James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org (James Womack) (05/14/91)
Index Number: 15583
[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]
Behold a river. A body of flowing water. Sometimes high, sometimes
low, sometimes gurgling, sometimes raging, always moving. Onwards.
This is a river; the mainstream of many streams or tributaries for
those who must be technical.
Behold the Deaf child, himself/herself a mainstream. Society
is supposed to provide tributaries that allows that stream (child) to
grow and move with the flow.
When we speak of a river, we speak as well of the tributaries
that vary in input volume and sediment content. Tributaries lend their
unique qualities that combine to give the mainstream entire its
character.
If the school systems looked at the Deaf child as an individual
and focused on the specific needs of the child, the education system
would work. A residential school for the deaf would supply the sense
of self, exposure to the language natural to a Deaf child, and a
cultural perspective specific to the child as a Deaf individual. A
public school could meet certain needs that a residential school may
not be able to. Things like exposure to the culture of peers who are
members of the dominant social group (hearies) or academic courses
that might fit a certain specific need of the child. The child might
have an exceptional aptitude for math for example. What we would get
is two systems working together for the betterment of the child and
not just hassling over voucher money and outdated philosophies. The
Deaf child is neither money nor a philosophy. He/she is a human being.
Tributaries feed rivers. They give them volume and strength to
obey the laws of gravity. Strength to push over, through or around
obstacles and continue their courses. Tributaries feed a mainstream,
makes it grow, prevents it from drying up and dying. Only then does a
river flow and keep on going.
When the tributaries in the education system focuses on the Deaf
child's actual needs, the child like any stream, grows and then moves
along.
What is a mainstream? A collection of input from tributaries that
meet the mainstream along the way. Making it stronger, adding to its
volume, contributing to (as opposed to hindering) its "PROGRESS."
Any program that does not do this for the Deaf child, is not
mainstreaming. It's creating stagnated swamps and we all know how
swamps smell.
A swamp's smell comes from rotting vegetation, water that is not
quite fresh because it isn't moving along well enough to get rid of or
dilute the flotsam, the mud and other impedances.
Is this what our educational system going to continue to insist
on imposing upon the Deaf child? I hope not.
Behold a river, a mainstream if you will. Look what it has to
teach us if we will but learn.
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