Using cued speech in Britain in 1988.

[proudofthefish]

Hi all

Comments

[dorsetgirl]

I'm sorry, but I've never heard of cued speech. Would it be possible to add a short explanation to your post

[bopeepsheep]

*g* Every hearing person in my family thinks of the primary cause being "the result of letting glue ear go untreated for too long", after my brother and I went deaf.

[We did get ineffective medication, it wasn't neglect - just the NHS refusing to offer grommets as an option. My brother was done after my mum pestered the surgeon with all the evidence from my hearing tests, but I had had to have my op privately. It astounds me that kids now get them as early as 18m - that would have transformed our childhoods.]

[karisitas]

That little beige box and the microphone system you mention in the second would be an FM system. I used varations of both as a child.

[sethg_prime]

Cued speech is a technique where you hold your hand up next to your face and make hand signals as you talk; the hand signals convey the phonological information (e.g., whether you are pronouncing a “p” or a “b” sound) that a deaf viewer couldn’t pick up through lip-reading.

As someone who got a deaf-ed degree in the 1990s, I know there are people who swear by cued speech, but it hasn’t really seemed to catch on, even though it was invented over fifty years ago. I suspect that hard-core oralists don’t like it because it still makes the deaf student depend on manual signals, and the Deaf Culture folks don’t like it because it has nothing to do with actual sign language.

[lilacsigil]

Cued speech is used as a learning tool in children of that age, definitely. There's (as in the US and most places) big divisions between people who want Deaf education with BSL as the primary means of communication and people who want mainstream education with English as the primary means of communication. What any individual child is going to be doing will be very much reliant on the resources and individuals in their local area so you have a lot of leeway there. A non-signing deaf child at a mainstream school is not out of the ordinary though

[proudofthefish]

Thanks for this. As the character is currently minor I haven't gone into too much detail yet about him.

[sollersuk]

This is a complicated issue, partly political, that I was involved in throughout the 1970s

[sollersuk]

Ran out of space.

The cost issue was due to the presence of a support teacher for each child for a large part of the week, and their presence is something you would need to take into account - during many lessons they would be working with the child (you confused me by saying "student" as we'd never say that for a primary age child and rarely for secondary age) on a one-to-one basis.

[proudofthefish]

All of these issues are similar to what I am familiar with in American Special ed. It's good to know somethings are universal. It's also good to have some background so thanks!

[bopeepsheep]

I was one of those late-70s deaf children and yup, mainstream primary with no support and no sign language (in school; I did learn some outside but no one at school could use it with me!). I became progressively more deaf through my first two years at school so teachers didn't realise that I was lipreading until the second year (not long before I turned 7) and when they did they did make an effort to always face me, speak clearly, etc - but one side-effect of this was that I was deliberately left out of big group activities where they knew they couldn't give me individual instruction. (This suited me as I could sit in the corner with a book, my natural inclination anyway

[second_banana]

It is possible (likely even) that if Harry is sent to live with Kingsley he likely would not attend primary school.

"'Where do wizarding children go to school before Hogwarts?'
JK Rowling replies -> They can either go to a Muggle primary school or they are educated at home. The Weasleys were taught by Mrs. Weasley."
JK Rowling's World Book Day Chat,
March 4, 2004Kingsley may or may not have a strong enough working relationship with the muggle world to send Harry to a muggle school. He does misname firearms "firelegs" in OotP. (That may or may not have been intentional, though.) Being a high up Auror he might not want to risk sending The Harry Potter to a school where no one could protect him from magical enemies. But since he is also likely to be too busy to home school Harry for three years, maybe a tutor? You could get really creative in showing how folks do early childhood ed in the wizarding world

[proudofthefish]

I didn't remember the mistake with firearms! My Kingsley has a very long and developed head cannon which in part has to do with him being the wizard we see most familiar with Muggles. Enough that Uncle Vernon comments on it in DH. In my head cannon I have him as a half blood raised as a Muggle until his Hogwarts letter. In the story he keeps Harry in Muggle school as he is in a Muggle area and is sort of hiding him in plain sight. I see no more risk in it then when Harry went to Muggle school in cannon.

[proudofthefish]

Also, the character in question is a Muggle and I always thought it too convenient if magic worked always for Muggles. So I would probably explain it as potions and healing magic only works properly if it can interact with a persons magic.

[fififolle]

I found this article for you. http://www.sussexdeafhistory.org.uk/page_id__158_path__0p61p56p60p.aspx

It would appear that in (tiny?) pockets cued speech may have been around in the UK for decades, but I've never even heard of it.

[bopeepsheep]

Elmsfield is a school for Deaf Children, and Hamilton Lodge School similarly. I suspect you'll find Cued Speech and other systems well represented in specialist schools, but not in mainstream. (Getting mainstream support for deaf children is still difficult in 2013, despite much better policies and funding.)

[fififolle]

That's it exactly!

[proudofthefish]

Thanks