Silvana Veinberg

Silvana collaborates with parents, teachers, doctors, and public administrators to ensure that deaf people live productive lives and are able to act as autonomous citizens with the right and freedom to integrate more easily with the hearing public. She is doing so chiefly by improving deaf education through such measures as introducing sign language into the classroom. In addition, she is ensuring the spread of information and medical research regarding deafness throughout the region. This research helps direct public policy and education reforms, public awareness efforts, and health care in relation to the deaf community. Silvana is also challenging harmful labels and stereotypes that stem from public misinformation and engender prejudice toward the deaf. In their place she is helping the Argentine public see and respect the qualities that distinguish the deaf community. This is a first step in achieving social integration. By involving deaf individuals and groups in understanding and defining their place in society, she is helping them to integrate.

With the exception of most of Brazil, Latin American countries do not adequately provide for their deaf citizens. For example, in Colombia, some bilingual programs have been designed for deaf children between infancy and 5-years-old, but they do not continue in formal schooling; in Uruguay, recent national budget cuts ended programs for training deaf adults as teachers of bilingual education (conducted in Spanish and sign language) and for training deaf children as teachers; in Chile, there are scattered professional groups working in deaf education, but there are no bilingual schools.

As for deaf communities in many parts of the world, the deaf community in Argentina carries the stigma of mental disability, and many of its members face isolation and lack access to effective education and other important public resources. Many people in Argentina and throughout Latin America see the deaf as incapable of learning as quickly as their counterparts. In some cases this prejudice has extreme consequences, manifest when educators, public administrators, and parents discourage or prevent deaf children from attending school regularly or at all. A recent survey of deaf adults in Argentina reveals that 80 percent are functionally illiterate and experience difficulty in performing routine tasks that would enable them to live on their own. Labeled disabled in childhood and later marginalized as illiterate adults, many in the deaf community develop chemical dependencies and other problems. Since they have had inadequate language training, they find it frustrating and problematic to communicate their problems and often refrain from asking for help. The challenge for deaf people begins at home and usually becomes acute in the schools. In public school classrooms in Argentina and elsewhere, deaf children often face a world that makes little sense to them. Teachers use oral instructional methods that are insensitive to their needs and abilities. The underlying problem is one of communication–between deaf students who use sign language and understand little of spoken language and their teachers who insist on using oral instructions. Deaf children learn Spanish from teachers who, in many cases, have not been properly trained to teach language skills to deaf students. Furthermore, signing is not presented to deaf children as an option, even though research reveals that learning sign language as their first language facilitates learning oral and written language later. Important messages are understandable only by hearing students (such as bells that signify the end of class period); consequently, deaf children often feel lost and insecure in the school environment.

Even the more progressive teaching methods encourage teachers to play a therapeutic role with their deaf students rather than challenge them and expand their knowledge of key subjects such as mathematics, science, and history. As a result, many deaf students conclude their primary education by 16 or so and are illiterate for the rest of their lives. In Buenos Aires province, 12 percent of deaf primary school students move on to high school; 10 percent graduate. In comparison, 94 percent of hearing students go to high school and 74 percent graduate.

With the exception of most of Brazil, Latin American countries do not adequately provide for their deaf citizens. For example, in Colombia, some bilingual programs have been designed for deaf children between infancy and 5-years-old, but they do not continue in formal schooling; in Uruguay, recent national budget cuts ended programs for training deaf adults as teachers of bilingual education (conducted in Spanish and sign language) and for training deaf children as teachers; in Chile, there are scattered professional groups working in deaf education, but there are no bilingual schools.

As for deaf communities in many parts of the world, the deaf community in Argentina carries the stigma of mental disability, and many of its members face isolation and lack access to effective education and other important public resources. Many people in Argentina and throughout Latin America see the deaf as incapable of learning as quickly as their counterparts. In some cases this prejudice has extreme consequences, manifest when educators, public administrators, and parents discourage or prevent deaf children from attending school regularly or at all. A recent survey of deaf adults in Argentina reveals that 80 percent are functionally illiterate and experience difficulty in performing routine tasks that would enable them to live on their own. Labeled disabled in childhood and later marginalized as illiterate adults, many in the deaf community develop chemical dependencies and other problems. Since they have had inadequate language training, they find it frustrating and problematic to communicate their problems and often refrain from asking for help. The challenge for deaf people begins at home and usually becomes acute in the schools. In public school classrooms in Argentina and elsewhere, deaf children often face a world that makes little sense to them. Teachers use oral instructional methods that are insensitive to their needs and abilities. The underlying problem is one of communication–between deaf students who use sign language and understand little of spoken language and their teachers who insist on using oral instructions. Deaf children learn Spanish from teachers who, in many cases, have not been properly trained to teach language skills to deaf students. Furthermore, signing is not presented to deaf children as an option, even though research reveals that learning sign language as their first language facilitates learning oral and written language later. Important messages are understandable only by hearing students (such as bells that signify the end of class period); consequently, deaf children often feel lost and insecure in the school environment.

Even the more progressive teaching methods encourage teachers to play a therapeutic role with their deaf students rather than challenge them and expand their knowledge of key subjects such as mathematics, science, and history. As a result, many deaf students conclude their primary education by 16 or so and are illiterate for the rest of their lives. In Buenos Aires province, 12 percent of deaf primary school students move on to high school; 10 percent graduate. In comparison, 94 percent of hearing students go to high school and 74 percent graduate.

Silvana is implementing a range of solutions to the problems encountered by deaf communities in Argentina and in neighboring countries. Her strategy is based on the notion that deafness in any community must be evaluated from as many aspects as it affects. To this end, Silvana collaborates with a wide variety of groups–teachers, parents and relatives of deaf people, health professionals, university students and administrators, legislators and policymakers, and the private sector–and involves herself in diverse activities, ranging from sitting on the board of activist organizations to working to install lighted school bells in classrooms.

Since the lack of quality education is such a major challenge in the deaf community, Silvana focuses much energy on the education sector. As an advisor to the Special Education Office in Buenos Aires, she works both with staff at 65 schools for the deaf in the province and with the growing number of communities outside of the capital where she conducts workshops. Teachers are eager to absorb and apply the techniques she offers that represent an effective approach to overcoming their deaf students' academic failure. Silvana is also working with the Deaf Professorship of Argentina to develop a new curriculum for the education of deaf teachers that will include a sign language component.

Silvana sees language training as a critical problem for the deaf. She feels strongly that their lack of aural ability should not prevent them from developing verbal skills. She is introducing Argentine Sign Language as the language of communication and learning for deaf students. She is also helping teachers develop and use effective techniques for teaching Spanish to deaf students, as this is critically important to their success in becoming active members of society. Silvana's program promotes sign language practice at a very early stage of deaf students' scholastic development and makes classroom teachers, both hearing and deaf, responsible for their bilingual education as they progress.

Once they leave the school system, deaf youths' prospects for success in adulthood are bleak. Silvana conducts training for educators of deaf children at La Matanza University. She is also working to encourage deaf people to become teachers themselves. This helps make the school community more inclusive, but more importantly, Silvana has found that deaf teachers also make excellent counselors and liaisons with hearing teachers, helping them learn sign language and other methods of communication with their deaf students.

Parents, not just teachers, are important role models in deaf people's lives. In Argentina, parents and schools share responsibility for prolonging the deafness-as-handicap myth. Silvana's Deaf Children Parents Association functions as a support system and lobbying group for families of deaf Argentines. Through it, Silvana organizes reflection and counseling workshops, disseminates information leaflets, and teaches parents to promote best practices in the treatment of their deaf children. The association also provides Silvana with a volunteer base to help her in her work.

In the medical arena, Silvana is driving a new outlook on deafness in the public health sector. She feels there is an urgent need to stop treating deaf people as sick–trying to "heal" them. As a member of the Argentine Pediatric Association, she coordinates and participates in congresses, seminars, and discussion forums and develops materials for hospitals; she also writes articles on phonoaudiology for medical journals and magazines and has appeared as a guest lecturer at Argentine universities.

To date, Silvana has worked directly with more than 4,000 deaf children and adults, university students, teachers, medical professionals, business people, family members of the deaf, and public officials. She has had an indirect impact on tens of thousands more. Because she believes that lasting change will occur only when society has been educated about the numerous issues of deafness, she is actively laying the groundwork for a national network of representatives from deaf organizations, medical institutions, the education field, civil engineering and public works, international nongovernmental organizations, politics, and deaf people's families. To this end she recently led the First Provincial Congress on Deafness and Education in the Twenty-First Century. In the congress she coordinated simultaneous sign translation for the first time in Argentine history. Thanks to the success of this event, her networking project has great potential to be funded by Bristol University. Silvana has also begun dialogues with international academic organizations in Sweden, Spain, Colombia, and Chile.

Silvana's work with the deaf began following high school when she assisted an audiologist at a deaf school. There she observed the many obstacles deaf people encounter in communicating with hearing teachers and with the hearing world generally. After this initial exposure to the deaf community, Silvana began to notice how the public education system was failing deaf students. She resolved to learn sign language; her deaf cousin taught her to sign in return for Silvana's help with class assignments.

Silvana's abiding respect for the power of education and her respect for differences among people can be traced to her family roots. Her grandfather was the founder of Sholem Aleijem, the country's most prominent Jewish school, the one that Silvana herself attended.

In college Silvana wrote her senior thesis on the emotional problems linked to deafness, definitively establishing her commitment to helping deaf people in their access to information, participation, and communication with society. While researching the thesis, she traveled to the United States for the first time. There she both found a comprehensive bibliography of sources supporting her ideas and discovered sign language in use both in daily life and in the classroom. Her own experience as a non-English speaker in America paralleled her subject of study. As she struggled to learn English and pursue her education under teachers who did not speak her language, Silvana developed many of her methods for improving deaf education in Latin America. In 1987 the American Association of University Women granted her a scholarship to develop and then apply her fresh understanding of deaf education in her home country.

When Silvana returned to Argentina, the National Commission on Science and Technology Research offered her a scholarship to investigate Argentine Sign Language linguistics and use it to introduce the language into public education. She declined the offer in order to further her studies. She spent the next years at the Argentine Deaf-Mute Confederation, where in 1991, she became the director of the pedagogy department. In 1993 she gained global perspective as a pedagogy counselor for the Deaf World Federation in Finland.

Since her return to Argentina, Silvana has worked relentlessly to improve the lives of deaf people at every level. She developed an addiction-prevention program for deaf people, for which the National Social Ministry recognized her as a social innovator. She received a grant from the Kellogg Foundation to train deaf and hearing teachers in educating deaf children. She has trained employees of companies like Edesur, a private electricity supplier, to serve deaf customers properly. In 1999, with the support of the Abilis Foundation of Finland, she trained deaf adults to tell classic children's tales to deaf public school students in Argentine Sign Language. The unprecedented success of this initiative proved to many teachers and school administrators that better methods existed for teaching deaf children and generated a huge demand for sign-language training.