Every year in Kansas, hundreds of deaf children, their parents and experts struggle with where they would get the best education.
That was reflected Tuesday in a mock trial at Johnson County District Court. Students at the Kansas School for the Deaf considered the issues in a case and rendered a verdict.
Kester Horn-Marsh, their English teacher, said he intentionally set up a controversial situation to teach the issues and the law.
“They’re going to marry other deaf people and many are going to have deaf babies and they’re going to face this,” he said.
The scenario Tuesday:
The mother and father of 5-year-old Brooke Harper have divorced because of irreconcilable differences, and they originally agreed the mother would decide all educational and medical issues.
Brooke attends preschool at KSD, communicates with sign language and is happy there.
Her mother is somewhat hard of hearing but speaks and does not use sign language. She got Brooke cochlear implants but the child has not learned to use them and speaks poorly. The mother wants to put her into a school for hearing children so she can better learn to use the implants and function in that world.
Her father, who is deaf and uses sign language, however, wants Brooke to stay at KSD. He wants the jury to rule that he has equal say in Brooke’s education and to keep her in the deaf school.
The issues that came out Tuesday in testimony by real experts and are not easy to deal with, Horn-Marsh said. At the deaf school, students learn the curriculum and speak with sign language, he said. At oral school, “there is less time spent on core curriculum issues and more on practicing speaking issues.”
Not all those with the cochlear implants succeed in the hearing environment and can suffer problems with self confidence and identity issues, he and experts said.
Things must be decided case by case, they said.
The jurors deliberated an hour and announced a verdict for the father and for the daughter to stay at the school for the deaf. They recommended the mother learn sign language.
Alfonso Torres Jr., a ninth-grader and 15-year-old jury foreman, later gave the jury’s reasoning: “Because we are deaf and also because we live in a deaf world; we didn’t want that student to go through the pain of going to an oral school.”
Other students in the courtroom cheered the verdict.
