Literacy in the Classroom and Beyond

Abstract

A photograph taken in 1893 at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Boston, MA, shows pupils taking part in a literacy lesson. Ten girls and boys are sitting in a semicircle with their teacher, while another pupil stands by the blackboard on which a passage of text is written in elegant copperplate. The picture is a reminder that, right from the earliest days of deaf education providing pupils with access to literacy, has been seen as a core objective. The importance of literacy is reflected in the United Nations Development Programs’ Human Development Index (HDI). This includes all the things you might expect such as measures of health, longevity, and standard of living in a particular country, but it also includes the literacy level. In many of the countries that appear at the bottom of the HDI rankings, the literacy level among the adult population is less than 50%, whereas it exceeds 95% in developed countries. The definition of literacy used for the purpose of the HDI is an ability to read a short, simple passage relating to everyday life. This is a modest requirement since, in order to read and write at the levels demanded in secondary education in developed countries, it is essential to be able to deal with abstract concepts and to integrate ideas across complex text. As had often been reported within the pages of the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, many children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) find literacy an enormous challenge, and many leave formal education without having achieved a level of literacy that prepares them for the demands of a literate society. What is by no means clear is why many children who are DHH experience such difficulties.