Social Adjustment of Deaf School Leavers in the United States

Abstract

Social adjustment may be viewed within a medley of contexts; however, limitations of time and space have narrowed the scope of this paper toward a consideration of social action by individual or group deaf school leavers within the greater social milieu of a predominantly hearing population. By the same limitation, it is not possible to carry on an extended discussion into differences of adjustment among the hard of hearing and the profoundly deaf. Finally, while we believe with Lee Meyerson that three distinct patterns of social adjustment are discernible, we must raise the usual caveat against stereotyped and generalized inference. Intrinsic to each deaf school leaver is an unique personality with all the attendant idiosyncrasies one would recognize in any normally hearing school leaver; each represents a separate human being, an individual inviolate, and from this standpoint one approaches with caution the question of individual compartmentalization.Social Adjustment Pattern One. A fairly large percent...