SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATIONSPECIAL EDUCATION AND INEQUALITY: THE DEAF COMMUNITY-cultural practices & collective identity

Special Education

The movement for an organized system of special education is often cited as beginning after WW2

Parent-organized groups (such as the American Association on Mental Deficiency, United Cerebral Palsy Association or the Muscular Dystrophy Association) using the discourse of the Civil Rights Movement advocated for increased school access

Special education-advocacy

By the 1960’s a framework had been established at state and local levels

Special education

Continued advocacy led to federal laws being created, such as:

the “Education for All Handicapped Children Act” (1975) –law designed to support states and localities in “protecting the rights of, meeting the individual needs of, and improving the results for infants, toddlers, children and youths with disabilities and their families.”

THE EDUCATION FOR ALL HANDICAPPED CHILDREN ACT  The Education for all Handicapped Children

Act proved to be the cornerstone of special education, requiring public schools to provide :

"free appropriate public education" to students with a wide range of disabilities, including “physical handicaps, mental retardation, speech, vision and language problems, emotional and behavioral problems, and other learning disorders.”

The law also stipulated that school districts provide schooling in the "least restrictive environment" possible.

IDEA

Before the “Education for all Handicapped Children Act”, many children with disabilities were denied access to public education altogether.

Today, this law is considered responsible for providing special education opportunities to more than 6.5 million children and 200,000 infants, toddlers, and families each year.

IDEA

After extensions of the law in 1983 and 1986, in 1990, services and eligibility were again expanded and the law was renamed the “Individuals with Disabilities Education Act” (IDEA).

Education & Deafness

Annette Lareau and John Ogbu discuss the “intersection of race and class in family life” and the idea of “collective identity” respectively.

How can these concepts be applied to the Deaf community?

FIRST REFERENCES

OLD TESTAMENT

NEW TESTAMENT

European Foundations/Cultural and Language Frames of Reference

Pierre Desloges Deaf Parisians-1779

Melchor De Yebra 16th Century-

notations of a hand alphabet

Juan Pablo Bonet-1620

Abbe Charles Michael de L'Épée-1st signs

Deaf Institutions in the U.S. & the foundations of a “Collective Identity”

Braidwood Academy Thomas Bolling and

Elizabeth Gray William Bolling and Mary

Randolph John Braidwood -1815

and 1817

Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons

Mason Cogswell Thomas Gallaudet –1815

Europe Laurent Clerc-Royal

Institution for the Deaf-1816 U.S.

College-Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb

Amos Kendall Edward Gallaudet

Assault on Sign Language: ORALISM

Horace Mann –Boston Clarke Institution for Deaf Mutes

Alexander Graham Bell 1870-Visible Speech

EUGENICS/RACISM 1880’s Application of Wealth

Milan Congress 1880 meeting

Agency of the Deaf Community & EDUCATON

Deaf President Now