Educação de surdos e preconceito : bilinguismo na vitrine e bimodalismo precário no estoque

This work performs an ethnographic study, under a social-anthropological theoretical basis on deafness, that puts it under the perspective of difference, oppositely to the clinical and therapeutical discourse.The field research was developed in a school for deafs in a Brazilian state capital, that officially names itself as bilingual, during the whole year of 2010.The observation was accomplished in the space of a deaf seventh grade students' classroom, during the classes of Portuguese Language and Brazilian Sign Language.The reality observed shows that, in spite of the bilingual proposition prescribed for the education of deafs, the observed school, which represents the universe of other deaf schools, is characterized by an absolute absence of a qualified and differentiated teaching method for deafs, with a predominance of oral targeted practices.It confirms that school goes on producing and reproducing practices that induce the condition of being functional illiterates, which the majority of Brazilian deafs achieve even after sitting during years on the school chair.Among the causes that conduce to this result, the analysis of the empirical data points to: (a) the prejudice against deaf students, that stigmatizes them as handicapped people who have not as effective development conditions as hearing people; (b) the absent or deficient formation of teachers; (c) the efforts to absorb the deaf into the hegemonic culture, which acts negatively both on his identitarian formation and on his sense of belonging.