Home > Opinion > Deaf schools: love, friendship and equality
Charlie Swinbourne
Charlie is a writer and filmmaker, and was responsible for the award-winning , which sees "a deaf boy go to his hearing mother with a surprising revelation" - watch it to find out what it is. He then went on make his directing debut with , and followed it up with a . You can check out Charlie's too.
Deaf schools: love, friendship and equality
13th July 2010
In a couple of weeks time, at the end of the summer term, the doors of a school which has been educating deaf children since 1841, will close forever.
After a failed last-ditched merger attempt with a sister school, Ovingdean Hall in Brighton is just the latest of many deaf schools to shut. There are now just 31 remaining in the whole of the UK. Barely a term goes by without stories of one more fighting closure, having their building taken away from them, or resisting being merged with another school.
Whatever your opinion is on educational policy, the politics of special schools versus mainstream units, or even whether deaf children should be educated in sign language or through the spoken method, there is another story being played out. As each deaf school closes ... the door shuts on another little piece of deaf history.
As well as being places of education, deaf schools are where friendships are formed, where couples fall in love, where people take a journey from childhood to being an adult. Much like any other school, you might say. Except that deaf schools have an importance within the deaf community that goes beyond that.
Along with deaf centres and sports clubs, the schools are one of the key places that deaf people meet other deaf people, giving them the chance to later go on and become part of the deaf community.
Whatever your opinion is on educational policy, the politics of special schools versus mainstream units, or even whether deaf children should be educated in sign language or through the spoken method, there is another story being played out. As each deaf school closes ... the door shuts on another little piece of deaf history.
As well as being places of education, deaf schools are where friendships are formed, where couples fall in love, where people take a journey from childhood to being an adult. Much like any other school, you might say. Except that deaf schools have an importance within the deaf community that goes beyond that.
Along with deaf centres and sports clubs, the schools are one of the key places that deaf people meet other deaf people, giving them the chance to later go on and become part of the deaf community.
For many, the schools represent a place where they first felt 'normal' among peers who faced the same problems they faced, and crucially, communicated the way they did. Many struggled in mainstream schools, yet when they were educated among other deaf children, felt as though they could express themselves for the first time.
My parents went to a grammar school for the deaf. When I was a child, I spent hours listening to stories and memories from their school days. Forty years later, they still keep in touch with many old friends, and when they meet up, reel off the names of people in the years above and below them, talking about how they're getting on as if they were members of a big, extended deaf family.
The school was where they first felt that being deaf was nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about. The sense of being like a close family was encouraged by the fact that many of them were boarders, only going home at weekends or the end of term, so they learned to support each other in the absence of their families.
Undoubtedly, they also had hard times. Homesickness, arguments with one another, teenage angst, or even a shared loathing of one or two of their teachers! However, those negative experiences also helped them learn to cope with some of the challenges they would face later in life.
I heard so much about Mum and Dad's adventures - which bore more than a passing resemblance to Enid Blyton stories - that I started to dream of going there myself.
When I was coming up to secondary school age, my parents took me there for a visit, and we walked through wooden panelled hallways and idyllic forested grounds that were just begging to host a game of Harry Potter's Quidditch, as cool young deaf people strolled around.
My parents went to a grammar school for the deaf. When I was a child, I spent hours listening to stories and memories from their school days. Forty years later, they still keep in touch with many old friends, and when they meet up, reel off the names of people in the years above and below them, talking about how they're getting on as if they were members of a big, extended deaf family.
The school was where they first felt that being deaf was nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about. The sense of being like a close family was encouraged by the fact that many of them were boarders, only going home at weekends or the end of term, so they learned to support each other in the absence of their families.
Undoubtedly, they also had hard times. Homesickness, arguments with one another, teenage angst, or even a shared loathing of one or two of their teachers! However, those negative experiences also helped them learn to cope with some of the challenges they would face later in life.
I heard so much about Mum and Dad's adventures - which bore more than a passing resemblance to Enid Blyton stories - that I started to dream of going there myself.
When I was coming up to secondary school age, my parents took me there for a visit, and we walked through wooden panelled hallways and idyllic forested grounds that were just begging to host a game of Harry Potter's Quidditch, as cool young deaf people strolled around.
I wanted to go, but in the end, it was recommended that I go to the mainstream school in our local area. I was disappointed, but glad I could carry on going to school with my friends, and go home to my family every night. As the years went by, I forgot all about it.
It was only ten years later, when I was working with a deaf colleague, that I got a glimpse of the world I could have lived in. She kept a few videos on the next desk and one day I asked her what was on them. We were working in TV at the time and I expected they'd be full of some discarded interviews for the show. Instead she put one of them in, and pressed play. It was a home video of a weekend at the grammar school.
As she walked through the corridors, through people's bedrooms into what looked like a TV room, different heads kept popping up, happy teenagers messing about, sharing in-jokes, signing towards camera. It looked like a deaf version of the nineties TV series Dawson's Creek, except without all the cheesiness and teenage introspection. Just the nice heart-warming bits.
As I watched the video, I realised I could have been watching myself on that screen. I could have been part of that group, feeling like I really belonged, with other deaf people my age. It's not that I didn't have close friends at the mainstream comprehensive I attended, I did, but what I was watching was a sense of brotherhood that went beyond friendship. I was seeing bonds that would last for life. The same bonds my parents had.
As each deaf school closes, I'm left with worries for the children. Will they be as happy at their next school? And will the friendships they've made, survive being interrupted as they go back to living many miles apart, attending schools where they might be able to count the number of deaf pupils on one hand.
I also can't help but feel a sense of sadness for the friendships that will never form, and the deaf children who will never get to meet each other in the future, as those doors shut for the last time.
It was only ten years later, when I was working with a deaf colleague, that I got a glimpse of the world I could have lived in. She kept a few videos on the next desk and one day I asked her what was on them. We were working in TV at the time and I expected they'd be full of some discarded interviews for the show. Instead she put one of them in, and pressed play. It was a home video of a weekend at the grammar school.
As she walked through the corridors, through people's bedrooms into what looked like a TV room, different heads kept popping up, happy teenagers messing about, sharing in-jokes, signing towards camera. It looked like a deaf version of the nineties TV series Dawson's Creek, except without all the cheesiness and teenage introspection. Just the nice heart-warming bits.
As I watched the video, I realised I could have been watching myself on that screen. I could have been part of that group, feeling like I really belonged, with other deaf people my age. It's not that I didn't have close friends at the mainstream comprehensive I attended, I did, but what I was watching was a sense of brotherhood that went beyond friendship. I was seeing bonds that would last for life. The same bonds my parents had.
As each deaf school closes, I'm left with worries for the children. Will they be as happy at their next school? And will the friendships they've made, survive being interrupted as they go back to living many miles apart, attending schools where they might be able to count the number of deaf pupils on one hand.
I also can't help but feel a sense of sadness for the friendships that will never form, and the deaf children who will never get to meet each other in the future, as those doors shut for the last time.
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Comments
For me, as a survivor of the "special" education system, I can say that far from making me feel "normal", my school emphasised the propositon that we weren't. I can appreciate your point about communication, but you can't dismiss the effect of Oralism on those who attended schools that adhered to the policy. It would be like taking my mobility aids away from me. And that's no cause to celebrate, surely?
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Deaf school education was developed to keep the deaf away from hearing, and ill-equip them for a life co-existing and working with hearing people, not as a 'social club' for deafies. The reason most are closed is down to very simple issues, none of them connected with anti-deaf views, but a LACK of deaf students coming forward,
The one in London had 8 pupils, pointless. There is a demand from deaf children and their parents for the right of education in their own area and with siblings and people they know. There is no need to send your deaf children to boarding schools in some god-forsaken building in the country so deaf do not impinge on hearing people's sensibilities any more.
Naturally, access is still far from perfect, but we have moved on from deaf schools. Many were not schools in real time, but institutions. No-one is going to miss that aspect as it suggested deafness was a mental health issue. We saw what happened to the world's fist 'deaf' university too, elitism and CHAOS !
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the .
Rather bias views MM if I must say; after the war, the deaf and other disability schools were especially adapted for the childs needs. The mainstream school at the times was ill equips to suit individual needs.
Over the periods of the last two decades, the advance of medical treatment & preventions and the change of education authority policies of sending children to Boarding schools. (Mainstream schools are cheap!) A lot of these specialists’ schools are closing due to lack of pupils.
Where is the Disable parent‘s right of choice?
Do you suppose these mainstream schools can cope with vast array of disability with 1 teachers and couple of helpers?
I am for one is very glad to go to ‘god-forsaken building in the country’ school such as Ovingdean Hall.
Do not insults us with your lack of ignorance, we are extremely proud of our school and they has taught us up to be much more independence than any of mainstream pupils.
We much rather see our school remain open and offer the same opt unity to future deaf children’s as we had.
I thank you Ovingdean Hall for my happiest moment of my life and for my lifelong friendships with many of my peer groups.
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I thought a lack of ignorance was a desirable thing, Seagull?
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Interesting you should show a video of a school that doesn't teach sign language - I thought a big advantage of Deaf schools was to learn to sign and have people to sign with so they can communicate more easily, but I'm not Deaf so I wouldn't know.
My school had a 'Hearing Impaired Unit' - so it was a mainstream school but with a few deaf children per year group, whose needs were met by the unit and by a loop system used in the classroom. I think all schools should have a unit like this for some sort of disability and that way most disabled kids could go to a mainstream school and still achieve and feel okay, and they could mix with kids with their disability and kids without. I wish the government would try and make every school have a unit like this.
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Well seagull, the reason so many deaf children were main-streamed is because deaf schools deprived them of an education commiserate with surviving in a hearing-run world,it is argued a lot still don't. You need to get the idea OUT of your head deaf schools are some form of cultural 'holiday camp' to be saved. The sole reason deaf children were taken from their families and put in a field somewhere is because local schools did not have the facilities or desire to teach deaf children,we have moved on, nostalgia won't do. The fact parents of deaf kids DO have more choice now is the main reason these enclaves in the middle of nowhere are being shut down. It's advance. Special schooling should ONLY be provided for those with the most issues that cannot be attended to by main streaming, and as deaf advocate themselves they see no differences between themselves or hearing. You are fighting your own advocates really !
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Ovingdean Hall catered for pupils who were deaf and had at least one additional need. The majority of these pupils have now been found places at alternative special provision, not mainstream schools. There are some who have not had alternative places confirmed and will start the new school year without anywhere to go. i don't believe that this has been the best for these children.
While it is true that these children have had to learn to live in a residential setting they have, in return, been given the opportunity to learn in an environment that places their needs at the heart of their education, they are not the only deaf child in their year or class.
Mainstream schools can only offer a limited number of alternatives to the mainstream education and some children need to work at a far slower pace than others, this cannot always be catered for in a mainstream school. There are even qualifications denied to deaf children in some mainstream schools, for example they are expected to continue working towards GCSE's in some subjects as there is no way to facilitate alternatives on the timetable. At Ovindean this was possible and children were offered courses even if they were the only one taking a subject. Which is better - to be the only one taking a subject or not to be given the chance? There could be views for both.
Please don't dismiss special education, it still has a lot to offer and not all children can be given the chance to do achieve their best in a mainstream school.
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There is a trade off between an education and cutting any links between hearing and deaf people. Nobody argues deaf need support,but need this be at the expense of integration or incluison ? If you keep deaf children in a 'specislaised surrounding' then they accept that as a norm and as we see with many on leaving specialised education are very dependent on help afterwards and with few skills to make their way in what is a hearing world.
Like it or not the deaf future is in a HEARING world regarding jobs and most other essential areas of life. How you start is very important, to how they will cope when school finishes. Personally I don't want to see deaf children go from a closeted system of education to an isolated one as adults forever blaming mainstream because they have never interacted with them, well it cuts both ways, it's an important life lesson for deaf to learn.
Of course multiple disablements require specialised education, in the scheme of things I do not believe it is conducive in the long run for the deaf with no other issue but deafness to assume that's all there is to it, and then justify the isolation and huge amount of dependency by blaming others as many adult deaf DO. Again support is the key, we only arm the doom-mongers of the deaf fraternity if that support is not there. There is no need to isolate the deaf at day one as 'par for the course', that is fatalistic.
To have choices you have to have the skills to exploit them, such skills require deaf interact a lot earlier and are included with hearing so they can gain them in real time, and not play at communications in specialised settings they are never going to meet when they finish school. Culture is a luxury few deaf can afford...
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Having been bullied and ostracised for 6 years in mainstream upper school, due to being partially deaf, I would have loved the opportunity to meet with and socialise with other children with hearing impairments. Whether in a focused school environment or just at a young group, I feel that this experience might have better prepared me for life in the wider world and provided me with an environment where my deafness was not such a major issue for others.
I appreciate that the main focus on this board appears to be saying that these schools were too isolated, but life after the school I went to is just as bad.
What needs to happen really is that more needs to be done to make the public aware of issues around deafness.
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