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Education of Deaf Children at the Turn of the 21st Century
- Gallaudet University Press
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Education ofDeaf Children at the Turn ofthe 21st Century GREG lEIGH AND DES POWER Compared with other fields of educational endeavor, the education of deaf chlldren has a very long history indeed. It is generally agreed that the first public school for children with different learning needs was a school for deaf students-established in Paris by the Abbedel'Epee in 1755 (Moores, 2001). Even before the establishment of that school, however, the field of deaf education had generated serious academic interest and inquiry and sustained professional debate. The level of scholaI'shlp and inquiry in the field ofeducation ofdeafchildren is evidenced by the fact that ithas one of the world's oldestprofessionaljournals in any area ofeducation. TheAmeriean Annals of the Deaf was established in 1847 and, except for a few years around the time of the American Civil War, has been published continually since that time. Similarly, the International Congress on Education of the Deaf (rCED) is almost cel1ainly the world's oldest continuously convened educational conference. Since 1878, theICED has had a seminal influence on the nature ofeducational opportunities for deaf people across the world-although not without controversy. Indeed, the best-known and most-cited congress was that of 1880, in Milan, where a resolution of the vast majority of participants proclaimed "the superiority ofspeech over signs" and that "the oral method oughtto be preferred" (Moores, 2001, p. 81). That congress played a pivotal role in ensuring a period of dominance of such lnethods in deaf education, which lasted until at least the 19608 in many countries. Nineteen lCEDs have been convened so far-12 in Europe, 4 in North America, 1 in Asia, 1 in the Middle East, and 1in Australia. The first ICED was held in Paris, France, in 1878, and they were held inegularly up until the 13th congress in Groningen, The Netherlands, in 1950. Since 1970, the ICED has been held every five years. xi xii Greg Leigh and Des Power The 1933 congress inTrenton, New Jersey, was the first to offera program on the model that has become the standard for the ICED, with 790 participants attending presentations and discussions on areas such as curriculum and teaching approaches in literacy, speech, and communication skill development (Brill, 1984). In the same manner, the 2000 ICED in Sydney brought together 1,067 practitioners, researchers, and, importantly, consumers ofeducational services from 46 countries to address an extremely wide selection of topics. As in previous congresses, the presentations were organized into topical areas 01" strands. In Sydney, the strands included inclusion ofdeafstudents in regular educational environments, literacy, audiology, auditory development and listening programs, hearing aids, programming for children with cochlear implants, signed communication in education, bilingual education , early intervention (including the rapidly emerging area of newborn hearing screening), education in developing countries, deaf students with multiple disabilities, and deaf students in postschool education. The quantity and diversity of presentations made within those areas at the Sydney congress provides an interesting reflection of the state of the field ofdeaf education as it entered the third century in which ithad existed as an organized field of endeavor. Thepresentations atthe congress demonstrated that there continue to be differing views about the most appropriate and effective pedagogies, technologies, and philosophies in regard to the education of people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Despite the effolts of early congress organizers to produce unitary and agreed positions on pedagogical and philosophical issues, the Sydney congress continued to build on the more recent tradition of facilitating open and considered dialogue about a range of issues from a wide range of different perspectives. Like other recent conferences, the 2000 congress provided for the further development of some new and better-informed perspectives on important issues that have previously been seen as dividing rather than uniting the field. This book is certainly not a full "proceedingsH of the Sydney congress. Rathel~ the chapters were chosen because they represent a cross section of the issues addressed at that meeting. The issues considered here span the entire curriculum range-from early intervention to postschool education -and were authored by 27 different researchers and practitioners from six different countries. In this respect, the book can be seen as a valuable description of the zeitgeist in the field of deaf education at the tuln of the century, and the millennium. [18.234.55.154] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:06 GMT) Education of Deaf Children xW What then can be said about this zeitgeist as revealed...