[misc.handicap] ASL as a Natural Language

James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org (James Womack) (03/28/91)

Index Number: 14546

[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]

Continuing on where Ileftoff when I ran out of text editor space:

Unfortunately, educators of the deaf is their disrespect for deaf people
and ASL both, have refused to allow deaf childrent to develop a first
language by denying ASL a place in education on a formal basis. It
has always been regulated underground or as an inferior tool used by
deaf teachers or some such other degradation. Indeed, onthis very echo,
one person insulted ASL and called it Pidgin English among other things.
This view is why ASL has not been allowed to be readily internalized
by deaf kids of hearing parents. For other deaf people, ASL has not
beenused formally to base further educational experiences on. So, you
get a lot of deaf people with very inferior education and too many
with porr self-concepts to boot.

To illustrate this further, recently my school made a blunt accusation
against the deaf staff. We were told that we wanted to completely eliminate
English in favor of ASL. This was said despitethe fact that we repeatedly
said that English and ASL are both an inseparable part of the Deaf
Community for day to day survival and interaction with mainstream society
and for interaction among "our people." We repeatedly said that for
English to finally be mastered by the majority of our students and
to pull up their educational level, ASL was merely a potentially powerful
tool for this IF used formally for this purpose to reach the greatest
number of deaf children. Somehow, our administrator heard that we wanted
to dump English completely and teach only ASL. So closed are so many
Hearing dominated people's minds that they cannot see beyond their
own noses. To make this worst, a group of orl deaf and their English
only advocates posted a billboard in California. It had a picture of
KOKO the gorilla withthe words-'DO YOU WANT YOUR DEAF KID TO BE LIKE
THIS?" Sure you can teach a primate to sign. Heck, I even saw a dog
talk on America's funniest videoes. In Russia, they researching a young
elephant that was videotaped and recorded speaking complete sentences
during nights. It was sayingthings it heard like, "Tino is bad boy.
Good boy, good boy. Do you want eat now?" Parrots can talk rather well.
But do these hearing and think hearing deaf belittle English because
an animal can utter spoken phrases? No! English is "normal" ASL is
"not  normal" intheir minds. It is an insult to the Deaf Community.

These talking animals may utter speech but they do not internalize
it. They do not share the cultural experiences that makes people people.
They are not able to apply it in intelligent endeavors. Yet both English
speakers and ASL'ers use their respective languages in creative and
spontaneously intelligent manners.

ASL IS natural to all deaf people. However, that does not mean that
it has the respect to be used to provide all deaf people with a first
language that logically fits a deaf persons linguistic and cultural
needs on which to build other educational foundations. It is natural
for all people to eat, yet look at how many are starving inthis world.
Even inthis great country American despite the rich agricultural bounty
inherit in it. WHAT IS AND WHAT IS ALLOWED ARE TWO SEPARATE THINGS,
Robin.

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