both languages. The "bicultural" aspect of this philosophy is that they teach both hearing and deaf culture. They teach deaf children to be proud of their deaf heritage. They expose the children to deaf adult role models (Mason 1995). Total Communication Philosophy:The total communication philosophy has many variations. In general, they use a combination of various methods and approaches to meet the individual child's needs. A combination of sign language, fingerspelling and spoken words is often used. In addition, some programs may include the use of Cued Speech to assist the child in English Access. These programs may use speech and language therapists, audiological training, and assistive devices in the course of instruction for deaf children (Quigley 1984).Literacy and Academic Development/AchievementHistorically speaking, educational achievement among the deaf has been poor. However, there have been numerous deaf people have become successful. We must remember that deafness is not a mental defect. The reason for low academic achievement begins with language delays. If a child is diagnosed at two or three years of age as having a hearing loss, there is a high potential for language delays since the child may have been missing large portions if not all of the auditory input that hearing children get from birth (Walker 1998). Compounded with this, there have been lower expectations on academic achievement of deaf children. In general, a child who is expected to achieve high goals and who is encouraged at home and at school tends to do better. The area in which deaf children have traditionally been low is in reading and literacy in English (Walker 1998). Every child, including deaf children, needs a rich-reading environment at home. They need exposure to both analytic (grammar, vocabulary, etc) reading and functional (meaning, literature-based, concepts) reading (Walker 1998). Deaf children of deaf parents have been kn...
