Dr Paddy Ladd writes below about his own educational experiences, from which he has developed particular concerns about the effects of oralist teaching methods and mainstreaming on the psychological development of deaf children.
I have often written about the education of deaf children and the way in which oralism distorts relationships between children and parents, teachers and deaf adults. My experience of mainstreaming in England, however, leads me to believe that it is the most dangerous move yet against the early development of a deaf person's character, self-confidence, and basic sense of identity. Forceful, clumsy attempts to mainstream not only deny the facts about being deaf but destroy much that deaf people and their friends have worked so hard to create, and may in the last resort be seen as genocidal (Hay et al., 1979). In this article, I have tried to re-enact the deaf child's experience, to attempt to evoke an understanding in you of what it felt like at the sharp end of the mainstream knife. I do not think I have allowed the personalised approach to distort any of the factual evidence but I do not pretend to be unbiased any more than the ordinary reporter is when recording the destruction of his life and his friends' lives by a foreign invader who has no respect for the culture and traditions of his native land.
In this section I am going to do two things at once. I will take you through the years of childhood and how it relates to integration, and I will also deal with my feelings about being deaf and about my identity as it changed during that time. Let me cushion myself against the trauma of memory by assuming the third person.
The story starts with Nigel being diagnosed as partial/severely deaf at the age of three. He was born with this hearing loss, but was able to use his vocal cords quite well because he had enough hearing to use. He started to attend the Nuffield clinic in London where he and his parents were told: "Your son is not really deaf. He is a normal person who cannot hear very well. If he is to be normal, he must use his hearing aid well, or else you will lose your son to deafness." He was paraded in front of parents at the clinic: "Now Nigel, show the parents how well you speak. Thank you. Now, if you work hard, your children will be able to speak like Nigel." (Implied, if your child doesn't, then you are to blame for not working hard enough.)
This was grossly deceitful for two reasons. One, that many of the parents had profoundly deaf children, who had little hope of being able to speak like Nigel. And it also was calculated to make Nigel feel better than those other deaf children, so that he would make the springboard into the hearing world, and leave those nasty traces of deafness behind. Thus, little Nigel began life with a carefully instilled pattern of self-deceit. The parallels between this approach and the capitalist Great Lie are remarkable - both say "You can make it to the top if you work hard. Anyone can."
In reality, of course, only those with the resources can do it, apart from a determined few who trample everybody before them. For the majority of people who have neither resources nor killer instinct, there is nothing but the branding mark of failure. The fact that this is not the only approach to life or to deafness is kept well hidden. These points will re-echo throughout our story.
