Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!yale!bunker!wtm
From: ALAMA10@HUMAIN.BITNET (David James)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: ASL vs SEE
Message-ID: <14662@handicap.news>
Date: 10 Apr 91 05:15:27 GMT
Sender: news@bunker.isc-br.com
Reply-To: ALAMA10@HUMAIN.BITNET (David James)
Lines: 30
Approved: wtm@hcap.fidonet.org
Fidonet: Silent Talk Conference

Index Number: 14662

In THE HANDICAP DIGEST Issue # 1883,
James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org (James Womack) writes;

> I wonder if youare aware that many deaf people's SAT scores and the
> number of deaf people entering colleges declined within 5 years after
> the SEE, Total Communication, L O V E and other MCE systems hit the
> educational field? Know why, deaf teachers were eased out the profession
> in slightly larger numbers and the educational philosophy of deaf programs
> swung back to oral and English only approaches which have been proven
> to not work over and over again.

Assuming that this is true, there's another possible explanation.
This probably happened as true mainstreaming was becoming much more
common than it had been, and many students who would in an earlier
period have gone to schools for the deaf went instead to ordinary
schools where all the other students were hearing. (I spell this
out because Mr. Womack seems to use "mainstreaming" to refer to
educational programs which use signs--SEE, TC, etc.--in a major
way. A truly mainstreamed deaf student does not use, or likely even
know, any signs for the simple reason that no one else in his/her
environment does.) The kind of academic aptitude that leads to high
SAT scores makes a deaf person especially likely to do well in
ordinary schools and stay in the (true) mainstream. Such people and
their SAT scores often do not show up in statistics about the deaf.

--David James
  ALAMA10@HUMAIN.BITNET
  DMJAMES@GALLUA.BITNET