Deaf school or mainstream?

Nicolette
#1. January 5th, 2008, at 4:47 PM.

I would like to answer your question but I do not know what is “mainstream”. Sorry. Maybe you could ask the question with more precision.

melvillefan
#2. January 7th, 2008, at 5:49 PM.

I think it all depends on the the person….if you feel comfortable interacting with your siblings in their hearing world then you would probably be alright in the ‘mainstream’ world. That being said I think people in the hearing world don’t understand what it is like for a deaf person so they do try to ‘normalize’ you in some ways.

If obtaining your identity and eliminating the communications barrier is important to you then I would suggest going to ‘deaf’ school.

Deaf Redneck
#3. January 8th, 2008, at 8:23 AM.

I’m hard of hearing and I was mainstreamed in high school but, it sucks because there is not many hearing impaired people in public high school to hang out with and I was always feeling lonely and struggled in classes because of the English and math level I only had a 6 th grade level English and 5th grade level math skill through out high school. I did have an interpreter in all major classes I had deaf ed in math, writing, reading and English it helped out alot. I like that it seems like more freedom in public school compared to a deaf school from what I learned from my deaf friends that went to a deaf school told me about deaf school. I do think that all hearing impaired need to go to a public school for a few week to learn how to interact with hearing people and teach hearing people what it like to be deaf because when you get out of school you are going to interact with hearing people more than deaf people in the public. yeah it nice to have alot of deaf people around but it only going to last for so long. .. I wish that all people need to know fluent ASL because it hard to communicate with the hearing. It a big pain to write or use an interprer to communicate. I always wanted to go to a deaf school to see what it like to have literally no hearing people around.

LetThemHearFoundation
#4. January 10th, 2008, at 9:08 AM.

The best school for a hearing impaired child is the one where the services offered match the services that are required by that individual child. If that is a deaf school, great. If that is a mainstreamed school, that is also great. People should not chose the education environment based on a “label”, they should chose it based on what the child needs.

My severely hearing impaired daughter was mainstreamed, and on the whole it has been a good experience. However, we had to fight tooth and nail for all the extra help she needed to keep up with her classmates, and I agree that the experience would have been a nightmare without this extra support. We are extremely fortunate that in high school, she has a deaf tutor who “gets” how she acquires information and can work with her on areas that drive her crazy (math word problems being at the top of the list).

My daughter frequently says that her biggest problem with being severely hearing impaired is that hearing people think she is deaf, and deaf people think of her as hearing, she really doesn’t fit into either world, especially because the majority of her hearing loss is post-lingual so her speech is almost perfect.

Green Lantern
#5. January 13th, 2008, at 12:40 PM.

Salam

May Allah SWT bless their effort inshAllah Tahala

Peace