A Grammar of Catalan Sign Language (LSC)

The first documents related with Deaf education are from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At that time, a monk, Fray Ponce de León, is considered the first teacher for the deaf in Spain. Later another monk, Juan Pablo Bonet, published a book in which he explained the methodology he used to teach spoken language to deaf students at that time, which was based in fingerspelling. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the education of deaf students was influenced by two methodological trends: i) the oral method, which focused in the teaching of spoken language, and ii) the gestural method, which was based in the method used by a monk in France (L’Épée) called ‘methodical signs’. The fourth of February of 1800 the first school for the deaf was created in Barcelona. The school was run by a religious teacher, Joan Albert Martí, who used the oral method in his classes in order to teach how to read and write.

In 1880, a conference in Milan was held to discuss Deaf education methodologies. In this conference, hearing educators decided that the best method for educating deaf children was the oral method, so sign language was completely banned from education. In the beginnings of the twentieth century other schools for the deaf were created in Catalonia: Escuela de la Purísima (School of La Purísima)(1903), Instituto Catalán de Sordomudos (Catalan Institute of Deafmute) (1904) and Casa de la Caridad (House of Charity) (unknown date). Another school was created in Lleida in the mid twentieth century: Sant Josep de las Servias. In the mid 70’s the Escuela de la Purísima moved to Torrebonica, in the city of Terrassa. All these schools were specific for the deaf and were religious. They either started as schools segregated by sex: Purísima was a single sex school for girls at the beginning and the Instituto Catalán de Sordomudos started as a single sex school for boys. Later on, they turned into mixed schools. 

In the seventies other schools were created in order to attend deaf children educational needs: CRAS Sabadell, Centro Piloto Asociación para la Reeducación Auditiva de los Niños Sordos (ARANS), Centre Municipal Fonoaudiològic José María de Porcioles (Phonoaudiological Municipal Centre José María de Porcioles), and Centro Médico de Audición y Lenguaje (Medical Centre of Hearing and Speech).

In 1982 the law LISMI, Ley de integración social de los minusválidos (Law of social integration for the disabled)was passed and the specific schools for the deaf were disbanded in favour of the integration of deaf students in mainstream schools. Only one specific school was created to take deaf students that did not have a good adaptation at the mainstream schools. Also, at that year the first centre offering educational resources for hearing impaired was created (CREDA, Centre de recursos educatius per a deficients auditius [Centre of educational resources for the hearing impaired]).

At present, the most common situation in Catalonia is that deaf children are integrated in mainstream schools. However, there are some schools with bilingual programs in Barcelona city; two primary schools: Centre d’Educació Especial Josep Pla and Centre d'educació infantil i primària municipal (CEIPM) Tres Pins, and a high school centre: Institut d’Educació Secundària Consell de Cent. The CEIPM Tres Pins was created in 1984 as a mainstream school with integration of deaf students. It was born from a previous specific school for the deaf (Centre Municipal Fonoaudiològic José María de Porcioles). In 1994 it became a bilingual school (Catalan-LSC) with preference for the integration of deaf students. At this bilingual school, deaf children share the classroom with hearing children, and there are different professionals coordinated with different functions in each one of the groups. In the regular classes there are two professionals: i) the teacher, who is in charge of the whole group, and ii) a speech therapist, who is competent in LSC and works as a support teacher for deaf students, adapting the content into LSC. Moreover, there are two professionals that work with the group of deaf students aside from the rest: i) a Deaf LSC teacher, who teaches LSC to deaf students, and ii) a speech therapist who focuses in the development of spoken language. After primary school in Tres Pins, students can continue their high school studies at IES Consell de Cent. Once at IES Consell de Cent, in the first period of high school (Educació secundària obligatòria ‘mandatory secondary education’) students are provided with educational psychologists and speech therapists that have at least a B2 level in LSC. In the second period (Batxillerat ‘baccalaureate’) they are provided with a sign language interpreter. In the table below an overview of the different schooling modalities and linguistic options for the students is offered.

                                                                               (based on Sánchez-Amat, 2015: 382)

However, not all the options listed in the table above are available in every region of Catalonia. Some centres actually change their programs depending on the student and offer ad hoc individualized programs that determine which resources will be made available in each case.