyggnader som varnar om deras
rattigheter som barn, som elever och som dova och horselskadade. Skolorna ska ta ansvar och
framja barnens sprak: svenskt teckensprak. Det ar era skyldigheter och plikter. Det ar i
dovskolan som barnen far en stark grund att sta pa, bygger en identitetstrygghet, far en
gemenskap genom sitt sprak, fa kunskap om dovhistoria och dovkultur. Vi menar att barnen
behover forsta vad det innebar att vara dov, att anvanda teckensprak och att tillhora
dovkulturen.
Isabel Engwall, fodd 1981, f.d. Birgittaskolan elev
Rebecca Jonsson, fodd 1993, f.d. Vanerskolan elev
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Wanted: deaf education teachers who can use spoken Swedish
At the same time, SPSM advertised 11 position at the oldest deaf school in Sweden, Manillaskolan. In the advert, candidate qualifications specify the ability to teach spoken Swedish. While spoken Swedish is not a requirement of the national curriculum as it applies to deaf pupils, it does rule out many deaf candidate teachers:
Larare i grundskolans senare ar, Manillaskolan, Stockholm
Specialpedagogiska skolmyndigheten (SPSM)Publicerad: 2016-03-01, Annons-ID: 6587292 Ort: Stockholm , 1 platsYrke: Larare i grundskolan, arskurs 7-9 Sista ansokningsdag: 2016-03-20
Manillaskolan soker en larare med behorighet att undervisa i arskurs 4-9, som vill arbeta i en grupp med elever som foljer sarskolans kursplaner, i en tvasprakig skola med elevernas sprak och kunskap i fokus.
Kvalifikationer
Du har lararutbildning som ger behorighet att undervisa i minst tre amnen i arskurs 4-9. Du har tidigare erfarenhet av eller kompetens i att arbeta med elever med utvecklingsstorning.Du kan undervisa bade pa teckensprak och pa talad svenska.
…
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The Swedish 1983 curriculum
—The 1983 curriculum included syllabuses for the two language subjects specific to special
schools in which the main elements were listed for the different stages of schooling.
These elements are nearly identical to the elements included in the syllabus for teaching both
spoken and written Swedish as a first language, but they are divided into two sections: those
reflecting the development and use of spoken language are assigned to the subject of
sign language; and those connected to written language are assigned to the subject of
Swedish. Thus, the diglossic situation is clearly mirrored in this section.
Svartholm 2010:161
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The Swedish 1994 curriculum
—In 1994 the national curriculum was replaced by a new one that was valid for the compulsory
school system as a whole. Through this curriculum, requirements for special schools were
increased: the pupils were not only to be ensured a development towards bilingualism; rather,
schools were now responsible for ensuring that upon completing their education all deaf pupils
would be bilingual.
Svartholm 2010:161
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Spoken Swedish is not an explicit goal for deaf pupils
—In this curriculum, it is explicitly stated that the general educational goals of deaf students are
the same as they are for hearing students. For English and Swedish, however, the goals differ
to some extent: neither spoken English nor spoken Swedish is explicitly mentioned as a
goal for students in special schools. Basic knowledge of speech and of the workings of speech
is included as a goal for the teaching of Swedish, but the goals are tailored to individual pupils.
Svartholm 2010:161
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An overview of deafness in education in eight slides
At this point, it might be useful to sketch in overview some warps and wefts of deaf
experience over time. A brief summary.
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Denying mental growth
At an international education conference in
Milan in 1880, delegates concluded that there
was no place for sign language in deaf
schools. Deaf pupils were deemed capable of
learning speech. A deaf instructor responded
as follows in 1890:
The Chinese bind their babies’ feet to make them
small; the Flathead Indians bind their babies’
heads to make them flat. Those who prohibit sign
language in the schools are denying the deaf
their free mental growth and are in the same
class of criminals.
Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf
member, 1890
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Oral education and the myth of mimicry as ‘natural’ language acquisition—1970
‘Oral’ education became mainstream for deaf pupils around the world for most of the 20th
Century. Language instruction was mostly founded upon the idea of speech imitation, by
deaf pupils, of the ‘perfect’ speech examples of adults. One of the strong proponents of
the oral method, Professor van Uden, wrote in 1970:
A boy said to me: ‘Long here?’ I said: ‘Say how long will you stay here?’
But the boy did not follow me. He insisted asking ‘Long here?’ and was almost angry that I did
not answer him soon enough!
This revealed a wrong attitude in the boy. Deaf children must keep an attitude of trial and
check, a feeling of wanting to be corrected and set to imitate the language of others.’
Van Uden 1970 cited in Brennan 1975
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Language learning through hypothesis-testing
The oral method became the focal point of in particular linguistic attention, partly the
result of generally bad language and education outcomes for orally educated deaf
pupils. For example, in a book about child language, Cazden noted that,
If the process of first-language learning is akin to the construction of scientific theory in which
hypotheses are tests against available data, then a meagre set of data may be
disadvantageous. An impoverished language may be harder—not easier—to learn.
Cazden 1972
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Cochlear implantation and the restoration of hearing, not language and cognition
Paediatric cochlear implantation spread rapidly from around 1998 onwards after (US)
FDA approval in 1992. In Sweden, as in most Western countries today, the vast majority
of children born profoundly deaf are implanted with cochlear implants. This has returned
deaf education to its prior longstanding preoccupation with the spoken language
modality. More generally, cochlear implantation promises better speech skills and
greater facility for deaf pupils to attend mainstream schools, that in turn more typically
associate with higher attainment than special schools.
However…
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The winds of favour
Following now well over twenty years of mass-implantation of (Western) deaf children
with cochlear implants, it is time to take stock of whether cochlear implantation fulfils its
promise.
A conservative estimate of the number of children who do not get enough linguistic input from
CI usage to ensure acquisition of a first language is 20%, even assuming that the overall record
has improved in recent years. We suspect the real percentage of lack of benefit is actually
higher. In a study of more than 20,000 children implanted since 2000, 47% of them do not use
their CIs.
Humphries et al. 2012
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Inclusive education
A second challenge to good sign-bilingual deaf education is the general movement
towards inclusive education, aimed at ending the supposed socially disadvantaging
segregation of groups of pupils in special schools, and instead facilitating their
education in local regular schools. In many countries, inclusive policy is also applied to
deaf education. Unfortunately, for deaf children who have sign language as their native
language, this also ends access to a language community of fellow sign language users.
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Aberdeen deaf school closes | 2005
The school needs to remain open until the last two children can be placed in a regular school. It is
proving difficult to find a suitable school. Both pupils have cochlear implants. Photodocumentary by
Ernst Thoutenhoofd 2005
British Sign Language Act ScotlandRoyal Assent on 22 October 2015
It is not all bad news. In October 2015, Scotland is the first country in the world to pass
legislation aimed at promotion of British Sign Language in access to public services. At
the time of writing it remains uncertain what the Act can do for deaf education in
Scotland. While on the one hand education is not specifically mentioned in the Act, on
the other hand education is part of the public services that local authorities provide.
A Bill for an Act of the Scottish Parliament to promote the use of British Sign Language
including by making provision for the preparation and publication of a British Sign Language
National Plan for Scotland and by requiring certain authorities to prepare and publish their own
British Sign Language Plans in connection with the exercise of their functions; and to provide
for the manner in which such plans are to be prepared and for their review and updating.
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Social justice
There is therefore ongoing hope within deaf communities for finally ‘doing right’
following the exclusion of sign language from education in 1880.
—Det är på tiden att ställa till rätta nu. Det har vi väntat på sen Milanokongressen 1880.
Gunilla Wågström Lundqvist, Facebook
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The technoculture of deafness, and deaf gain
In this section, I aim to give a brief overview of the distinction I see between deafness
and being deaf. My suggestion is that the meaning of deafness is largely dependent on
the increasing use that is made of technologies in both understanding, and in
‘controlling for’, deafness. Being deaf, on the other hand, is about social relationships.
The following question then arises: should deaf education be a product of social action
in relation to deafness, or in relation to being deaf?
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Deafness has become an extensible concept
New meanings and possibiities
arise along with ever new
(scientific) thinking and products.
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‘Deafness’ is thus a product of our sociotechnical culture
1 neonatal screening technologies
2 neurolinguistic (imaging) technologies
3 audiological instruments and tests
4 acoustics instruments and tests
5 aids to hearing
6 cochlear implantation and surgery
7 rehabilitation and its monitoring systems
8 genetics and counselling techniques
9 sign language corpora
10 educational attainment tracking systems
11 learning support such as laptops, notetaking and extra time
12 social (incidence) statistics and (psychological) classifications
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How can deaf people talk back to science?
This conflict of impulses, to ‘repair’ on the one hand, and to
acknowledge diversity on the other, must be one of the
deepest contractions of the twenty-first century. Deaf people,
whether they like it or not, live their lives in the middle of this
contradiction.
Padden and Humphries 2006
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Being deaf is however sooner a social relationship, not a medical or technical state
The use of the silence metaphor is for example one indication of how the understanding of
deafness is dominated by hearing. Hearing is defined as the universal, and deafness as
emptiness.
Bayton 1992
But there is also distinctive ‘gain’ (or even potential advantage) associated with being deaf…
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Seeing voices
It is as if the left hemisphere in signers takes over a realm of visual-spatial perception, modifies
it, sharpens it, in an unprecedented way, giving it a new, highly analytical and abstract
character, making a visual language and visual conception possible [...] The signer becomes a
sort of visual expert in many ways, in certain nonlinguistic as well as linguistic tasks,
producing not just a visual language but a special visual sensibility and intelligence as well.
Oliver Sacks 1989
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Deaf people and ocularcentrism
—You find yourself in a dark room and you cannot hear.What will you look for, a hearing aid or the light switch?
Like all of us, deaf people do not live by the absence of sensory input, but by their presence. Although definitional of deafness, not hearing is a circumstantial attribute of being deaf. Thoutenhoofd 1996
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Deafhood
Coined by British deaf scholar Paddy Ladd, the notion of deafhood captures a process of
becoming, a personal journey into self-discovery and self-realisation as a deaf person.
Collectively, it suggests the common experience of being deaf as involving a different ‘centre’ of
being, finding strength in language, culture, history, biography, cognition, skills and
competences.
Ladd 2003
Deafhood is now emerging as an international (activist)
movement especially among young deaf adults—including
here in Sweden.
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Conclusion and ways forward
Taken together, I suggest that it is reasonble to consider the following by way of general,
supportive claims about being deaf and give some pointers to an alternative route that
deaf education might take—focusing more on the human relations of being deaf and
much less on the sociotechnologies of deafness.
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Four general claims about deafness and being deaf
1. The definitions of deafness and what it means to be deaf are not ‘given’ by nature, and are therefore not primarily matters for science (medicine or audiology) to address. They are instead firstly matters of social science and politics—what it is like to be deaf at any one time and so what deafness ‘is’, depends on social values.
2. The notions of deaf gain or deafhood—the scholarly insight that deaf people collectively harbour unique capacities for human flourishing—are poorly addressed by science, education and politics, where knowledge and practice remain wedded to conceptions of deafness as individual pathology.
3. Improving the lives of deaf people collectively in Sweden should therefore include placing a far greater trust in deaf people than has so far been the case—their particular skills and contributions are needed for achieving collective goals, including good education and social progress.
4. The political goals that deaf people seek are founded upon a historical solidarity that spans generations. What deaf people seek are better prospects for present and future deaf children—that is, for our children. How their goals are met (or not) depends on public standards and ethics of conduct and practice, not on advance in hearing technologies.
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A few suggestions
Deaf schools—that is, socioculturally deaf schools—are needed for educating deaf children in
and through sign language into competent and capable deaf adults.
Experienced in being deaf, the visual intelligence and native sign language competence of deaf
teachers is likely to prove more critical to a viable deaf education sector than is hearing
teachers’ spoken Swedish competence. It follows that teaching programmes might usefully be
proactive in recruiting and training deaf people for the teaching profession, including also for
educational leadership.
Deaf education needs a deaf curriculum that has its starting points in a positive and forward-
looking conception of deafness and being deaf and that capitalises on the visual intelligence
and different cognition of deaf children in teaching and learning. Such a deaf curriculum might
be designed to replace a supposedly mainstream (but in effect ‘hearing’) curriculum based on
an outdated compensatory logic of deaf children as having special needs.
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Final thought
How can we be kind, benevolent and humane toward others if we lack the capacity genuinely
and truly to accept alien nature in ourselves, to adopt alien situations and to make alien feelings
into our own?
Friedrich Schiller
And another gentle reminder:
www.skrivunder.com/oppet_brev_till_spsm
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References
Baynton, D.C. (1992) ‘A silent exile on this earth’: the metaphorical construction of deafness in the nineteenth century. in American
Quarterly 4(2):216–243.
Brennan, M. (1975). Can deaf children acquire language? An evaluation of linguistic principles in deaf education. American Annals of
the Deaf, 120(5), 463–479.
Cazden, C.B. (1972) Child language in education. New York, US: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Delin, M. (2016) BO riktar hård kritik mot specialskolor. Dagens Nyheter, 22 Mars.
Humphries, Tom; Poorna Kushalnagar, Gaurav Mathur, Donna Jo Napoli, Carol Padden, Christian Rathmann and Scott Smith (2012).
Cochlear Implants and the Right to Language: Ethical Considerations, the Ideal Situation, and Practical Measures Toward
Reaching the Ideal. Chapter 10 in Cila Umat (Ed.) Cochlear Implant Research Updates. Intech (online open access book).
Ladd, P. (2003). Understanding deaf culture: in search of deafhood. Clevedon, England ; Buffalo: Multilingual Matters.
Padden, C. and Humphries, T. (2006) Inside Deaf culture. Harvard: Harvard UP.
Sacks., O. (1989) Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Schiller, F. [1794] (2009) Über die ästetische Erziehung des Menschen | On the æsthetic education of man. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp.
Thoutenhoofd, E.D. (1999) See deaf: on sight in deafness. (Online, open acces pubication)
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