When we look at the current state of deaf education, we can see that it is lacking something. Most Deaf people have suffered from it. For them, their real education began after they left school at 16 to18 years of age.

The failure of deaf education is due to the predominance of oralism. Deaf children struggle to try to understand their teachers through lipreading, and express themselves through incomprehensible speech.

The policies of most local education authorities (LEAs) promote oralism. The “informed choices” for parents are biased towards oralism/auralism, and give hearing parents unrealistic dreams that their little Johnny or Jane will one day hear and speak as they do.

Reality dawns when little Johnny or Jane start to grow up (from about 10 years old onwards). By then, it’s too late for them and they are too far behind with their education.

It has not always been like this. There was a time before the mid 1800s when Deaf education was far better than it is now. There were even Deaf writers, lawyers, artists, teachers and professors. What happened to bring Deaf education crashing down to where it is now? The answer is...

Milan 1880.
 

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