Deaf culture at Indian schools

Abstract

In recent years, more and more scholars conduct research on Deaf culture representing hearing handicapped people “Deaf”, a linguistic minority. However, scholars have studied Deaf culture in developing countries based on a medical model persistently. This research aims to demonstrate how Deaf culture is expressed among deaf students at Indian schools while education for the hearing handicapped is changing day by day.
I conducted fieldwork in Delhi and Darjeeling through the method of participant observation. I selected the schools for this investigation where hearing handicapped students had registered. I basically observed the interaction between teachers and students in those schools, and had interview with them if needed.
I observed specific characteristics between hearings and deaf and extracted some unique features among deaf students, which were represented as “Deaf culture”. Through the fieldwork I found those three profiles as below.
(1) A situation where a limited number of hearing teachers dominated a large number of deaf students,
(2) An interaction between teachers and students,
(3) The play world which deaf students created.
I could not find any interaction among deaf students under a strict oral method education. Moreover, it was found that adults who had an oral method education throughout their youth did not belong to any particular communities.
I also found that an oral method dominated many schools. It was similar with the scenes of Colonialism that the hearing people extended domination over Deaf through an ideology which held power in relationships rather than by dominating them directly. Moreover, it was hard to develop an interaction among deaf students under Audism, and they didn’t belong to a particular community after they became adults. It is important that deaf students find a particular community to belong in early stages. At the same time, we should appreciate that deaf people have a great diversity which is not tied to a conventional concept of “Deaf” so that we could perceive deaf culture at a new point of view.
This research did not have enough interview data with Deaf since I did not have enough time to do research and had difficulties with speaking local languages as well as Indian sign language. Long term research based on interview method in local languages should be conducted.