Parenting, Training, and Schooling
This chapter traces the Zobrests’ decision-making regarding their deaf son Jim’s education from a pediatrician’s diagnosis in Erie, Pennsylvania, through Jim’s early training at the Gertrude A. Barber Center, to the family’s removal to Tucson, so that Jim could attend the Arizona School for the Deaf and the Blind, a public school. The analysis centers on the claims of competing pedagogies in deaf education: American Sign Language and socialization within Deaf culture, identity, and community and mainstreaming through Total Communication, speechreading, and Signed Exact English. The preference for mainstreaming is analyzed in the context of both a parental disposition toward complete social integration of deaf children and in the context of strong parental activism in behalf of enhancing opportunities for deaf children.