Read the points and prepare the questions for class discussion if

you want to know more about the history of Deaf Education and
SASL.

• One may wonder where South African Sign Language (SASL) originated. Firstly, let us
go back to the history of sign languages. In the 1600s written records showed that
there were Deaf people using sign languages in Europe. Sign languages blossomed
while used in the education of the Deaf until 1880. There were many Deaf teachers
employed at schools of the Deaf during those times. According to Gannon (1981:3),
"Teaching was becoming a promising career for deaf persons. Deaf teachers were in
demand ..." The teachers also acted as great role models for Deaf learners in the areas
of linguistic and socio-cultural identity.

• Many missionaries were sent to South Africa, and this missionary-minded approach
also reached the South African Deaf community in the 1860s in the form of the Irish
Dominican nuns and, later, the Dutch Reformed Church.

• The German Dominican sisters followed, bringing with them German signs and the
two-handed European alphabet. Additionally, the German Sisters brought with them
an oral approach to educating Deaf learners, thus introducing South Africa to the
modality debate.

• The first school for Black Deaf children, Kutlwanong, was opened in 1941 in Gauteng.
That school used a system of signs invented in Britain known as the Paget-Gorman
System, a sign system that is a manually coded form of English using 37 basic hand
signs and 21 distinct hand postures. Although it did not correspond to the natural signs
of the Deaf community, it did allow for the development of a strong visually-based
communication code that facilitated rather than repressed a strong Deaf culture.

• When the Nationalist Party government came into power in 1948, there was greater
fragmentation of Deaf communities along racial lines, and as a result of the homelands
policy, a number of additional schools for African Deaf children were established in the
rest of the country, divided according to the spoken language of the ethnic groups, and
in line with the Bantustan separate development policy. For example, the Kutlwanong
School moved to Rustenburg and served the Setswana, South Sotho, and Sepedi
“speakers”.

• Black, Coloured and Indian (BCI) schools used visually-based communication that
enhanced the development of their sign language and strengthened their identity as
part of a Deaf culture, they reaped some benefits from apartheid and were in some
ways superior in their education offerings to those offering education to “privileged”
White Deaf learners.

• Deaf learners are usually enculturated into Deaf culture through schooling where they
interact with other Deaf learners and learn to acquire SASL as a first language. It is
estimated that more than 90% of Deaf children are born to hearing parents; less than
10% are born to Deaf parents. The former have a great difficulty in acquiring language
at home.

Morgan R, 2014:256, Morgans G. H, 1999