Deaf Education

Deaf education in New Zealand has had a difficult history. Despite early attempts to create a signing Deaf school in the late 19th century, the Milan Conference in 1880 declared that an oral method of language articulation was “superior” to the use of signing in Deaf education. So began a century of the suppression of singing in Deaf schools and the wider ramifications of such a policy on Deaf people. Modern Deaf education has progressed a long way and bilingualism is now the official policy and a single nationwide service for Deaf compulsory education. Tertiary education began to be accessible in the late 1990s with the emerging availability of qualified NZSL interpreters from the Auckland Institute of Technology programme (now AUT University). Victoria University of Wellington established a Deaf Research Studies Unit which supports both the creation and maintenance of a NZSL Dictionary, as well as vital training for NZSL tutors and mainstream university students.