Alone in the Mainstream Looking Back on Public School as a Deaf or Hard of Hearing Child First Edition, 20th Anniversary Edition
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In 1975, federal legislation initiated drastic changes in the education of deaf and hard of hearing children. Public Law 94-142, later known as IDEA, proposed to provide the “Least Restrictive Environment” for all such children. In the years since, advocates for deaf and hard of hearing children have raised the alarm that mainstream educational settings can cause language and social deprivation for these children.
In Alone in the Mainstream, author Gina A. Oliva documents her experience as a “solitaire,” the only deaf or hard of hearing student in her school. Oliva felt alone because she couldn’t communicate easily with her classmates and because she had no peers who shared a similar experience. As an adult, when she began her career at Gallaudet University, she realized that she wasn’t alone and that her experience was widely shared with other mainstreamed students. She decided to write about this commonality and invited other solitaires to reflect on their own experiences in emails and essays. Collective themes of isolation, low expectations, and low self-esteem emerged. Alone in the Mainstream blends Oliva’s personal narrative with the reflections of sixty other solitaires and makes the case that deaf and hard of hearing children need each other.