Educação de surdos em Caxias do Sul de 1960 a 2010 : uma história escrita por várias mãos

Abstract

Throughout history, deaf people have been denied the right to communicate and to receive education in their natural language, the Sign Language. This impossibility to be educated in an accessible language, either left them out of the formal education system, or submitted them to institutions which intended to ignore their difference, in a continuous search for transforming them into people who hear and speak, in other words, people in accordance with the current standards of normality. However, experiences of resistance to the disciplinary power were frequent throughout all periods and established the possibility of emergence of other discourses on deafness, different from the pathological perspective. Watching this general historical outlook of the deaf education, the scientific matter started by this issue: how did the education process of deaf people happen from 1960 to 2010? This comprehensive issue induced me to many other questions, such as: which assumptions and objectives were underlying the educational practices of deaf people during this period? How do deaf people realize the education process they attended? Which strategies did they develop to take a position against the established power, in order to set the resistance as the possibility of emergence of other discourses in education field? Which other institutions and places contributed to the education process of the deaf? In this way, this study aims to inquire about the historical process of deaf education in the city of Caxias do Sul, from 1960 to 2010. I used the Oral History method, interviewing deaf people who studied or worked at Helen Keller School at this time. The interviews were shot and translated from Sign Language to Portuguese. After that, I analyzed them based upon Michel Foucault´s studies about history, the invention of normality, and the agencies of discipline and security.Besides the narratives of the deaf, I used as source the foundation decrees of the school, mail, minute books, pedagogical plans and photographs. I underline, as results of the research, that in Caxias do Sul there was the same trend as in the rest of Brazil: the education of deaf people started in 1960 as clinical care, emphasizing the oralism and the speech therapy, and, gradually, it became a real pedagogical approach.