A case against special needs and for very deaf schools in Sweden

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

DEPT OF EDUCATION AND SPECIAL

EDUCATION

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.


EDUCATION

Organised oppression of deaf people’s collective linguistic heritage seems to have returned.

And yet again, (special) education is the heart of the debate.


EDUCATION

Deaf pupils in Swedish education 2016

—Min drom skola, det ar att alla lararna skall kunna flytande teckensprak.

Elev, Manillaskolan


EDUCATION

—Jag blev tvingad av en larare att prata pa lektionen! Det var det varsta jag har varit med om.

Elev, SPSM-skola


EDUCATION

—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


EDUCATION

—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


EDUCATION

—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


EDUCATION

BO riktar hård kritik mot specialskolorDN.se, 22 March 2016

Barnombudsman (BO) Fredrik Malmberg


EDUCATION

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


EDUCATION

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.

…


EDUCATION

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


EDUCATION

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


EDUCATION

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


EDUCATION

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


EDUCATION

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


EDUCATION

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…


EDUCATION

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


EDUCATION

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.


EDUCATION

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.


EDUCATION

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


EDUCATION

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?


EDUCATION

Deafness has become an extensible concept

New meanings and possibiities

arise along with ever new

(scientific) thinking and products.


EDUCATION

‘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


EDUCATION

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


EDUCATION

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…


EDUCATION

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.


EDUCATION

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.


EDUCATION

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


EDUCATION

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)


EDUCATION

Education

A case against special needs and for very deaf schools in Sweden