POST #9: "Toward Ending Ableism in Education" Thomas Hehir

  "Toward Ending Ableism in Education"

Thomas Hehir

Quotes

In this reading "Toward Ending Ableism in Education," the professor, author, and strong advocate for classroom inclusion, Thomas Hehir, provides his insight into the history of teaching those who are deaf, blind, and suffer from learning disabilities, and poses a compelling argument for the need to be inclusive within the school environments. Throughout the piece, Hehir describes these three marginalized groups of people, and their struggle to have an equal education. The group I chose to place my focus on within the reading was the deaf. The quotes that follow describe Hehir's section on educating deaf students. 

"Unlike some disability populations, such as students with significant levels of cognitive disability, educational programs for deaf children have existed in the United States for over 150 years."

     This was something I found very surprising. Hehir describes the use of ASL dating back this far into American history.  Schools for the deaf were established and grew very successful in their teaching of ASL. It wasn't until the method of oralism came into creation that the advancement of education for the deaf was set back. People started to feel that using manual communication would deter people from wanting to learn the language, however, with the use of oralism, people would only really understand about a third of what was being said. 

"This research underscores the point that language is the fundamental cornerstone upon which educational achievement is built for all children. Unless children have well-developed language before learning to read, they are unlikely to achieve high levels of literacy (Snow,1998). Deaf children are no different from their hearing counterparts in this regard. However, the optimal way for these children to learn language is different because they cannot hear."

    This quote describes that the hearing impaired have the ability to learn as well as anyone else, however they require a method of teaching that they will actually be able to understand. ASL was on the cusp of being pushed out of the educational system by those who were able bodied and could hear. It was not until studies were conducted that supported the use of ASL, that educational systems started supporting it again. These studies proved that the use of ASL resulted in much higher scores and learning outcomes than found by using oralism.

"The ultimate institutionalization of ableist assumptions can be seen in a U.S. Supreme Court interpretation of IDEA in the case of Rowley v. Board of Education of the Gloversville Enlarged City School (1993).The Court decided that a deaf girl who was integrated into a regular class was not entitled to a sign language interpreter because she was “receiving benefit”—that is she was passing."

    This case described an instant where our government failed to protect the rights of a deaf student by not allowing her to have a sign language interpreter in the room with her. They expected the girl to use oralism to understand what the teacher was saying, because they thought having an interpreter would give her a benefit that the other children were deprived of. In reality, because she was only able to understand fragments of what was being taught, she was not given an equal education as the rest of her class. 

Overall, the use of ASL has been a major step that has helped the education of the hearing impaired, and must be continually implemented in education to provide a fair education for all students. Thomas Hehir stresses that in order to understand the best ways to help those with impairments, we must actually listen to their opinions on what is best for themselves.