Dream Of Failing:Born Deaf Education Demand Research Of Special Schools

Nowadays, the universal values of human rights、democracy、equality has been widely accepted, but people’s attitudes towards the disabled have not completely changed. Body defect is often labeled as abnormal, sick and disabled. Living under the same blue sky, the disabled such as the deaf are like the strangers from another world, as they were kept distance with some persons, and even were teased and rejected by others. Deaf persons live in the corner of the society that is always forgotten by people, living a life full of hardships. The society does not pay enough attention to the education for the deaf. It was very common in the past that feeding them without educating them, while now since the education problem of the deaf has been realized but still be ignored in action. Inadequacy in the education resources for the deaf and quality declination can not ensure them a bright future, and for this reason, deaf education is also widely defined as abnormal, pathological.So to speak, Education for the deaf in China has been in an unprecedented trust crisis from inside to outside, which is the reproduction of China’s special education development dilemma as well as the reflection of the long ignored fairness problems of education.This study chose the field full of crisis and tried to explore the question as based on the vision that the special education integrated into the mainstream society, whether the education for deaf students, as a very important platform for compensating for the body defect, training living and survival ability and vocational ability, meet the demand of the deaf students? By presenting the current situation of deaf education, deaf school education, and the boarding school education for the deaf, this study tries to answer the questions like:How do the deaf students experience and suffer in the deaf school that provides both freedom and restricts since the day they step into the school with body defect and lingering stigma? What are the real roles of the current deaf education? On this basis, an objective and critical review of the complex relationships between the fates of the disabled groups and the transition of China’s special education is also put forward.This study took the questions who are the deaf students and what are their needs as a starting point for research. It adopted life-history, educational ethnography and the field research method as the main tools of collecting, sorting and analyzing the data. This study tried to explore the reasons why the deaf community unfortunately encountered and struggled for survival through the trace of life-history and field studies of deaf school. It chose the deaf students of Z university’s special-education school as the main sampling scope, taking the advantages of teacher’s identity, the researcher selected19deaf students who are very typical as the subjects. Sincere attitude helped to build a bridge between the researcher and the subjects, and with the help of a sign language translator, an equal daily interaction was reached. By interviewing the deaf family, visiting the deaf school, and talking with deaf education experts, entering the deaf online community, the researcher collected sufficient data about the educational requirements and difficulties of the deaf students. Methods as decoding, coding and selective coding were used in the typical case analysis on which the conclusions were refined.Conclusions could be made as follows:Firstly, there is bias between the real outlooks of the deaf and society’s universal cognition of them. On the one hand, under the echoes of "disability" view, the deaf are the disadvantageous and marginalized groups in the society, and have been endowed with different forms of labels and stigma. On the other hand, though deaf people’s hearing limits their life, it does not prevent them from participating in the real social life.Secondly, limited listening comprehension has a negative influence on their life and study, but the deaf students still have diverse and rich dreams as normal children. Dreams are the products of the joint construction of body, experiences, environments, personality and so on according to the different special demands. So, the dreams of the deaf persons and hearing persons are different from the normal, which should not be taken equally.Thirdly, the core of deaf education should be the ability to survive and living. Making a living by themselves and being involved into social life constitutes the most important drive of the deaf students. Specifically, it indicates in the following aspects:1. to achieve success in life by improved academic support;2. to establish a sincere and harmonious interpersonal relationship;3. to create a social atmosphere full of love;4. to provide a sufficient and multiple information services;5. to be facilitated with career development guidance.Fourthly, the deaf school education fails to meet the needs of deaf students. There is a huge gap between the real role that the deaf school education plays and the "ought to be" role it should play. The confusion of the educational principles and chaos of educational practice are interacted with each other, as a result, the deaf education has been tripped in a crisis from top down which concerns the discipline construction to the practice of education.Fifthly, isolation and escape form two main parts of deaf school life. On the one hand, isolation restricts the life field of the deaf school:walled off the school and society, and separate and decompose the campus groups. Fleeing into the real life, on the other hand, portraits the real life of the deaf students:tramped in the tight dragnet weaved by the isolation, the deaf students can not endure the suffering and find out a lot of ways including body transformation, dressed-up, body performance and physical violence to flee which become the coping strategies of these disadvantageous groups.In general, this study attempts to know by a handful the whole sack, although there some limitations on the research subjects and the conditions. At least the results prove that the current domestic deaf education has been falling behind all-round the deaf students widely has the most basic demands for survival and development education, while the deaf school education failed to meet these needs; on the contrary, the deaf school practice characterized by isolation has produced negative influence on the growth and development of the deaf students and brought them great trouble, which pushed the deaf students to escape from school so as to increase the social differences between the deaf students and the normal. It could be concluded that in the current mode of deaf education theory and practice, the future for the deaf students must be dim and inaccessible. Therefore, It is urgent to reform the theory and practice of the deaf education, which constitutes the common subject of China’s special education as well as the common task for the realization of educational fairness and high educational quality in the period of social transformation.