For many years now, it was thought that total communication would meet the needs of deaf children who need sign language and voice. Now, as scientific evidence continues to pile up that sign language is the natural language of deaf children, and even that their brains function differently, the pendulum is swinging again in another direction -- towards bilingual-bicultural.
What is bilingual-bicultural education?
As best as I can understand it - never having experienced it myself - is that it means that ASL is used to teach deaf children, with English taught as a second language. For as long as anyone can remember, the average deaf high school graduate's reading level remained stubbornly low. Many deaf children did succeed but overall, it still remained low. No one knew what would work. Then the evidence of research began to come in: Deaf children of deaf parents tended to do better. More recently, study after study has been released showing that sign language is the default language of deaf children, who ARE visual learners. In Nicaragua, deaf children developed an entire new language on their own.
Independent bilingual-bicultural charter schools began to spring up. Now more schools are beginning to recognize it as well. New York City's JHS 47, a public school for the deaf, announced it would drop total communication in favor of bilingual bicultural. This was big news and even was reported on in the New York Times. This quoted sentence from the article says it all: "Deaf children could not understand their hearing teachers, which has produced failure after failure." [Even if the teachers are deaf, they may not be using ASL].
What does all this mean?
It means that we need a fourth educational option. For years the only options were oral, cued speech, or total communication. Now we must add a fourth option, the bilingual-bicultural option. The other options should not be dropped - there are many deaf children who thrive with the other options.
