At the Crossroad of Cultures: Education and Identity of Hungarian Deaf Learners in Romania

Emese Belényi

doi:10.37441/cejer/2019/1/1/3344

Abstract

Deaf people living in ethnic-national minority situation form a social group whose members have multiple cultural backgrounds. Starting from interpretations which are viewing the deaf child as a member of a distinct cultural and linguistic minority, I studied the education of Hungarian deaf pupils in Romania graduating from the Hungarian Special School in Cluj/Kolozsvár/Klausenburg, with particular regard to the relationship between formal and informal language use in school, communication culture and identity. Methodologically the research is based on life path interviews with Hungarian Deaf Special School graduates, family case studies of two or three generation deaf families and structured interviews with experienced educators. The research results reveal that the educational practice of the concerned educational institution strengthens the pupils' identity awareness and sense of belonging to the Hungarian nation in two distinct, still interconnected ways: on the one hand, through oral language acquisition, nursing the oral Hungarian language skills, and on the other hand through cultivating the Hungarian Sign Language embedded in the deaf culture within the learner community. Nowadays, the conditions and modalities of exercising this role are changing in several respects. The positive educational effects achieved so far can be reinforced and strengthened by educational policies based on the recognition and cultivation of cultural diversity, in all its complex and multifaceted manifestations, including the peculiar needs of ethnic minority deaf learners.

Highlights

Until relatively recently, deafness was seen as a physical impairment: the absence of hearing (Butler, Skelton & Valentine, 2001; Lane, 1997)
When the deaf child reaches the school age, the most important stage of socialization is the special school and its pupil community (Harris-Beech 1995), where the child is spending most of its time
The children of the deaf parents - the hearers too - acquire sign language as their mother tongue at early age, while the deaf children of the hearing parents learn sign language when they are in the schools for deaf

Summary

Introduction

Deafness was seen as a physical impairment: the absence of hearing (Butler, Skelton & Valentine, 2001; Lane, 1997). Much discrimination against deaf people was based on the assumption that they were people without language (Davis, 2007) This approach ignored the fact that deafness is an unique kind of disability. According to Tajfel (1978), cultural communities acknowledge that certain socially constructed group characteristics with specific cognitive content distinguish them from their social surroundings. In this regard, deaf community is not just one group of people with disabilities among others, and a linguistic and cultural minority, whose members use sign language as a primary means of communication, behave in a similar manner and share similar beliefs. According to Padden (1989) deaf community can be defined as the totality of languages, experiences, values and forms of contact which are characteristic for the deaf

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