Myths about deafness in the imaginary of young and adult students of an inclusive bilingual school

Abstract

Nowadays discussions involving deafness and the deaf people are becoming more frequent in our society, but even with a greater approach to that subject and the presence of deaf people in inclusive environments, the general population still have a lack of knowledge about the issues involving the deafness. That helps to create an erroneous sense-common and stereotypes involving the deafness, deaf person and their specificities. In this context, this article aims to report and discuss some myths about deafness through an activity carried out in a municipal school in Campinas. The activity had as a proposal to investigate the knowledge of hearing students about deafness and the deaf person to discuss and deconstruct the main myths surrounding this theme. Also, is proposed an discussion about the role of inclusion at the modification of the view that the hearing people have of the deaf people and about deafness itself. The results obtained indicate that just inserting deaf students in the classroom does not promote a change in the view of hearing students about the experience of being deaf or about the brazilian sign language. To obtain that result would be necessary that the management of the schools mobilizes itself with the aim of providing situations in which the deaf assume a leading position in the classroom and at school to share true knowledges about the differences and the potentialities of deaf people and about the brazilian sign language, in order to overlap the myths widespread and often assumed as true.