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From: Jack.O'keeffe@f26.n129.z1.fidonet.org (Jack O'keeffe)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: Total Communication
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Date: 15 Mar 91 04:43:14 GMT
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Index Number: 13941

[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]

Dear Annie:  I suppose it comes with the territory when an echo
becomes as popular and successful as SilentTalk, but I really
regret seeing it become such a conduit for misinformation from
individuals who may be grinding personal economic axes.  It is
fine to have SilentTalkers advocate for their personal favorite
methods of communication.  But it should be done in a positive
manner.  Plenty of positive things can be said about ASL.  Thus we
must pity those unfortunate and ill-informed ASL advocates who are
able to promote ASL only by denigrating other methods, or slandering
successful philosophies like Total Communication (TC).

To try to bring a bit of rational balance to the echo, I am posting
below excerpts of an article on Cued Speech (CS), a method with which
I am totally unfamiliar and which I do not recall being discussed
previously on SilentTalk.  This comes from the Winter 1990 issue of
"Cued Speech News" published by Gallaudet University.
             _______________________________

"Daniel Koo is a freshman at the University of Maryland.  He is an
unusually talented young man who is aspiring to become an architect.
Although he was not introduced to the Cued Speech system until the
fifth grade , he expresses a preference for cueing in the classroom.
The following is excerpted from one of his letters to his parents.

"I would like to say one of my favorite quotes from Victor Hugo, the
author of "Les Miserables": 'What matters the deafness of the ear when
the mind hears.  The one true deafness, the incurable deafness, is
that of the mind'.  My mind hears.  My eyes are my ears.  My hearing
aids are my salvation from insanity. . . . Yet I am proud to be deaf.

"Being one of the first CS students to graduate and go off to college
is not an easy step.  However, having chosen University of Maryland
near Montgomery County, I was able to have a CS interpreter for all
my classes.  Lucky, lucky."
             _________________________________

Annie, as you well know, there is a wonderful world out there beyond
ASL.  You, personally, are a bright and shining example of this.
Neither you nor I will deny that ASL is an important element of
Total Communication.  But it is far from the be-all and end-all that
some of our more radical SilentTalkers would have us believe.  Could
they be suffering from Victor Hugo's "incurable deafness of the mind"?

I'd like to hear more from upbeat folks like Fran and Vixen who are
able to express the positive aspects of ASL without castigating other
equally valid systems of communication.

... lllegitimii non Carborundum!

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