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From: Laurie.Wilson@p0.f5.n119.z1.fidonet.org (Laurie Wilson)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: Musings of a demented mind
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Date: 12 Feb 90 03:00:19 GMT
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 > The ridicule of others is not a reason not to teach a
 > person a useful skill. Therefore, I don't buy your argument
 > that one should not teach a deaf person to speak because
 > his voice produces strange sounds. Let's educate his hearers,
 
Pat,
 
  We also need to realize that only small percentage of deaf people 
succeed in speech to a varied degree.  However, there are really many 
of those who can only produce uninteligible sounds.  The point is 
that most of them have already been trained in speech in their early 
years.  No matter how hard they tried, they just couldn't produce 
good speech enough to make it worthwhile.  Really, in my personal 
opinion, speech is not the most important part of being human, especially 
when the deaf people already have their own language.  They feel that 
speech is not natural for them because they can't hear it themselves. 
 
We all know from the history that it is human nature when some unusual 
minority groups are being ridiculed for being different from the majority. 
I called the "ridiculing" attidute as a racism.  Look at how the Chinese 
immigrants who came here in California back in 1800's and how they 
were harrassed by the majority.  And remember there is a saying that 
a powerful and dominating majority tends to impose their language 
upon those minorities---in such as education, public, and politics. 
Sociality is the place where the minorities seek each other in their 
common language and heritages.
 
When deaf people immigrated here from other country, they already 
had their own sign language. Laurent Clerc was one such guy. He was 
a French man and a deaf teacher who brought his French Sign Language. 
According to the history of the deaf, there was an old American Sign 
Language prior to 1820's.  Eventually, both FSL and ASL combined together 
into modern ASL.
 
I really believe it is important to give all deaf children a chance 
at learning speech in school, but not forcing it on them if some of 
them fail at it.  There is another way they can communicate well by 
learning English as second language. With that they can write and 
read well.  I know from experiences that if we teach only English 
to them without sign language, they most likely will not do well by 
falling below the average age reading and writing skills.  This has 
been proven too often. I am amazed that no one is doing anything about 
before!! Well, I will say one thing for sure...the deaf education 
really sucks!  We should hire more deaf teachers.
 
Laurie

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