Including deaf children in education

The third roundtable: Mainstreaming Disability in Practice: the case for Inclusive Education was the last in a series of three international events looking at the relationship between disability, poverty, and mainstreaming disability in development.

Held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, May 2005, the South East Asia regional event was hosted by the Disability Action Council, Cambodia and organised by Healthlink Worldwide, UK as part of the Disability Knowledge and Research programme (Disability KaR) funded by the Department of International Development (DfID).

Over 60 participants attended the event and several questions were raised in the seminar about the particular issues involved in the inclusion of deaf children in mainstream education. These included:

• Are deaf children better off in mainstream schools, or do they need to be educated with other deaf children?
• What are the benefits of inclusive education for deaf children?
• What is the reality for deaf students in inclusive settings?

This account reflects on the debates held at the Roundtable on inclusive education and the commonly held discussions about the challenges to the inclusion of deaf children in education. It also reports on some of the observations made by participants when visiting Phnom Penh special education schools and mainstream schools in the light of the rapid developments of the past ten years.

Cambodia has a large deaf population, most of whom have never met another deaf person and have no spoken language. Language will become an increasingly important factor for them as a deaf community begins to grow and develop in Cambodia.

One of the major problems in educating deaf people is that the deaf students do not have a common language with the teachers in the classroom and with the society around them. Eighty percent of education comes through hearing, and deaf people do not have sufficient access to this part of what is being taught.

Sign language, it is argued, is the most natural first language for deaf people. An appropriate inclusive education programme must, therefore, provide for sign language communication, as the medium of instruction for deaf students. Other languages can be taught as a second or third language, but the first language of instruction should be sign language. In order to understand the particular context in which deaf Cambodian children are growing up, it is important to reflect on the way the deaf community, Cambodian Sign Language, and educational services in general have developed since 1990.

Organisations working on sign language issues
There are two main organisations working in deaf education in Cambodia: Krousar Thmey (KT), which has a formal education programme for deaf children; and the Deaf Development Programme (DDP) which has a non-formal basic education programme for older deaf people.

From its beginning in 1997, Krousar Thmey has used American signs. DDP, which started in the same year, has used a very limited Cambodian Sign Language. A Cambodian Sign Language Committee has been set up under the Disability Action Council in Cambodia to discuss the two different sign languages and to work toward a common sign language for the country. Members of the committee come from Krousar Thmey, the Deaf Development Programme, the Disability Action Council, and from the Ministry of Education. The committee has agreed in principle to work toward the development of a Cambodian Sign Language (CSL). As new CSL signs are developed, they would be introduced and would replace American signs.

In practice the process of developing a common sign language in Cambodian signs has been slow and difficult; the committee has provided workshops on the nature of, and use of sign language in education. A big factor is the need for Krousar Thmey to quickly develop a complete sign language in order to be able to teach all subjects at all grade levels. American signs have become very familiar and accepted at the Krousar Thmey deaf schools because the development of CSL has been slow.

Currently the CSL Committee has suspended its meetings while some research is done on the various approaches that can be taken. Should American signs continue? Should only CSL be used? Should a complete sign language from another country be imported to become the accepted sign language for Cambodia? Should nothing be done, and as deaf people gather, let signs develop naturally?

Developing services for deaf people in Cambodia
Prior to the 1990s there was no education specifically designed for deaf children, despite the fact that Cambodia had been ruled by the French, and Catholic missionaries were very active there. There were also no Deaf organisations or any obvious sign language for deaf people. In previous decades the Vietnam war and the subsequent devastating civil war have been major factors in there being little information about educational developments.

In the mid-1990s Krousar Thmey (KT), a national NGO, was created by a French man who had been working in the refugee camps. Krousar Thmey means ‘New Family’. This name was very appropriate as so many families had become separated, or family members killed, during the brutal civil war. In ten years an impressive range of services has been established. In fact, a visiting teacher from Melbourne School for the Deaf is reported to have said that KT has accomplished in less than 10 years what it has taken her school 30 years to accomplish.

Four schools for both deaf and blind children have been opened by KT in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Kampong Cham and Battambang. The first school was opened in 1996-7 in Phnom Penh and it now has a kindergarten catering for 10 children. The older deaf children attend mainstream government schools in a nearby location, as part of KT’s policy to promote inclusion.

If a small number of deaf children (6-10) can be grouped together, KT will train the teacher in Sign Language and set up a class in an ordinary primary school. There are approximately 40 such classes in government-run schools throughout the country and they are managed by the district. Teachers receive an additional payment, or salary top-up, as well as training in Sign Language during school holidays.

Many of the teachers trained by KT are deaf themselves. This would not be allowed in government schools in Cambodia, where current legislation means it is not possible for a person with disabilities to train or be employed as a teacher in a public school. (For more information on this read the 'Role models - the issue of disabled teachers' story.) Deaf people face many barriers all over the world to becoming trained teachers.

The Deaf Development Programme
The Deaf Development Programme (DDP) began in 1997 under the Cambodian Disabled People’s Organisation (CDPO). It was started by a young deaf woman from Disabled People International who spent six months in Cambodia in 1996-7. She started by bringing deaf people together to socialise – something which is considered by deaf people in the rest of the world to be essential. As well as developing Sign Language in Phnom Penh, the CDPO programme also supported Sign Language classes in various provinces of Cambodia.

The Sign Language for the DDP has been developed with funds from Finland and the support of an American from Gallaudet University (the only university for deaf people in the world) who is an expert in sign language development. Young deaf people were brought together to develop their own signs. Most of them are US signs modified by the young deaf people to their own linguistic and national contexts. CSL already has two thousand signs. Recent developments have been supported by the Japanese Nippon Foundation. It has included Sign Language development work in four countries: Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines.

Sign language and basic literacy classes have been run for adults in Phnom Penh, and classes in the other four provinces were opened to children and adults of all ages. If a trainee has reasonable teaching and Sign Language skills, the DDP is prepared to overlook the fact that they do not have a Government teaching certificate. However, it has proved difficult to develop good quality training because of the shortage of trained teachers.
The last ten years has seen the rapid development of services for deaf people and early attempts at including deaf children in mainstream government schools. At the same time efforts have been made by national and international NGOs in Cambodia to work with the Government to promote more inclusive practices in education.

Interestingly there are significantly larger numbers of deaf children than blind children attending the KT schools. For example, Siem Reap school has 98 deaf children, but only 20 blind children. The buildings are new, very well decorated, furnished and equipped, and each class has approximately 15 children. This is in sharp contrast to the learning environment in the government schools which are less well funded. It is perhaps too early to judge how well this is progressing.

Observing an inclusive class
As part of the roundtable participants visited various schools. One of the groups visited the school for the deaf in Phnom Penh and the government school where the deaf children were included. At the school for deaf children the participants observed deaf teachers in action. It was very noticeable that the deaf teachers were more fluent than the hearing teachers.

In the government school participants observed a lively and interactive mathematics lesson. A group of about ten deaf young people, both boys and girls, were seated at the back of the class at two long desks, one behind the other. Their interpreter was seated with them at the desks. The teacher made a big effort to involve the deaf young people and called one of the girls to the front to write an answer on the blackboard. She continued to sign to her deaf peers from the front of the class, as she looked for clarification and support in answering the question.

The participants were later able to share their observations with a group of teachers from the school, including the class teacher. This enabled the participants to discuss the seating arrangements: “Why were the children seated at the back of the class?”

There was no clear answer given for the seating arrangements. Participants considered that it may have been considered to be less distracting for the other children. Yet if the children had been seated at the front and their interpreter had also been at the front with the class teacher, the hearing children would have had the additional benefit of seeing the lesson interpreted into Sign Language. In this way they would have been able to learn some Sign Language and so improve the communication between deaf and hearing students which can sometimes be very challenging.

Roundtable discussions
Following the visits, the participants discussed their observations further and were able to meet members of the DDP who had very strong views against the ‘full’ inclusion of deaf students in mainstream schools. They reported that some of the deaf young people have told them of their unhappiness at having to leave the school for the deaf and attend the government school. They thought the way forward was to support the further development of resource rooms or special units attached to mainstream schools.

It is perhaps inevitable that those children whose first experience was in a well-resourced setting with other deaf children in small classes will find it difficult to adjust to an ordinary classroom. Children whose only experience is of attending their local school would not be able to make such a comparison. The case study above illustrates an example of a child who had only known his local school and who refused to be sent to a school for the deaf. Change is always difficult! It is also important to acknowledge that there is still a great deal to learn about how best to include deaf children with their hearing peers.

The participants made the following recommendations based on their observations:

• Hearing children should be sensitised to the environment of the special school (a form of two-way inclusion)
• Sign Language should be taught to hearing students
• Children should be encouraged to say what they need and how they experience learning
• Exposure visits should be arranged for teachers to visit neighbouring countries.

The role of deaf adults in the education of deaf children
Deaf adults have an extremely important role to play in the education of deaf children, as they are usually the most fluent and proficient users of Sign Language in any community. It is rare for teachers of deaf children, who are not deaf themselves, to achieve the same level of fluency.

Including deaf children in mainstream schools is an extremely complex, controversial and contentious issue across the globe. Many deaf adults have campaigned for the right of deaf children to be educated separately where they can access information through their most natural first language – the Sign Language of the community in which they were born.

Where material resources are limited and services are struggling to cope with large numbers of children and inadequate budgets, it can be difficult to ensure that deaf children have access to deaf adults. In Cambodia this shouldn’t be such a big problem as there are deaf adults in most villages. However it is important that the initiative is taken to bring them together. It does not matter whether the deaf adults are proficient in Sign Language or not. Social contact and support to the children and their parents is crucial. Ideally deaf children would attend their local school, with the support of deaf adults and with opportunities to meet other deaf children. In the absence of an established deaf community and local sign language, this can be very challenging and requires careful facilitation.