James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org (James Womack) (11/19/90)
Index Number: 11824
[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]
As an educator, I have watched SEE abandoned by kids who were
instructed with it. As a college teacher, I have seen pre-
lingually deaf people express bitterness at the waste of time
and their lives by parents and educators who insisted on a
phonetically based sign system. Some even break down into
tears. I watch how these same people gravitate to ASL over
time.
That is not to say SEE has NO value and Oralism has no value.
It is to say that the low academic level of most deaf people
is due to a stubborn refusal of educators to accept the
fundamental fact that the deaf child cannot HEAR a spoken
language or hears it only in fragments. These educators
stubbornly insist on denying the deaf child a first language
to have some kind of foundation on which to build. SEE and
Sign English are not true languages. They are manual codes of
a phonetic system; there, they are not natural. That is why
anyone who bothers to look, will see the following:
Most deaf children sign stiffly (trying to be precise
in English use and usually failing miserably). Their thinking
is not clearly expressed. Within two or three years after
graduating, they switch to ASL and sign with confidence. I
see it again and again. But only now is that phenomenon
finally is being researched.
ASL is under no circumstances the cause of deaf people's low
academic achievement. Indeed, it has historically been denied
its proper place in educating the deaf. Every non-native
speaker of English had a first language as a basis for
associative learning of English. Yet so-called educators of
the deaf have historically refused to allow the deaf child
that same fundamental need. It is absurd.
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