Part 1: Introduction

How did you as an infant and young child learn?  Whether your native language and background is English, Spanish, Russian or Japanese you probably learned about "your world" from infancy by learning to speak your parentsí language.  Probably you learned by hearing from your family members and friends using it on a daily basis.  They spoke with you in their native language when you were an infant and just starting life.  For most people, language and learning are acquired exactly this way.  That is, receptive language is learned by means of hearing and is expressed by means of speaking.  When formulating concepts and ideas, people who can hear spontaneously rehearse spoken words and phrases in their mind prior to speaking them.  However, what happens to a child born deaf?  What happens to their education?  How do you educate a child who is born deaf?

There is often confusion by people as to the difference between "speech" and "language".  Dr. William Stokoe, noted linguistic and researcher in the field of deafness, once was asked by a parent of a deaf child:  "Isnít speech the most important skill my child needs to learn?"  Dr. Stokoe responded by saying "Do you want a parrot for a child?  Parrots have speech.  Parrots do not have language!"
 

Speech is, according to the American Heritage Dictionary "the faculty or act of expressing or describing thoughts, feelings, or perceptions by the articulation of words."  The actual concepts, thoughts, perceptions and feelings are developed by and through language.  Language can be described as "the unique communication of human beings in organized combinations and patterns in order to express and communicate thoughts and feelings used by the people of a particular country or by a group of people with a shared history or set of traditions."  Language is tied to learning and two are inseparable.  According to Dr. Stokoe, without language there could be no learning.  This is the key issue in the education of the child who is deaf: developing a rich language base in order to learn skills without the use of hearing.  Does it sound simple?  Unfortunately, it is not!
 

Imagine, if you can, that you are a deaf child and you have to go to a regular public school where you donít fully understand the teacher in your classroom because you can not hear them.  Imagine you are five or six years old and the children in your class are speaking excitedly in another language and you cannot easily communicate your thoughts to them or readily join in on their activities.  How would your social development proceed?  What about your learning and cognitive development?  Even your personality development could be affected!

Suppose you are being tested on the recent Early Language Assessment (ELA) or the Terra Nova (New York State required testing tools) and the measure of your success is contingent upon your ability to figure out what the examiner says and wants you to accurately say and do?  Many public schools are requiring an oral interview on videotape for the ELA as part of a studentís elementary school permanent record or portfolio.  How would this affect your performance and perhaps even your educational success in school?

Finally, as you move through school, the hearing adults responsible for imparting knowledge about the world to you continue to be unable to carry on a conversation of any real depth with you.  They perceive you to be a slow learner and proceed to change the information they choose to teach you by reducing its language and its content complexity.  Abstract concepts such as social justice, calculate pi (all included as part of the New York State Educational Standards) are left unanswered because they are not concrete enough to be simply answered by the teachers responsible for your education.  And yet, if you constantly try to get the teacherís attention and perhaps disrupt the class, you might be labeled a behavior problem.

Unfortunately, the above scenario is too often too near the truth and, according to noted linguistic Dr. Harlan Lane, researcher in the field of linguistics and deaf education at Northeastern University in Boston, is the educational environment faced by most deaf children during their educational lives (Bahan, Hoffmeister, Lane, 1996).

Parents or caregivers responsible for making the complex educational decisions for their newly diagnosed deaf infant face an inordinate amount of questions: How do I begin communicating effectively with my deaf child?; Which modes of communication should I make available to my child?; What type of school or program is best for my child and what kinds of professionals should I seek help from?; What are the qualifications of the teachers?; What happens after elementary school and high school?  These and many others are decisions that will affect your childís entire life socially, emotionally and cognitively (Ogden, 1982).

First, however, let us examine how an infantís brain grows and how language is developed from interaction with the parent.  The above questions and more can be answered as the information is integrated into this paper.