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From: James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org (James Womack)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: your msg
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Date: 1 Mar 91 04:24:41 GMT
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Index Number: 13818

[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]

Fran, I am not all-manual, though IO must seem that way. I would be
the first to advocate a deafie with a good amount of residual hearing
to take speech classes, use a hearing aid, etc. If yougot it, use it
before you lose it, I say.

I am a strong advocate of lettingthe child develop ASL asa first language
so that his/her world experience can happen. Learn things that hearing
kids pick up incidentally for the simple reason that they have and
are developing a first language on which to build future learning.
If the deaf child is allowed this same privilege, s/he will take off
and be one. I see this almost everytime I get a deaf kids from deaf
parents who are ASL users themselves. This kid is quick and it is usually
they who go to college and achieve so highly. They come o school with
a solid foundation on hich to build.

Hearies are learning signs in groves. Recently statistics says there
are more hearing signers than deaf signers in the uSA! Imaginethat.
In anycase, so what? If a deafie has thetype of education s/he should
tobegin with, who needs speech all that much? I talk just fine (or
so I am told) yet, I willoften insist on using a pen and paper (especially
in matter sregarding a goodly sum of money). I havelearned the hard
way how sometimes hearies will seek to take advantage of a deafie's
inability to hear so I say write to make sure we are communicating
on an equal basis. If hearies who talk and hear well have trouble listening
to each other, how muchmore so will a deafie have with ahearie. Put
it on paper I say. :=>

Anne and I will probably never agree, yet the funny thing is, I am
not anti-mainstreaming. I am against the way it is handled. I have
seen it work when used as I described it to Jay some ime back. It is
this drag the "defects" out and lump into the mainstream ( and consequently
, watch most of them drown) philosophy that I abhor so much.

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