James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org (James Womack) (03/28/91)
Index Number: 14518
[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]
I uploaded the deaf staff's position paper to youagain. You said you
only got part of it before. If you give me your address, I will mail
you our full proposal paper and the response to the school's consideration
or rather lack of consideration on using ASL as a first language for
our students so they can learn better than they do now.
I must say that the Hearing Impaired Professional Advocates (HIPA)
is making waves. The superintendent will meet me again today. We seem
to have a battle on who will structure the meeting. Apparently, we
are being set up to fail according to certain hearing administrative
staff. These staff members honestly want to see the changes we seek.
To quote them, "What we have been doing hasn't worked. You Deaf people
know this and have known it for years. Maybe it's time we respect your
ideas on how deaf children should be educated and not just adopt a
wholly hearing English only approach. Afterall, you people are a product
of the educational system and if you are proof and say it isn't working,
we ought to listen."
Jay they are right because we are right. Programs for the deaf and
that includes residential schools have gone through SEEE 1 and SEE
2, Total Communication, Signed English, Simultaneous Communication,
Lingistics Of Visual English (LOVE), Oral only approaches and honest
to God-putting fingers and pieces of wood down deaf people's throats.
None of it has helped the majority of deaf people obtain the type of
education we are capable of. Do you know that in medieval times, "experts"
in deafness blew trumpets only inches from deaf people's ears? They
blew so loudly, theperson's ears bleed. You ought to read the book
A PLACE OF THEIR OWN. If we deafies have been made to endure all this,
just what is the true fear of letting our children endure ASL as a
first language to give it s genuine scientific test to see if indeed
it would help facilitate the learning of English as a second language
as well as other academic disciplines? As HIPA and D.E.A.F Network
strives to achieve true autonomy here, I fear that I see what I believed
for years. There too many hearies in positions in agencies serving
the deaf who donot really want deaf people to becom so independent
that we won't need them. They would no longer have anyone whose lives
they can control. Yep, we have true hearie friends out there. A good
deal whom we deafies would not have been able to achieve much of anything
withoput their help. Unfortunately, ther are not enough of them to
offset the dictatoral attitudes of the others. Recently, a frustrated
deaf staff member tried to talk to an administrator at school. In frustration
he asked, "You've been here for over 15 years. When will you learn
to sign?" The administrator answered, "When will you learn to lipread?"
This same B****** also ignored the efforts of an elemnetary aged child
to say hello. He looked down at the boy, turned his head with one of
the ugliest expressions I have ever seen and walked away from him.
The boy, young as he was still understood the rejection. He first looked
bewildered, then he practically reduced to tears. I was so shocked
I could only stand there with my mouth agape. I could not move. Luckily,
an lementary teacher came by to comfort him though she did not know
what had provoked his emotional turmoil.
Believe me, Jay, with such attitudes so prevalent, little wonder we
deafies are beginning to say get off my back, leave my language and
my culture alone, it's ME and I want to be ME. I have been a mockery
of YOU long enough. Now let's do things the Deaf Way. It is long overdue.
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