Many scholars turn their dissertations into books. Few do so with Naomi Malone's aplomb and clarity. Moreover, A Constant Struggle: Deaf Education in New South Wales Since World War II adds considerably to the scant literature of deaf education in Australia and removes a significant historiographic blind spot in the broader study of special education. Her call for a unified social movement on behalf of deaf students echoes in each chapter of the book, making clear the need for concerted advocacy rather than fractured lobbying leading to piecemeal and sometimes token results.
The field of special education over the past two centuries, to borrow from science fiction author Douglas Adams, was not so much designed as congealed. Born of independent advocacy in numerous communities and informed by disparate local factors ranging from religious conviction about the rights of God's children to the latest in technological advances, special education is less a unified field and more an amalgamation of disciplines, each with its own historical baggage. Malone's book therefore lends much-needed structure to the historiography of special education, not just in Australia but within the broader scope of the discipline's global history.
Malone structures the book as a straightforward chronological examination of deaf education but, throughout her writing, deftly incorporates the overarching theme of a much-needed unified social movement to better advocate for deaf students. She also discusses some of the field's long-standing core controversies, such as oralism versus manualism, and laments the fragmented nature of the deaf movement from its origins into the present day.
The first chapter begins with Plato and Aristotle before moving swiftly through the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, where Malone briefly outlines the history of deaf education in France, Germany, the UK, and the United States before closing with a discussion of deaf education in Australia from the 19th Century until the onset of World War Two. The subsequent chapters focus on deaf education in the southeast Australian state of New South Wales within a wider national and global context.
The book's second chapter picks up at the end of World War II, when the Public Instruction (Blind and Infirm Children) Amendment Act 1944 (NSW) finally took effect in 1946, despite being passed two years earlier. Oralism, which “does not include any sign language, sign system or manual alphabet” (p. 50), was by far the primary mode of instruction for deaf children in Australia into the 1960s. One of oralism's most ardent proponents, Helen Keller, visited Australia to great acclaim in 1948, lending her name and prestige to the movement. The growing conflict between oralism and manualism, or the use of sign language, “served to generate incohesion and conflict within the deaf movement. This was because the contrasting views about deafness and how deaf students should learn and be educated revealed tensions and conflicts among people's understandings of both deafness and deaf education” (p. 53). The introduction of increasingly sophisticated hearing aids lent further support to oralism by allowing many deaf students to enroll in “normal” schools.
In chapter 3, Malone discusses the broader push during the 1970s toward integrating deaf students into classrooms with their hearing peers. Simultaneously, Malone argues, the decades-old medical model of disability, in which “people with disabilities were asked to adapt to fit into the world as it was [or] if this was not possible, they were shut away in a specialized institution or isolated at home” (p. 71), began to give way to the normalization theories and practices of the 1970s and the social model of disability in the 1990s (p. 71). Adding further to the integration initiative, boarding schools exclusively for deaf students began converting to day schools during this period. Two of the state's most prominent Catholic schools involved in deaf education, whose alumni are among those Malone interviewed for this work, had shuttered their dormitories by the mid-1970s. One, the Rosary Convent for Girls, closed entirely.
Nonetheless, Catholic schools took on an increasingly prominent leadership role in deaf education during this time, with playgroups and visiting teacher services made available to the families of deaf children. The state's public education system, meanwhile, became enamored of hearing aid technology as a means of helping deaf children integrate into traditional schools. The consequence, Malone argues, “was the result of a fragmented deaf social movement instead of a strong united front” (p. 87).
Entering the 1980s, chapter 4 describes Catholic school engagement of families with social services for deaf children. The visiting teacher service born in the previous decade had slowly grown and proven sustainable. Public school policy lagged, however, and periodically bogged down in the mire of politics. Complicating matters were two significant issues: growing awareness of multiculturalism in Australia throughout the 1980s and the government's formal recognition of Australian Sign Language (Auslan) in 1987. Lobbying organizations, too, became more prominent and more powerful, adding further to the fragmentation of effective advocacy.
The 1990s saw the growth of inclusive education that was supposed to be, in chapter 5's optimistic title, “a new era in deaf education” (p. 119). The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 outlawed discrimination against people with disabilities “in many areas, including education,” which subsequently “drove a huge wave of policy and strategy development across Australia” (p. 121). Government reports drawn up in the wake of this new law highlighted the need for including deaf students in mainstream classrooms. Of particular note, Malone writes, was a 1996 NSW Department of Education feasibility study “which recommended that support provided be based on the educational need of the student and not his or her disability or place of enrollment” (p. 122). Further technological advances in hearing aids, the growth of more lobbying groups, and the proliferation of both private and public services meant that deaf children in the 1990s had more educational options than any students before them. Rather than serving as a panacea, however, Malone argues that the flood of choices led to the uneven delivery of services for deaf students, who were themselves an increasingly diverse population.
The first decade of the new millennium, discussed in chapter 6, saw both good and bad news for deaf children in Australia. Growing national and international collaboration led to greater awareness and understanding of the need for special education services, including deafness. In 2006, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which the government of Australia ratified in 2008. There was, too, a growing public awareness of the diversity of both students and modes of support. At the same time, however, medical and social controversies regarding advocacy and treatment continue to rage. On the logistical side, “state and Commonwealth funding models and the way governments worked with the independent service providers drove competitive behaviors. This served to reinforce the tendency to fragment the deaf movement” (p. 152).
In the brief final chapters, chapter 7 and the conclusion, advocacy continues into the twenty-first century's second decade. While support for deaf students is greater than ever, such efforts “continued to be piecemeal and generally uneven” (p. 183). Malone concludes that although educators and advocates have made tremendous progress in deaf education over the past two centuries, “it is unfortunate that the history of the deaf movement has been characterized by internal fragmentation” (p. 189).
Of particular value to scholars, in addition to her work's thorough grounding in primary source material and secondary literature, are the personal interviews Malone conducted with students and former students of some of the institutions highlighted in the book. Beyond its illustrative value, this oral history provides critical insights into the on-the-ground effects of state and national educational policy-making. That human aspect, so critical to historiography, has often gone missing in histories of special education, and I was delighted to find it here. Malone's excellent book will, I hope, serve as a valuable resource and a foundational text in the history of deaf education for years to come.
