Book Review: The Rising of Lotus Flowers: Self-Education by Deaf Children in Thai Boarding Schools

Howard, a prominent member of his community, made a revealing comment to a mixed audience of hearing and Deaf people. All members of his family – his parents and brother as well as aunts and uncles – are Deaf. He told the audience that he had spent his early childhood among Deaf people but when he was six his world changed: his parents too him to a school for Deaf children. “Would you believe,” he said, pausing expertly for effect, “I never know I was deaf until I first entered school?” (Padden & Humphries, 1988, pp. 16 – 17).

“There were some popular ways of doing the stories. We’d start with the beginning of the film. We’d put our hands together, then slowly draw them apart, each hand representing the fabric as the curtains were drawn apart, all the while doing our vocal roars in imitation of the overture. Then we’d do the rolling up of the titles and credits. One boy was my favorite, and everyone else’s too. He could transform each episode into a wonderful story with the kind of detail we liked” (Padden & Humphries, 1988, p.94).

Above are the two of the many anecdotes and reminiscing stories related to the institutional, residential school experience that deaf people shared with others. Regretfully, in the past few decades, there is an ongoing trend in an immense shift from institutional, residential schools for deaf K-12 students to public mainstreamed education across the United States. As more deaf students enter public mainstream schools with (and, in some cases, without) deaf programs, education-related legislation (e.g., the Individual with Disabilities Education Act of 1992) has (and will continue to)

accelerated this trend. With current federal legislations in education (e.g., No Child Left Behind Act of 2001) gaining in prominence, this current trend in dwindling number of deaf students in institutional, residential schools (and thereby forcing increasing number of institutional, residential school closures) is not likely to go anywhere.

In reviewing the literature on deaf education, residential school experience has long been identified as one of the core aspects of deaf culture and community. Historically, many deaf students at most residential schools often learned ASL and gained access to deaf culture in the deaf-oriented environment, e.g., dormitories and, in many cases, classrooms with deaf teachers (e.g., Padden & Humphries, 1988). Everyone in the field of deaf education knows about the immeasurable value of institutional, residential schools to many people in the deaf community.

Deaf people truly value institutional, residential schools because they know and do not argue with the fact that, if not for the language rich (ASL) environment with interaction among their fellow students growing up, they more than likely might have gone through life overwhelmingly disabled linguistically, socially, and cognitively. Regardless, their defense of institutional, residential schools, for the most part, rests on anecdotes and emotional appeals, and this is not enough to sway the policymakers and administrators to keep the institutional, residential schools for the deaf open. Before deciding on whether to close given institutional, residential schools, the policymakers and administrators often ask themselves this question: how does institutional, residential schools contribute to the human development of deaf children in positive ways? They want hard evidence of it, but, sadly, much to the dismay of many deaf people, the policymakers and administrators do not see any due to the lack of empirical study outlining the positive benefits of deaf students’ institutional, residential school experience. “We believe that a lack of in-depth information about the conditions and educational processes within residential schools has contributed to their loss of favor among policymakers. Study of interaction and educational process within residential schools is needed to make a fair assessment of these schools’ role in the education of deaf children” (Reilly & Reilly, 2005, p.xiv). In the end, deaf people and their hearing allies are left on their own to fight the losing battle (in many cases) against closing of their beloved institutional, residential schools, that is until the publication of The Rising of Lotus Flowers book came along.

It was not until 2005 that this book has finally come out to provide the much-needed ammunitions for the institutional, residential school supporters in their fight to save the institutional, residential school from the closures. Had not the authors, Charles B. Reilly

and Nipapon Reilly, put out this book, the outlook of the institutional, residential school supporters would likely to continue to be bleak. This book is a study of the after-hours activities and social organization created by a large group of deaf Bua students within an institutional, residential school (namely and mainly, Bua School for the Deaf). This book is about 376 deaf students living at an institutional, residential school in Thailand and their will to learn and to communicate, which helped them to make the best of a lonely and intellectually desolate situation. Charles B. Reilly and Nipapon Reilly has done an invaluable service in documenting the process and outcomes of how deaf Bua students draw on the resources of their own internal group in face of a wide communication gap and psychological distance between them and hearing-speaking people that surround them.

The book provides insight into the process of acquiring knowledge and linguistic skills in deaf students as a result of being placed in an institutional, residential school for the deaf; it showed how they are learning more than they did or ever could in a non-residential school setting. The book begins with the opening chapter describing the historical significance of residential schools as central source of learning and vital to the survival of a sign language and deaf community in their respective communities at large worldwide. It also presents the research settings and methodologies, and four research questions that helped guide the authors’ research thus providing the foundation of this book’s content. The authors argue that the first and most important contribution of residential schools made to deaf students is providing them an accessible environment within which they can socialize among themselves and acquire a primary language in the form of the sign language that is natural to them. At this social environment, deaf students form lifelong friendships that form the basis for formation of the larger deaf community. The authors also noted that at the Bua residential school as well as two other similar residential schools they visited, the teachers were nearly all hearing with no formal training in sign language instruction and there was negligible exposure to signing deaf adults for the deaf students. As a result, outside their classrooms, younger deaf students turned to their peers and older students for models for learning and acquiring most of their sign language skills and worldly knowledge.

The next chapter (two), the authors review the historical evolution of the educational system in Thailand that began with religious schooling (through Buddhist monastery instruction) in thirteenth century to present national secular public schooling, how this evolution has impacted deaf education in Thailand along the way. The authors note that very low academic expectations for deaf people in traditional Thai society prevails

even over the slowly changing attitude toward deaf people with demonstrations of their capacity and their protected rights under the Thai law. Due to these low expectations, Thai deaf people have had to contend with substandard or “simplified” curriculum stripped of all but the most important “essential” skills. “Since 1978, I have seen deaf children complaining that school is boring because the lessons are not challenging. ‘Copy-copy-copy is all we do’ is a frequent criticism” (Reilly & Reilly, 2005, p. 85).

Chapter three looks at the four social and environmental conditions affecting deaf students who board at the Bua School for the Deaf: physical isolation, detachment from family, limited access to information and alienation from teachers. The authors argue that these four conditions have contributed to the Bua School for the Deaf being a “total institution” for the deaf students who live there, and they believe that these conditions are what shape social interactions among the students themselves. Moreover, this is what the authors believe provide the fertile ground for Thai deaf students’ sign language acquisition and their social organization (thus creating their deaf community).

Chapters four through six make observations of the social organization of deaf Bua student life and the educational and free time activities that deaf Bua students manage among themselves during and after school with minimal adult supervision. Through a handful of descriptive examples in chapter four, the authors explore one aspect of social organization among the deaf Bua students: a complex three-tier social hierarchy of social ranking among the deaf Bua students based on individual student’s level of intellectual and language ability. Using available data from careful observations of deaf Bua students and interviews with them, the authors was able to provide a theoretical description of three levels of social ranking that they believe direct the patterns of social communication between different deaf Bua students at in school and after school activities. They believe that the students are socially organized and ranked in one of the three tiers of social hierarchy based on their given individual level of intellectually and language ability. The authors briefly discuss the given self-explanatory terms that deaf Bua students themselves use to assign each of them based on the strengths their given linguistic and intellectual states of mind (e.g., cognitive strengths or mastery of sign language skills): “numbskulls,” “know-nothing,” “becoming mindful,” and “to be smart.”

As for chapters five and six, the authors describe the free-time activities and students’ patterns of authority in these activities. In these creative free-time activities run by the students, the authors show how the older students help their younger peers to pick up

their sign language and to mature socially complete with world knowledge. For instances, the authors record very observative descriptions of elaborative activities where deaf Bua students share, practice and gain mastery the tool of sign language (e.g., storytelling, broadcasting and interpreting) and participatory gatherings where deaf Bua students can learn knowledge and practice social and linguistic norms (e.g., conversational circles, verbal dueling, and games and sports). The authors also show how older students govern among themselves through patterns of authority; in one instance, the authors show that deaf Bua students use some of their knowledge to aid in their self-governance since they seem to have an intimate understanding of their linguistic and social capabilities growing up. “[These] deaf children were not passive recipients of institutional messages. They actively interpreted and modified school norms. These variations are important to elucidate because they suggest how older pupils have a different ‘theory’ about how youngsters learn (and should be taught)” (Reilly & Reilly, 2005, p.179).

For instance, in their study of free-time activities through observations and interviews with deaf Bua students, the authors find that the “role of the storyteller and of storytelling is so valued by the Bua pupils that they take conscious measures to ensure its continuation. Creative leaders have a clear notion that they are descendants of a line. All seven of the sign masters recalled the name of one or more graduates to whom they felt indebted as models” (Reilly & Reilly, 2005, pp. 151 – 152). Supporting their argument about the value of storytelling to the students in free-time activities, the authors quote one of the deaf Bua student storytelling followers-turned-masters:

I was delighted to watch the sign. I learned form it (took-in-through-the-eyes) and began to practice myself... I really liked to have these stories about problems, about life. I’d watch these things, I didn’t know about these things, I didn’t know what was going on here, but I started to watch it and was delighted to see it. And finally, we would do it every day until lineup time. (Reilly & Reilly, 2005, p.152)

The authors also note that the tradition of storytelling continued with the followers becoming the masters with the leaving of key individuals thus motivating their followers to “take the stage” as one of the students put it: “someone had to do it.” This is a very good example of why many deaf people place imminent personal value on institutional, residential schools for the deaf wanting to save them from closures due to their personal experience growing up in one of these schools.

The final chapter (seven) closes out the book with summary of theoretical review along with discussion of findings for each of the four research questions presented earlier in the opening chapter that guided authors’ research. These findings help support the authors’ theoretical view that the after-school activities at residential schools help deaf students acquire the necessary linguistic skills and world knowledge that they otherwise would not be able to fully acquire from their school’s hearing teachers and this forms the basis for formation of a deaf culture and a deaf community. “The core findings of our 1991-92 study can be stated as follows: The deaf children, ages six to nineteen years, have devised a social organization based on a sign language that their teachers neither appreciate nor use much to support their learning of sign language, in-group and societal norms, and worldly knowledge” (Reilly & Reilly, 2005, p.227). The authors end the book with handful of research-based recommendations (and their justifications) for deaf education policy that they believe will give deaf students a supportive and accessible environment equipped to meet their linguistic and cultural needs and provide full access to education for deaf students.

This The Rising of Lotus Flowers book needs to be recognized for its contribution to the understanding and for showing research-based evidence of benefits for deaf students going to institutional, residential schools. The only setback with this book for any American deaf educators and scholars is that this focuses on a non-American institutional, residential school in Thailand, which in some situations, may or may not make it difficult for some to use in their defense of institutional, residential schools. Also, this book may be an excellent book for any educators and scholars interested in gaining a new, informed perspective about deaf students’ special (cultural and linguistic) educational needs from a cross-cultural viewpoint. Moreover, thanks to The Rising of Lotus Flowers book, the supporters of institutional, residential schools for the deaf will no longer have to rely only on anecdotes and emotional appeals to help convince policymakers and administrators save the schools keeping them open.