Transgressing the Object: The Laboratory
ALA & RC : November 2011
“One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
There is a general consensus that the educational system in America is broken. The white supremacist audist capitalist patriarchy education-as-a-banking system1 hegemony has long since incapacitated our children. Is it any wonder that all across America, students everywhere are not succeeding? That so many drop out, unmotivated to learn?2
We cannot discuss what has been termed “deaf education” without first exploring some of the history of modern education and its convergence with a medical pedagogy. Public education as it stands now has three clear functions: To promote assimilation with the dominant hegemony, to enforce a culture of obedience, and to create consumers (Gatto, 2009). Public education in America came into existence through many different avenues, but one of the most influential periods for compulsory education occurred during the Industrial Revolution. It’s this simple: a group of rich, hearing, white men decided that in order for mass production to be successful (read: profitable), there would need to be mass consumption (as well as an accumulation of individuals willing to do mundane factory work). Prior to this period, most communities were self-sustaining and the idea of buying more than was needed was unfathomable. “Schools didn’t have to train kids in any direct sense to think they should consume nonstop, because it did something even better: it encouraged them not to think at all. And that left them sitting ducks for another great invention of the modern era—marketing” (Gatto, p. xx). Policies for schooling at the time were established, not by governments or local citizens, but by a few specific industrial titans, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institute.
Another influential individual during this era was Inglis, who outlined six specific basic functions of modern schooling. Among the six are three functions that have an ideological impact on the development of “deaf education.” The first is “the differentiating function,” where children are “diagnosed” and sorted based on their social merits. This function overlaps with “the selective function,” (much influenced by Darwinist philosophy), where schools have the power to “tag the unfit” – for the eventual purpose of discouraging “breeding” among those considered “poor stock.” This, then, leads to a third function, known as “the propaeduetic function,” in which a small group of elite kids are “quietly taught how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor” (Gatto, p. xix).
In the meantime, schools became a breeding ground for “chemical experimentation,” using behavioral methodologies to control and regulate behavior, standardized tests to explore both intelligence and mental susceptibility, and medication, such as Ritalin, to further control the masses. In other words, schools became laboratories (Gatto, 2009).
Meanwhile, another movement was gathering steam: Eugenics. For those who are unfamiliar with the beginnings of “eugenics,” a brief summary follows. The father of “eugenics” was a man named Francis J. Galton, who did most of his studies in England. Galton was obsessed with statistics; in particular he was fixated on the ability to predict in order to outwit (Black, 2003). Galton’s work eventually led to studies of hereditary. He looked into genealogies of reputed scholars, military men, poets; he discovered that many were descendants of the same families. As one might imagine, this led to the mistaken belief that “superior stock” would breed “superior stock” and “inferior stock” (which, at the time was defined as the poor, the illiterate, and criminal misfits) would “taint” one’s lineage (Black, 2003).
The idea of “superior breeding” was popularized in America by Alexander Graham Bell, who, in 1929, was the chairman of the board of the scientific directors of the eugenics record office. In 1884, Bell published “Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race, in which he wrote, “Those who believe as I do, that the production of a defective race of human beings would be a great calamity to the world, will examine carefully the causes that lead to the intermarriages of the deaf with the object of applying a remedy” (p. 41).
In addition to Bell, two of the biggest proponents of eugenics in America were: The Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institute (Black, 2003). And there it is again: corruption by the richest 1% of our society.
A third, earlier avenue of influence was set in motion by the father of audiology: Jean-Marc Itard. A resident physician at St. Jacques (deaf school in France), Itard conducted intensive experimentation on deaf students (some of which resulted in deaths). At the time, the French Revolution was coming to an end and the emergence of democratic republic spaces gave birth to new areas of authority on “knowledge.” One such area was the establishment of écoles normales (teacher’s training colleges). This led to the development of an apotheosis of medical personage—in other words, a doctor’s status became equal to God (Rabinow, 1984). In November 1807, Itard presented two memoirs: “On the Means of Providing Hearing to Deaf-Mutes,” and “On the Means of Providing Speech to Deaf-Mutes.” His experimentation, which incorporated an “objective” study of a patient’s body without personal involvement from the patient (known as Condillac’s Analytical Method), led to the incorporation of medicine in education (Lane, 1993). Today we know this as “Special Education,” of which one specialization is “deaf education.”
Given this history, we pose the question: what, exactly, is the goal of “deaf education”?
Whether public schools, charter schools, or boarding schools, the current “deaf education” pedagogy has repeatedly shackled deaf students. Students are constantly exposed to one school of thought, almost always learning from hearing teachers whose lessons reinforce audist stereotypes, such as the notion that hearing ways of being are universal. Those students are always and only responding and reacting to hearing people.”3 They learn that, as Freire writes, “to be is to have, and always at the expense of those who have nothing.”4 The lesson that every child incidentally learns is: to be is to have hearing.
Rather than striving for self-actualization, for their own bright light on the spectrum of humanity—deaf children strive to be hearing. This becomes their task as students within the deaf education pedagogy: To hear (and form sounds & speech). This oppressive pedagogy removes opportunities for students to discover their power as individuals who have the ability to think critically, to interrogate social construct, and to assert their place in society. In essence, “deaf education” colonizes.
1 Friere, Paulo: Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Chapter two discusses in depth what Friere terms a banking system of education.
2 “Waiting for Superman” (Film): This film discusses in detail the abysmal statistics of education in America.
3This line was initially used by bell hooks in “Teaching to Transgress.” “Always and only responding and reacting to white folks.” (p. 4)
4 Friere, Paulo: Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
bell hooks (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
Black, Edwin (2003). War on the Weak.
Freire, Paulo (2000). Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Gatto, John Taylor (2009). Weapons of Mass Instruction.
Lane, Harlan (1993). Mask of Benevolence.
Rabinow, Paul & Foucault, M. (1984). The Foucault Reader.
Film: Audism Unveiled (2008).