Deaf & Dumb Education

The fundamentals of defectology
(Abnormal psychology and Learning disabilities)

The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky volume 2

邱倚璿

Compensation

• Overdevelopment, overcompensation

• The sensation of having a defective organ constantly stimulates the individual’s psychological development

• Overcompensation leads to the consciousness of superior health in a diseased organism, to the transformation of an inferiority into a superiority complex, a defect into giftedness and ability

• Adaptation results from unfitness, from struggle, destruction, selection

Alfred Adler (1870-1937)

• an Austrian medical doctor

– individual psychology

– inferiority complex

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Adler

• In 1904, at the age of 24, Keller graduated from Radcliffe, becoming the first deaf blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller

The early history of deaf education

• Pavlov: All behavior consists of unconditional, hereditary reflexes and conditional reflexes acquired through individual experience

• Educational process~ conditional reflexes

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• The process of training a conditional reflex will be the same in all cases.

– Light = sound

– Blind reading Braille = deaf reading lips = normal

àThe principles and the psychological mechanism of education are the same here as for a normal child

• Education cannot impart to the organism any single completely new movement; it can only modify, reshape, and combine reactions which the organism already has at its command.

àA child’s drives or natural instincts cannot simply be prohibited and changed by a pedagogue.

• In psychology and in pedagogy

– The problem of a child’s handicap = a social problem

– To educate this child means to set him back on the right course in life in the same way a dislocated or injured organ is reset.

• In theory and in practical

• Speech: part of the overall social life of a child

• The path of speech development

– Traditional system: speech died out

• Unfavorable external conditions, without special instruction of speech before entering school

• Mimed gesticulated skills > oral speech

àActive interest in speech has been killed

àLearning speech becomes a painfully arduous task

Preschool education
speech instruction

• The exercises consist of children's first babbling which is preparatory to each new word and reading from the lips; simultaneously with it, the organs of speech -voice, breathing- are also working and developing in quite a natural way.

– Mispronunciation, misarticulation, confusion of separate sounds

• The natural method is just vice versa: from the complex to the simple elements of speech and their combining

Preschool education stages

• The initial stage: automatism

– K. Malisch (1860-1925) Reflex imitation and automatism of speech instruction

– Speech must proceed sounds

– àthe residual hearing is used and developed at the same time that voice and breathing are practiced

• The later stage: reinforced, similar path to normal child

– N. A. Rau (1870-1947)

• The difference lies only in the means, the methods, and the amount of time

• Synthetic lip reading

– Speech (live oral speech): function of communication, an instrument of thought (speak mentally)

K. Malisch (1860-1925)

• Austrian specialist in deaf education

– Synthesis method of lip-reading whole words and phrases

– Reflex imitation and automatism of speech instruction

• Criticize from Vygotsky:

– Inconsistencies in overcoming the short comings of the German analytical phonetic method

– Select instructional material according to the degree of difficulty in pronunciation

– àsimple technical reform the analytical phonetic method

N. A. Rau (1870-1947)

• A Soviet specialist in deaf education

– The founder of the first kindergarten for the deaf in Russia

– Synthetic lip-reading: the connection is formed between concepts and the picture of lip movement and of the movement of the tongue

– Preschool education of the deaf-mute child must be solidly grounded in live oral speech

• Vygotsky was in complete solidarity with Rau

Primary school education_1

• The same principles: logical living speech

• Two methods: I. Golosov, I.A. Sokolianskii

• 1st method

– I. Golosov

– 1910, Method: entire word

– 1923-1924, Experiments: 22 sounds

– School-children can understand and can immediately use for communication in their surrounding milieu

– Lip-reading, writing, articulation, and reading written language

– Entire word method ~ ≠ K. Malisch

• Judging by G. Leman in 1925

I. Golosov (?)

• A teacher of the Moscow Institute for the deaf mute

– First attempt to teach oral speech to the deaf-mute on the basis of whole words

– Reading from face (lip-reading)

• Vygotsky was in complete solidarity with Golosov

G. Leman (?)

Primary school education_2

• The same principles: logical living speech

• Two methods: I. Golosov, I.A. Sokolianskii

• 2nd method

– I.A. Sokolianskii

– 1926, Lip-reading, words on the board, writing processing

– speech becomes automatized

– A phrase is given according to a prescribed order first by means of lip-reading accompanied by direct instruction (a natural mimed gesture)

• Ex: Children, get up! Children, sit down.

• No one method itself can solve the problem of oral speech development for a deaf-mute child

• German analytical phonetic method

– Implement cruelly

– pressure

– prohibition of mimicry

– It is suitable for the instruction of pronunciation and articulation, but not for teaching speech because it results in totally useless speech

• Education must be directed along the lines of the child’s interests, not contrary to them

• It tears a deaf child away from the normal milieu, isolating and placing him in a narrow, closed-off world. His mental health and psychological condition become disordered and deteriorate

The new education system for deaf

• In principle, there is no difference between the education of a normal and of a deaf child

• Education: part of social life, and preparation for the child’s participation in this life.

• Labor, society, and nature are the three fundamental channels which guide educational and formative work in school àwork-oriented school

– The body of a deaf-mute varies very little from that of a normal person à full range of possibilities for physical development and the acquisition of skills and vocational aptiitudes

– A child learns to see himself as a participant in life on a world scale

Ia. K. Tsveifel’s book (1931)

• Only through labor and speech, only through social education in the truest and deepest sense of the word, can a deaf-mute child really overcome the obstacles which stand in the way of his development

• Linder views a deaf child as

– the being who stands at the first stage of human development

– lack all cultural development because of the shortcomings in speech

– Incapable of mental activity

• Koehler, the differences between apes and humans

– The existence of speech

– A very limited life span

• Old philosophers

– As long as deaf-mute children lacked instruction on live speech, their gifts could not develop

• The goal: as a fully-valued being

Reformulated the position on mimicry (sign language)

• 1931, “One must reevaluate the traditional theoretical and practical attitude toward the various individual forms of speech used by the deaf-mute, and above all toward mimicry”

• Recognization of “sign language” as a valid auxiliary communicative system

• à Polyglossia

My opinions

• Language – thought

– The initial stage: establishing the language ability

• Education – Social problem

– The problem is not only from deaf people, but also from so called normal people.

– How does a hearing people communicate in place with 99% deaf signers?

• Mainstream

– Where is the mainstream for deaf people?

• Polyglossia

– Different sign languages