Teaching College English to the Hearing-Impaired

Abstract

IN THE FALL OF I 97 5 the 94th Congress passed Public Law 94-142, which maintained the equality of rights of children in the pursuit of education and made mainstreaming the rule rather than the exception. Although much has been said about the disparate burden this mandate places on the classroom teacher, the intent is humane and just: all persons have a rightful place in society, and society must accommodate certain individual differences. One handicapped group that has already begun to assert its rights and claim its space in the larger society is the community of the hearing impaired. Because of the nature of this particular handicap, it almost seems that PL 94-142 was written especially for them. The only handicapping feature of hearing impairment is the restriction or loss of the ability to communicate with the larger, hearing population. Consequently, this handicap is bilateral: the larger society is also by its inability to communicate except through written or oral language. Therefore, mainstreaming the hearing impaired at a very early age, in spite of the difficulty teachers will have writing individual learning programs, will bring both of these groups to a point of mutual understanding and acceptance, enlarging and enriching the mainstream these students join. The future is bright and hopeful. However, what do we do with the young adults who have finished their public schooling and now, facing forty to fifty years of participation in the adult world, need additional training and skills? The post-secondary schools already in existence that provide programs or services for the hearing impaired are few and widely scattered. And the only liberal arts college for the deaf, Gaulladet, couldn't possibly bring this kind of education within reach of the multitude of qualified persons within this group. This relative dearth of post-secondary opportunities for the deaf, coupled with the increased emphasis on education of the in general, is going to have a definite impact on many colleges that may have never even heard of Public Law 94-142. As more and more hearing impaired individuals who are now in high schools recognize their equality of rights in the pursuit of education, their goals will rise. And being unwilling to travel to Minnesota, Louisianna, or D.C., they will begin to knock at the doors of their own state insstitutions. Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act (PL 93-112) prohibits these institutions from using a person's handicap as a determining factor in admissions, and there seems to be evidence that the institutions will have the responsibility of accommodating the handicap to whatever extent possible. However, many of these institu-