The John Tracy clinic: Opportunities for deaf children

Shanahan, Louise

doi:10.1080/01463376509368722

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“…The Tracy Clinic had been founded in 1942 by Louise Treadwell Tracy, wife of actor Spencer Tracy, whose first son was deaf. It had started as a group of mothers of deaf children meeting, and developed to a pre-school with a spoken language orientation based on the concept that “parents and very young deaf children should have an opportunity to learn together” (Shanahan, 1965, p. 17).…”

Section: Making a Community Of Parent-advocates: The Shepherd Centrementioning

confidence: 99%

The hope and burden of early intervention: Parents' educational planning for their deaf children in post-1960s Australia

Payne

Proctor

Spandagou

2022

HER

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PurposeThis article examines the educational decision-making of hearing parents for their deaf children born during a period (1970–1990s) before the introduction of new-born hearing screening in New South Wales, where the study was conducted, and prior to the now near-universal adoption of cochlear implants in Australia.Design/methodology/approachWe present findings from an oral history study in which parents were invited to recall how they planned for the education of their deaf children.FindingsWe propose that these oral histories shed light on how the concept, early intervention – a child development principle that became axiomatic from about the 1960s – significantly shaped the conduct of parents of deaf children, constituting both hope and burden, and intensifying a focus on early decision-making. They also illustrate ways in which parenting was shaped by two key structural shifts, one, being the increasing enrolment of deaf children in mainstream rather than separate classrooms and the other being the transformation of deafness itself by developments in hearing assistance technology.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to a sociological/historical literature of “parenting for education” that almost entirely lacks deaf perspectives and a specialist literature of parental decision-making for deaf children that is almost entirely focussed on the post cochlear implant generation. The paper is distinctive in its treatment of the concept of “early intervention” as a historical phenomenon rather than a “common sense” truth, and proposes that parents of deaf children were at the leading edge of late-20th and early-21st century parenting intensification.

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Section: Making a Community Of Parent-advocates: The Shepherd Centrementioning

confidence: 99%