Don’t close schools for deaf children
Queen’s Park appears to be on the verge of undoing more than a century of progress for deaf children. The province should change course before it does lasting damage.
The ministry of education’s recent undertaking of a consultation process apparently aimed at closing two of the four provincial schools for deaf and hard of hearing students should serve as a warning bell to everyone concerned with equity in education.
Such closures would undo 130 years of Ontario deaf community advocacy for the use of sign language in deaf children’s education. At the provincial schools, deaf students have the opportunity to study with teachers who are fluent in sign language and with other deaf students. Students also have access to bilingual learning materials (in American Sign Language and English or Quebec Sign Language and French) and opportunities to study sign language as a school subject. It is exceedingly rare for a school board program to provide such accommodations to individual students, who are often isolated in mainstream school board classrooms.
In mainstream classes, there may be no access to sign language, or only through a poorly qualified interpreter. Deaf students in these classrooms are often excluded from group activities and may not develop supportive peer networks due to language barriers. Providing adequate accommodations in mainstream settings is more expensive than having all supports centralized.
The government’s actions conflict with current evidence regarding the role of sign language in deaf children’s healthy development. As reported last February at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, depriving deaf children of sign language results in linguistic and cognitive delays that extend into adulthood. For this reason, scientists urge teaching sign language to children and parents even when deaf children receive cochlear implants. In fact, sign language can help children receive more benefits from cochlear implants, since it provides a foundation for the development of speech and listening skills in addition to literacy.
On April 13, in what was apparently a pre-emptive strike aimed at undercutting a planned rally of parents and community members at Queen’s Park, Minister of Education Liz Sandals announced that enrolment will resume for 2016-17 at Centre Jules-Léger in Ottawa and the Robarts School for the Deaf in London. However, no long-term promises have been made regarding the future of deaf schools in Ontario.
In fact, problems with the enrolment process have set the stage for these consultations. Unlike other Ontario public schools, which are managed by school boards, the provincial schools are directly under the purview of the ministry’s provincial schools branch. Parents of children with a hearing loss must first register their child with a local school board before undergoing a lengthy application and evaluation procedure. Community advocates and parents report that children are frequently refused entry to the provincial schools, for seemingly arbitrary reasons.
These refusals appear to be tied to ministry efforts to shrink student enrolment and thereby strengthen the case for closure of the provincial schools. Even with Minister Sandals’ announcement that new students will be accepted for 2016-17, how many parents will place their kids in a school that may close one year later?
The threatened closure of Centre JulesLéger in Ottawa is of special concern, since this is the only school for deaf children in the province that provides a bilingual education in Quebec Sign Language and French.
The elimination of any opportunity for francophone deaf children to learn their native sign language will be in contradiction to Premier Kathleen Wynne’s recent apology to Franco- Ontarians for the government’s historic restrictions on the use of French in elementary schools.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Canada signed and ratified, calls for governments to provide services which ensure disabled children achieve their full potential. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities requires governments to facilitate learning of sign language by deaf students and promote the linguistic identity of the deaf community in schools.
Instead of closing the provincial schools, the ministry of education should work to enhance the schools’ environment and enable deaf and hard of hearing students to thrive. It is time for Liz Sandals to get up to speed with both current research and her government’s legal and moral responsibilities regarding the educational rights of deaf children.
Ontario’s actions conflict with current evidence regarding the role of sign language in deaf children’s healthy development