Education of the Deaf in Brazil: educational policies as drivers of deaf life forms

Abstract

This paper proposes a reflection on deaf life forms in the context of educational policies. The objective is to investigate how deaf life forms are standardized, at the national level, by educational policies. The methodological approach is based on the selection and analysis of a set of national documents, in the time frame of the last three decades, using a qualitative approach, theoretically based on Foucaultian Studies, from which the concept of experience matrix is ​​chosen as a theoretical-conceptual tool. The results of the research show that educational policies are constituted as a surface that brings together: a) a set of knowledge that gathers conceptions and disputes about deafness, the deaf experience and the educational paths aimed at the deaf population, influenced, predominantly, by the areas of Health and Education; b) the historical record of the regulations that led/lead the educational processes of the deaf in Brazil, and; c) projections of characteristics, such as identity traits, directed at deaf subjects conformed in this game of tensions between the fields that dispute the discursive hegemony over the forms of deaf lives. The conclusions indicate the recent strengthening of the bilingual emphasis on Deaf Education, as an approach to the historical demands of the deaf movement and as a possibility for the emergence of other forms of life, more affectively linked to each other, considering that this model contributes to the construction of a school life experience deeply marked by interaction between peers, in contrast to regular schools that often reiterate the principles of Special Education.