The Emergence of the Deaf Community in Nicaraugua: "With Sign Language You Can Learn So Much"

7. Adolescence, Language, and Community

145 Adolescence, Language, and Community 7 DURING THE EARLY 1980s, Nicaraguan deaf people’s behavior took a decidedly different path than it had in the previous thirty-five years. In 1979, Thomas Gibson found no deaf community in the country, but by 1986, there was a formal organization of deaf adults. Something was available during this time lapse that was not available earlier. Conversations consisting of home signs, gestures, and mouthed words must have occurred among peers, and between children and teachers, for a long time at the Apolonio Berríos Special Education School. Olga Tenorio, a teacher there from 1948 to 1976, said clearly that the students had used their hands to communicate outside of class, commenting that “it was impossible to stop them. And among themselves, they got a lot of information across.” All of her former pupils remember Soledad de Flores with fondness, and they comment spontaneously that she was a good person, so her students probably did want and did try to communicate with her in the same way at the Berríos school. The conversations with Soledad were probably not that different from the conversations Morena observed when former students visited Rúthy. While no community or communal language seems to have developed in the 1950s, 1960s, or 1970s, things changed for the better in the 1980s. We have to carefully compare these two periods to determine how such differing results could occur. Nothing much changed from 1946 to 1992 in the lives of deaf children in the age range typical for elementary school in Nicaragua. Educational practices remained stable, although more special education schools were added in outlying parts of the country. The number of deaf students who were brought together daily at the special education school in Managua increased during this period from about 10 to about 200, and deaf children still were educated in schools that also contained students with mental retardation (who always outnumbered the students with deafness ) or blindness. 146 Chapter 7 In the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, enormous changes occurred in the lives of deaf adolescents. Many began spending more time with other deaf children on a regular basis and were required to remain in the educational system for more years. A vocational school was established that encouraged them to be independent and assume adult roles (like employment ). This kept adolescents and young adults together at a time when they were carving out their identities and craving a peer group in which to try out and enact their abilities to be social actors. Additionally, a regular meeting time outside of school fostered a sense of communality, and provided a group to which to belong. In other words, increased opportunities for adolescents and young adults was what made the 1980s different from the 1950s. Based on the Nicaraguan example, I hypothesize that adolescents and young adults, then, appear to play important roles in the formation of deaf communities and their sign languages. We know that Berríos school students would stop attending classes when they turned fifteen, but we have no way of knowing what percentage actually followed this practice.1 We know that some exceptions were made: While Salvador López left school when he turned fifteen, Noel Rocha was nineteen when he left. (This age policy was not made especially for the students at the special education school. From 1946 to 1992, most Nicaraguans only expected to obtain an elementary education and then leave school to work at approximately age fourteen or fifteen.) Yet, when the deaf pupils were transferred to the new school in 1977, nearly half of them were fifteen to nineteen years old. And in 1981, a training school was opened to accommodate students fifteen to twenty-five years of age. Clearly, deaf youth were encouraged to spend more years in school, and that allowed them further socialization opportunities just at the point that parents were likely to allow them to ride the buses independently, and where seeking out school friends at their homes was possible and important to them. In 1981, the vocational workshops were moved from the elementary school to the new site in Villa Libertad, and a radically different method of learning reigned there. Everything emphasized employability. Arriving independently, on time, every day, was part of the curriculum. Classes had didactic portions, but most of the work was hands-on practice, a method Adolescence, Language, and Community 147...