[senco-forum] RE: Deaf children's literacy and speech (was Teaching vocabulary)

I tend to be a 'lurker' on this forum but have responded occasionally to
individuals and certainly find many of the discussions of interest.  This
time, I have to take issue with the content of a posting - quite daunting as
I generally find Eddie's contributions to be useful and informative.
However, I'm sure if he had made his comments on the sister forum for ToDs
(Teachers of the Deaf) he would have been inundated with replies.  The
description of profoundly deaf people he describes is misleading and
inaccurate.

Obviously, the subject is very complex but the short response is that
pre-lingually, profoundly deaf children do read, write and achieve and need
not be mute!  There are several factors influencing this and a controversial
history surrounding the education of deaf children but, in brief:

 - 'Profoundly deaf' is defined as an average hearing loss of 95dB or more
in the better ear.  Without hearing aids, a person with this type of loss
would only begin to perceive sounds that many of us would find unpleasantly
loud - power tools, planes taking off, gunfire and so on.  They will not
hear voices, music and most environmental sounds: in earlier times, such
people would have been regarded as having no useful hearing. As you say, it
is extremely rare for someone to have no residual hearing, but even where
this is the case we would not assume that they would be unable to learn to
read or write.

 - Before the development and availability of effective hearing aids and
other interventions, literacy was regarded as an important tool for enabling
deaf people to communicate and participate in society

 -  The Milan Conference of 1880 advocated that all deaf children should be
taught orally, without the support of sign language - this has caused
controversy ever since and I don't want to get side-tracked into the
politics of the issue here.  As a consequence, British Sign Language (BSL)
in the early part of the twentieth century was less 'standardised' than it
is today and there was a lot of fingerspelling employed to aid communication
- so 'reading and writing' were important skills

 - Newborn Hearing Screening helps identify deaf babies and enables
technical aids and communication support to be put in place within weeks of
birth.  At the same time, improvements in hearing aid and cochlear implant
technology in the past 15 years have given increased and more accurate
access to the speech frequencies from very young ages.  In educational
settings, this is supported by acoustic treatments and the use of
FM/infra-red systems.  

 - Deaf children are educated in various settings (special schools for deaf
children, resource bases for deaf children in mainstream schools or fully
included in mainstream schools with support from their local sensory support
service.  Similarly, their primary mode of communication may range from BSL,
through spoken English with varying degrees of signed support according to
need or philosophy, to spoken English with no sign.  Their use of
audiological support (and therefore their ability to 'listen') will vary.
Around 30% will have additional needs such as a physical disability or
learning difficulty.  It would be expected that all these children would
develop functional reading and writing skills and many will develop skills
commensurate with their peers. 

 - Deaf people are obtaining conventional qualifications at school,
progressing into Further and Higher Education or training and are working in
the 'real world'.  A far cry from the picture of mute illiterates Eddie's
post suggests.

For interest and information, I would refer you to the BBC programme 'See
Hear' (screened on BBC2 at midday on Saturdays); the series of Education
Guidelines produced by RNID; DELTA (Deaf Education Through Listening and
Talking) the Ewing Foundation (supporting professionals: inclusion and
achievement for deaf children through listening and speaking)and the other
'deaf organisations'.  More 'academic' research on the subject is being
carried out a number of universities. Also, a look at the prospectus of (or
better still, a visit to) any of the special schools for deaf children will
give a realistic view of the current attainments of young profoundly
pre-lingually deaf people.

Best regards
Stevie Mayhook
Education Consultant
Ewing Foundation

-----Original Message-----
From: senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
[mailto:senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of Eddie Carron
Sent: 11 February 2007 16:09
To: senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
Subject: [senco-forum] Re Teaching vocabulary

Sharon contributes: Deaf people 'read' without sound.  They can see,
comprehend, manipulate and use the symbols before them without ever hearing
them. I have a problem with this. 'Losing' their hearing after having been
able to hear, does not of course preclude learning to read nor does the
possession of only some residual hearing. Why should it? I have considerable
age-related hearing loss myself but this does not affect my abilty to read.
Those who are profoundly deaf from birth and have never had any hearing are
very rare indeed but it is my understanding that such people can never learn
to read. A profoundly deaf person is apparently (and understandably) also
mute. Henry VIII is said to have put a new born baby on an island with a
deaf mute nurse to settle an argument about how speech was acquired.
Naturally, all the child could do was to emulate the calls of the seagulls.
One researcher taught a profoundly deaf mute to recognise some words printed
on cards together with a picture of their meaning eg a picture of a dog with
the textword 'dog' printed underneath.  This person acquired a limited sight
vocabulary of a few hundred words which enabled them to acquire a very
limited form of reading - but very limited! The graphemes in the text their
learned could never be associated with sounds therefore they could never
generalise a decoding skill because sound is a critical component of
decoding. I regard words as sounds and that in reading, these sounds are
recreated from the text sub-vocally.  This summons their meanings from
memory as well as a cascade of associations which we call comprehension.
Eddie C.