This article has been developed to illustrate the scope of the Brazilian educational policies for the deaf since the 1990's, highlighting the ideological disputes that have had a direct impact on the fields of linguistic and inclusive education policies concerning the group mentioned above. The public management of the languages adopted for the education of the deaf was used as our key element of analysis to assess the effectiveness of those policies. The complex situation of bilingual education for that group is also taken into consideration. It is diluted in the process of including disabled people in regular schools, which is not less complex. Therefore, we show that there is a diversion (rooting from a misconception of the deaf subject) in the official texts that constitute the legal and philosophical guidelines for the education of these students. As a result of that, the access to the Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) as a first language to that population, a mother tongue since childhood, as requested by the deaf community and ensured by law, is not safeguarded. We point out the importance of a linguistic policy as a crucial element on the current situation of the national policy for the education of the deaf debate, whether or not it resonates with the present government point of view. By analyzing historically the linguistic policy for deaf education, we are also able to make a critical review of the advances and difficulties of the so-called bilingual education for the deaf in our so-called inclusive education context.
policies on inclusive education; linguistic policy; bilingual education for the deaf