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Abstract
Educational arenas are important sites for understanding how diversity and democracy become operationalised since they constitute and at the same time must attend to students' different needs. This article focuses on diversity from two specific angles: how research activities allow for particular ways of understanding human differences and how human pluralism is conceptualised in the organisation of education. These discussions emerge from the position that our use of language itself shapes human realities. The organisation of the segregated Swedish special schools for the deaf and research that focuses on this specific “human category” are used to illustrate and discuss issues pertaining to diversity and democracy. Pupils in special schools are conceptualised both as “handicapped” as well as belonging to a “linguistic‐minority” group. Democratic tensions related to maintaining a separate school and conducting research on the human category defined on the basis of “deafness” are discussed and alternatives raised. Implications regarding (the lack of) pluralism in research perspectives and agendas are also discussed and the need for integrating studies of marginalisation into mainstream academia is highlighted.
Acknowledgement
This article has developed from the findings presented particularly in the final chapter (Chapter 8) of my book Literacies and Deaf Education. A Theoretical Analysis of International and Swedish Literature (Bagga‐Gupta, Citation2004a). Support received from the Swedish Agency for Education and a grant from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Örebro University are acknowledged. Critical discussions with Karl‐Georg Ahlström on issues raised in this article are also noted.
Notes
1. The academic and/or political recognition accorded to different Signed Languages in different national contexts can be used to illustrate this issue.
2. Compare “dis‐abled” (see also Baker, Citation2002).
3. In line with established conventions, I make an attempt to differentiate between Deaf and deaf human identities. While the first concept identifies human beings in terms of (minority) members of a particular sociocultural and sociolinguistic community, the second focuses on the audiological condition of deafness or inability to hear.
4. A similar dramatic increase in percentages has however not been reported from industrialised national contexts outside Scandinavia.
5. In contrast a variety of ways of organising deaf children's education has existed and continues to exist in different countries in the world.
6. While the extra school years also applies for hard‐of‐hearing pupils who attend “hard‐of‐hearing classes” in the special school settings, it does not apply for hard‐of‐hearing pupils in regular school settings.
7. Bagga‐Gupta (Citation2004b) distinguishes between “visual” and “visually oriented”.
8. Despite the compensatory perspective of the School Law, representatives for this school form and a majority of Deaf NGOs highlight the need for a “linguistic community” as the primary reason for the segregation of this school.
9. Compare with the organisation of education for the same group of pupils in Norway (see Service Catalogue ⟨http://www.statped.no/moduler/templates/Module_Overview.aspx?id = 21545&epslanguage = NO⟩ August 2006) or other non‐categorical ways of organising primary education for this group in Italy (see Teruggi, Citation2003) and other national contexts.
10. The establishment of these academic domains bears witness to ways in which politics of recognition creates possibilities for changing understandings with regards to human diversity within both research and society more generally. This also highlights the concomitant need for the establishment of specialised research areas that build upon robust theoretical frameworks that can also contribute to creating new insights into human existence.
11. See Barnartt and Scotch (Citation2001) for a classical treatment of this theme; see also Lane (Citation1992).
12. Both Padden and Humphries are Deaf academicians.
13. This can be compared with the situation in educational settings for the deaf. While grass root level discontent—that made headlines worldwide in 1988—led to the instalment of the first deaf Vice Chancellor at Gallaudet University (the Mecca of higher learning and research in the area of deafness), deaf education continues in general (especially in Sweden) to be dominated by hearing leaders and teachers. The current grass root level discussions regarding the selection of the new Vice Chancellor at Gallaudet are also instructive in this respect.
14. In Sweden, local health authorities are responsible for allocating resources for medical and rehabilitation services as well as for interpretation services for this group.
15. This economic, bio‐technological and ethical question is further complicated with reports that a number of implanted children stop using their CI after their operations.