Do deaf people have to go to special schools?
In the past most deaf people attended special private schools for the deaf; the first in the U.S. opened in 1817. Over the years there have been heated battles over the best methods of instruction for the deaf, most of them centering on the question of sign language vs. oral-based education. Despite these ongoing controversies, laws passed in the mid 1970s gave children with special needs “equal and appropriate” education within the public school system. Today, many deaf children attend public schools where they are offered a combination of special instruction and general studies with their hearing peers. One of the greatest challenges faced by deaf people is the acquisition of language skills. People who are born with hearing problems or develop them very early do not learn spoken language the way hearing people do. Since written English is based on spoken language, deaf children have difficulty learning English and expanding their vocabularies over time. Children who first learn to c
