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The Deaf Community Schools are usually rooted in the community's aspirations. Schools are controlled by the community which they serve - except in the case of minority groups where they may have practices enforced by the minority and they may often collude with this ("our children have to live in a majority culture and so the only means to gain power and success is to follow the majority principles"). But the owned by the community. This has to begin to occur for true bilingual schools. In very few countries in the world, do deaf people have any real control over deaf schools. Not surprisingly the deaf community's attitude is mixed. On the one hand, deaf people may recall their school days as a happy time when they first used sign language freely; on the other hand, it is a place populated by teachers who used speech only and who punished them for use of the language which they found so effective. Deaf people seeing hearing people now embracing the language of the community are understandably sceptical. Deaf people returning to school in the role of helper are also somewhat suspicious of the school which formerly denied them the language. The situation of the deaf community in a bilingual environment is difficult to place and there are concerns as can be seen in the section on evolution of this environment. |
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