An Overview of Educational Provision for Hearing-Impaired Children from 1950 to Present Day

Opportunities for hearing-impaired child ren to develop fluent spoken language have never been so great as they are today. And yet, a l though large numbers of young adults with severe and profound hear ing losses are en ter ing society with a fluency of spoken language that allows them to live independent ly in a world that consists mainly of hear ing people , it has to be said that equally large numbers are not . To under s t and the present-day situation in the educat ion of hearing-impaired chi ldren, it is really necessary to consider it in light of the major developments in the field since the end of World War II. Those who were deaf chi ldren in the late 1940s and early 1950s are adults today, and many of them resent the type of "oral" educat ion that they received and that sent them out into the world ill equ ipped linguistically. They are anxious that today's chi ldren with hear ing impa i rment should have bet ter t r ea tment and bet ter opportuni t ies than they had, and many are demand ing a say in the educat ional provision made for the hear ing impaired. What is no t always clearly under s tood is the difference that advances in the field of medicine , technology, audiology and psycholinguistics have made to the opportuni t ies available to hearingimpaired chi ldren in the 1990s. Today's oral programs, which have the use of hearing as their base line, are as different from the old "oral" programs as these were from signing programs.