Preventive integration

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Preventive integration is a term that describes the integration of the disabled in education for the hearing impaired .

History and definition

The term was coined by Breiner. The basic idea of ​​preventive integration is to organize encounters between hearing and hearing-impaired children in such a way that failures and undesirable developments are prevented or at least mitigated. In practice, this means that hearing children are admitted to a special school . According to Breiner, the decisive factor here is that "... the entire funding process is based on the norms of our society, but at the same time the conditions of the event are geared towards the disabled as the weakest ...".

Preventive integration aims to improve the chances of hearing-impaired children who have to attend a special school tailored to their needs because they cannot do justice to the offers of the mainstream schools. In this way, the advantages of the special school, such as special facilities, subsidies and educators trained in the deaf field, are retained for the hearing impaired. With this measure, the school isolation of hearing-impaired children and thus school segregation is prevented. Right from the start, the hearing-impaired children are not in the “ghetto situation” of a pure class with only the hearing-impaired.

In practice, preventive integration means:

  • bringing normal hearing students into a hearing impaired class
  • the coming into effect of a development process
  • orientation towards the hearing-impaired child
  • exploiting the effectiveness of the group

This model has been in practical use since 1978 in the special kindergarten and since 1992 in the elementary school of the Palatinate Institute for Hearing and Communication in Frankenthal / Palatinate.
This model is currently used in Frankenthal in one class each in grades 1–4. For some years now it has also been used in the state school for the deaf and hard of hearing , Neuwied, and in some schools in Austria, e.g. B. the Josef Rehrl School , Salzburg, or the Michael Reitter State School or State College for Hearing and Vision Education in Linz / Danube.

Criticism from the point of view of the deaf communicating with speech

Proponents of spoken language are usually also proponents of full integration in normal hearing classes; H. in mainstream schools . Therefore, this model of preventive integration is criticized for the fact that the developer of preventive integration wants to train the hearing impaired "too cautiously" or only apparently integratively. For the speech-oriented deaf or professionals it is a concern that deaf people have to be confronted with reality. This means that deaf people should be trained according to this fully integrative approach in schools with normal hearing, where they are confronted with problems with normal hearing people. This should help the child to develop solutions for daily life and to learn to apply them directly in everyday life.

In the opinion of the proponents of the fully integrative approach, mainstream schools are the only right way to achieve this, as the willingness to resolve conflicts should and must be encouraged, especially in school, even for children with normal hearing - even with people with disabilities . Because non-disabled children are confronted with disabled children, they also come into contact with a reality, so that they have to develop appropriate social skills and get to know people with disabilities. In the long term, this has the consequence that a cycle begins: Society gradually increases its acceptance of disabled people - another positive effect that, according to the advocates of the fully integrative approach, should inevitably occur.

With preventive integration, on the other hand, the children who are to go to school with the disabled child are pre-selected. This means that these children already have no fear of contact with disabled children from home. Thus, in the opinion of the proponents of spoken language, the aim of preparing the child for everyday (professional) everyday life with small everyday conflicts with hearing people is not achieved. Thus one cannot speak of a real integration or preparation for everyday (professional) life.

literature

  • Herbert L. Breiner: Preventive Integration . Frankenthal 1989, ISBN 3-924935-11-4 .
  • Alexander Hüther : School experiment on preventive integration. Final report . Frankenthal 1997, ISBN 3-924935-24-6 .
  • Alexander Hüther: Effects of integrated and non-integrated schooling for the hard of hearing at special schools. Results of a comparative student survey with special consideration of the results in mainstream schools . In: Hearing Impaired Education Heft 3, 2001
  • Alexander Hüther: 30 years of preventive integration: What kind of parents are those who put their "normal" child in a special school? In: Hearing Impaired Education Issue 1, 2008
  • Friedlinde Hüther: Preventive integration for children with hearing loss - an alternative to integration in mainstream schools? In: Schnecke (57) 2007.
  • Pfalzinstitut Frankenthal (Ed.): 30 years of preventive integration. Theory and practice at the Palatinate Institute for the hearing-impaired in Frankenthal . Median-Verlag, Heidelberg 2008, ISBN 978-3-941146-00-6 .