Category talk:Schools for the hearing-impaired

Move proposal

I propose that this category be moved to Category:Schools for the deaf because it is the more common name for a school that teaches children who are not hearing.

Example here: http://www.deafconnect.com/deaf/school.html ("hearing impaired" 23, "for the deaf" more than 100)
Even oral schools that mention "deaf" or "hearing impaired" in the name more commonly use "for the deaf": http://www.oraldeafed.org/schools/index.html#England ("for the deaf" 8, "hearing impaired" 2, the rest don't mention it and simply use the type of education, i.e. "oral" or "hearing/listening and speech" school)

Google results:
school for the deaf - 15,800,000 results
school for the hearing impaired - 15,600,000 results (but this search is also bringing up "school for the deaf" results)
school for the hearing impaired -deaf - 9,400,000 results
"school for the hearing impaired" - 502,000 results

- Purplewowies (talk) 02:23, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

• Support, "deaf" seems to be the more common use. Kaldari (talk) 03:30, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose for consistency with the parent category. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 04:56, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

• Comment The category name there also isn't the most common term (this was the rationale for moving "hearing impairment" to "deafness" on the English Wikipedia as well). I still hold that this is an extremely uncommon term (the exact title of this category in quotes gets less than 1,000 results on Google, and without the "s" on schools, only 10). - Purplewowies (talk) 17:56, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

I think that disrupts a whole series of related subcategories of "Category:Disabilities by type" in the form "XYZ impairment", and so is not a good idea. It also raises the issue of whether the other categories are to be renamed: "schools for the blind", "schools for the crippled", and so on. I don't think this is a good route to take. Finally, a term like "hearing impairment" indicates that there is a range of disability, from people who have a mild hearing impairment to those who are profoundly deaf. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 18:21, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

The only other "school" category currently is Category:Schools for people with visual impairment, and any problems with the title in this vein could be solved with a move discussion for that page. There isn't a policy against Category:Hearing impairment having a subcategory of Category:Schools for the deaf, and that term is the most common, while this one (even more so than "schools for the hearing impaired") is exceptionally uncommon. - Purplewowies (talk) 17:19, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

•  Oppose. Hearing impairment replaces more and more the (subset) deafs in many languages (it looks as if English is lagging in that respect), and is technically more correct, so a better long term solution. And when we would change the name, we will not lose 20 % of the deaf schools. Google is often a bad tool to find correct names. --Foroa (talk) 13:45, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

• Comment From what I've seen, English has been moving away from "hearing impaired" and using "deaf/hard of hearing" more often. And aren't category names supposed to be in English? Students with all levels of hearing loss go to schools for the deaf, despite their name. At the current name, no schools on either list use that term. Category:Schools for the hearing-impaired is not covering what 80-90% of the schools are using (worldwide, as evidenced by the lists provided). Moving to Category:Schools for the deaf will fit what most schools use, and I don't see why the schools would change their names when many of the American ones at least have been using "for the deaf" in their name for 50-100 years, some even close to 200. Even if the Google results are not a good example, the lists provided are from reliable sources and also definitively prove that "school for the deaf" is by far the more common term, even among an exclusively oral school listing, which is a teaching methodology that is more likely to use the term "hearing impaired". - Purplewowies (talk) 06:19, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

• This has nothing to do with languages; it concerns the concept: many schools in other countries use the "hard of hearing" (equals hearing impairment) concept, as you say "despite their name". So we better keep the top level name right; over time, those schools will change name anyway to be politically correct. There is a good chance that if we trickle down to deaf schools, that some people will recreate the wider "Schools for people with hearing impairment" category again. --Foroa (talk) 07:23, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

• Do you have sources for the use of "hard of hearing"? The lists I linked to contain even less schools with that term than "for the hearing impaired", and I can't find any schools that use "for the hard of hearing". The parent category Category:Hearing impairment doesn't have to change (I'm assuming that's what you mean by "top-level", if not, please correct me); there's no policy that says that a subcategory's name must line up with its parent. Most schools that educate deaf/hard of hearing/hearing impaired/another of the many terms for it students educate people who hear at all sorts of different decibel levels. And most of those schools are currently using the term "for the deaf". I also don't see the evidence that the schools will move to what is considered "politically correct". I also feel I must say that my recent special education class taught that even if using "person with [disability]" in every other circumstance, one should use "deaf"/"deaf person" in reference to deafness (I know that under Wikipedia policy (though that's not where we are), that could well be considered original research, but it is what was being taught two semesters ago). Lastly, just because someone might recreate the old name doesn't mean we shouldn't move the current one. - Purplewowies (talk) 21:36, 11 October 2012 (UTC)