James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org (James Womack) (11/19/90)
Index Number: 11823
[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]
Now ASL, contrary to what you say, is not the cause of deaf
people graduating with a 3rd or 4th grade reading level. ASL
has been suppressed for over 200 years by hearing educators.
Oralism and oral-based sign systems have dominated deaf
education. Their combined result has been a failure for the
majority of deaf people. Common sense says that if a person
does not have mastery of a first language, the second one
cannot be learned with any degree of mastery. By denying the
deaf children a first language particularly geared to their
needs (ASL) and forcing one on them that was not geared to
their needs (English) a grand folly results. English is
phonetically based. You need working ears to have any hope of
mastering it. Trying to teach it via the eyes is little
different than trying to teach the color of a rainbow through
the mouth.
If deaf kids had been allowed to master ASL in school
and if it had been the primary early teaching tool and the
tool to teach the second language, deaf kids would achieve
more. The ultimate proof of that is the consistently proven
by research fact that deaf children of deaf parents perform
higher academically than deaf children of hearing parents.
This is because these deaf parents provided their kids with a
language suited to the child and the child mastered it. He
/she came to school with a richer background of lingual
experiences to draw from and associate with the classroom
experiences. Just as hearing kids come to school with a
lingual background that allows them to comprehend their
teacher while learning new skills.
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Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!300!14!James.Womack
Internet: James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.orgrudy@mtqua.att.com (Avram R Vener) (11/26/90)
Index Number: 11964 In article <15731@bunker.UUCP>, James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org (James Womack) writes: > Index Number: 11823 > > needs (ASL) and forcing one on them that was not geared to > their needs (English) a grand folly results. English is > phonetically based. You need working ears to have any hope of > mastering it. Trying to teach it via the eyes is little Wrong. A close friend of mine was born deaf to hearing parents. She has no hearing whatsover and never learned to speechread. She also has perfect English. She learned her English through signing and fingerspelling. When you talk with her on the tty or computer you would swear she was either hearing or 'oral'. The only thing that gives her away is that she does NOT know how words are prounounced, which words rhyme with what or other such phonetically related attributes. Also her spelling errors are visually oriented instead of phonetically oriented. Rudy Vener AT&T BL uucp: att!mtqua!rudy