Total Communication - History

History

Total Communication was originally developed by David Denton at the Maryland School for the Deaf in 1967, although the term “total communication” was first used by Roy Holcomb in California and was adopted by the Maryland school as the official name for their educational philosophy. TC was supposed to find a middle ground in age-old disputes between oralism and manualism, and as an alternative to Simultaneous Communication. In practice, however, most Total Communication programs use some form of Simultaneous Communication.

Total Communication educational programs have been established in the UK, France, U.S.A, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, France, Germany and elsewhere. In the United States, TC was most popular during the 1970s and 1980s, when most schools and programs for children who are deaf, as well as most major organizations in the field supported the TC philosophy. Today, the debate seems to be between TC programs and bilingual-bicultural education.

Read more about this topic:  Total Communication

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.
    Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)

    The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it.
    Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)

    I assure you that in our next class we will concern ourselves solely with the history of Egypt, and not with the more lurid and non-curricular subject of living mummies.
    Griffin Jay, and Reginald LeBorg. Prof. Norman (Frank Reicher)