The New Zealand Deaf community
When a capital D is used in the word “Deaf”, this indicates that the word is being used to describe the members of the Deaf community, who are an important cultural and linguistic minority in New Zealand and are “ … typically characterised by prelingual profound or severe hearing loss, special education, and a preference for communication in New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL), and identify themselves with other Deaf people” (Dugdale, 2002). The word “deaf” with a lower case d is used as a more generic term for people who have limited hearing, whether they belong to the Deaf community or not. Hearing-impaired, half-deaf, and oral deaf are other terms that may be used by the Deaf community to refer to those who do not use sign language as their primary mode of face-to-face communication.
There are no reliable statistics on the number of Deaf people living in New Zealand, but according to Dugdale (2002), the internationally accepted statistic indicating the prevalence of prelingually deaf people is one in a thousand. For a population of roughly four million people, then, the number will be around four thousand. According to Statistics New Zealand, “some 7700 partially or completely deaf adults living in households used New Zealand Sign Language and/or Signed English” in 2001 (Statistics New Zealand, 2001b).
The inclusion of NZSL as a community language in the 2001 census signifies that a large number of people are aware of its existence. Twenty-seven thousand, two hundred and eighty-five people identified as being able to use it conversationally in 2000 (Statistics New Zealand, 2001a).
Deaf people are commonly born to hearing parents, and so they differ from other cultural minorities in that they do not always share the dominant culture of their families of origin. This cultural difference is more marked if Deaf children attend a school for the Deaf, and especially so if they are boarders at the school. Deaf communities are generally made up not of family groups but of collections of individuals who share a common language and culture that is not based on ethnicity. The exception to this is Deaf families, whose members may all be Deaf or may include some Deaf and some hearing people. Deaf families have traditionally played an important part in the community because their Deaf culture and language are not “one generation deep” but are transmitted to future generations in a similar way to that in which many ethnic minorities transmit their culture and language. Children born into Deaf families usually have the advantages of a strong first-language base in NZSL and an acceptance of being Deaf as the norm.
Deaf education in New Zealand
Until around 1880, deaf students throughout the world were educated using both oral and manual methods of communication with varying degrees of success, and rival methods of teaching coexisted. In 1880, state education for deaf children in New Zealand was established in Sumner, Christchurch, with a principal who was dedicated to oralism (focusing on acquiring spoken language skills through speech therapy and lip-reading). This official acceptance of oralism had negative consequences for the development of NZSL for many years.
In 1942, some of the children from Sumner were transferred to the Auckland School for the Deaf at Titirangi. This school was subsequently moved to Kelston, where it continued to place strong emphasis on oralism and audiology for many years (Dugdale, 2002). A further oralist school, St Dominic’s School for the Deaf, was established in Feilding in 1944.
In the late nineteen-seventies, the philosophy of Total Communication (TC) was introduced. This philosophy involved using all available means to communicate with deaf children, including speech, lip-reading, sign language, gesture, reading, writing, and listening.
From 1995, NZSL was introduced as a language of instruction at both Kelston and van Asch Deaf Education Centres in pilot bilingual (NZSL and English) programmes. The success of this model has led to better access to the curriculum and greater pride in Deaf identity (Dugdale, 2002).