The MSDP curriculum for the 0-6 stage will be a flexible play orientated one but with the highly structured Montessori format-modified for the visual rather than the vocal senses. The higher stages will follow the regular mainstream model. The first language will be ISL, but being Bilingual, English will always be present and brought into use. Most of the learning will be done by experiencing model child activities of ordinary life. The child learns life skills by doing, and receiving explanation in ISL. Objects will have name labels so that the child will quickly get the written English word and ISL sign for what they are working with. In this environment the children will acquire their first and natural language as effortlessly as hearing children do. Written English verbs, adjectives and names, and story books will gradually introduce the second language and the Irish language too.
Teaching depends on each child's own process of searching for meaning in what is communicated and discussed that meaning with others. They can explore and discuss each others inner thoughts. The school will nurture the child's natural curiosity and desire to learn `everything`. Their education will be structured to make encounters with signed, spoken an d written languages enjoyable, developmentally appropriate, and without excessive pressure or meaningless repetition. Word identification, reading, drama and story telling will follow. Much of the subject matter in children's classical story books, such as Aesop`s Fables, can be communicated through ISL in the same way teachers impart knowledge to hearing children through spoken language before they can read. Communication opportunities in playing and physical exercises will be part of the curriculum.
Teachers and parents have found that patience in allowing confidence in the first language to develop slowly and fully is rewarded when teaching of reading and writing is not prioritised too early. The pupils first language must be used to explain and discuss grammar and features of English, the spoken language. This is the experience also with hearing children in multi-culture immigrant and refugee-camp settings. Knowledge of a second language helps both languages to develop - in Sweden many deaf pupils are now learning English also. With the oral system Irish deaf children are confined to a single language.
As children's command of the written word improves, dependency on the text as a source of information increases. In other words, the goal is that school achievement not be allowed to suffer while children are in the process of getting around the language of their text books. (The extra years allowed by the oral system to complete the school education levels are considered a means of accommodating deaf children's special learning needs. However, linguists have for years argued that this strategy only accommodates ineffective communication practices).
Hearing and speech cannot be relied on for teaching of English to the deaf. The skills which deaf pupils are to develop through English teaching must emanate from what the pupils are capable of apprehending visually, through ISL and by means of written English. Deaf children must be surrounded very early with fun, meaningful, and comprehensive input in English that demands nothing more of them than that they enjoy it. The pupils with residual hearing, aided by amplification, can assimilate instruction via hearing and speech, but they may still be dependent on visual support in the form of writing and signs for consolidation of their skills.
After four years in Stage 1 we expect the children to have a strong first language; are comfortable with their identity; already know a great deal about their world; and have the linguistic, cognitive, and social readiness to enter a more formal education course, as they do in Sweden. While Stage 1 is in progress we will attend to the task of finding professional training for one or two deaf Primary Level (Stage 2) teachers to take on the up-coming pupils; and likewise, in our own time, we will provide for Secondary Level (Stage 3) teachers.
The 1983 Swedish Curriculum advises that deaf and hard of hearing children need to belong to a sufficiently large group of coeval, older, younger and adult deaf and hearing-impaired persons who also use Sign Language, so a s to give them access to positive, realistic models for the identification purposes. In other words, people from the deaf community must be `brought in` to give a helping hand to the deaf person and family at the infancy stage. [in the Irish mainstream school model, which handles up to 70% of deaf children, this opportunity is totally absent].
It is vitally important that participating parents remain loyal and committed to this philosophy. The school will help the parents to get through this difficult patch. In Denmark, the Parents Association pioneered the Bilingual system, and their faith and whole-hearted support of it since they started in the 1980s has paid off to the extent as stated earlier, that deaf education levels are now on a par with hearing students and mainstreaming is practically eliminated [see Appendix No. 3].
Exposure to deaf adults, ISL and deaf culture will constitute the biggest change to the Irish situation. Leadership and team management will be the vital link between the pa rent and family of the deaf child. This will include organising and co-ordination of the various activities of the two cultures in the school.
Extra-curriculum activities will form a large part of the school programme. This will help to capitalise and reinforce deaf identity in the school, and ensure that there are deaf role models leading all activities and at all levels of authority. This will be a major learning process for both the parents and members of the deaf child's family, who will be mostly hearing people, and new to the culture of the deaf community.