The Cultural Construction of Linguistic Incompetence through Schooling: Deaf Education and the Transformation of the Linguistic Environment in Bali, Indonesia

Abstract

This article examines the impact of teaching strategies on the linguistic competence of students in a school for deaf pupils in Bali, Indonesia. In particular, the article examines the effect of the use of a signed version of Indonesian on the linguistic participation of students in their native communities. The school's teaching strategies are based on Western models transferred to Indonesia via the training of Indonesian teachers in the West and the presence of Western experts in Indonesia. Indonesian education administrators have implemented this expertise without questioning its value and appropriateness. Moreover, proponents of nationalism have imposed the use of the national language, Indonesian, in education, regardless of the fact that Indonesian is rarely used in the villages that many deaf students return to. These factors exert a particularly forceful and disabling, symbolic violence on the school's pupils.