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. -- Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!300!14!James.Womack Internet: James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org