The Deaf community is trying to put together a statement to legislators and so forth on the importance of the Schools of the Deaf and why ASL and English bilingualism is the best approach to educating Deaf kids. Here is my thoughts on this subject — I focused on the ASL and English bilingualism aspect, and my thoughts are partially directed to parents of deaf kids:
Denying a primarily visual language to a child whose hearing is not great is like gambling. Some might make it through by the luck of the draw, and those are the success stories you see. What is often unseen except among the Deaf community is the so-called silent evidence that shows how those methods are truly a disaster. We see those kids who come into our schools at 5 with no language, or quite delayed language development. Then we have to hurry and catch them up in the fully accessible visual language (ASL) before we can then teach them English. In the meanwhile, the clock is ticking and these kids are unlikely to achieve the level of education necessary to obtain great jobs.
It is not the ears or hearing that is important, but rather the mind that is most important. The ability to think, understand, and be understood on complex subject matters is the key to a good job in this day and time. Recent research has shown that these abilities are actually enhanced even further when somebody grew up with more than one language. Why not, instead of seeing lack of hearing as a limitation, see it instead as a call to champion bilingualism or even multilingualism. Bring these kids up in both ASL, English, and what ever other language you would like from day 1.
If only these kids who had to struggle with delayed language development had started off with ASL, we could have leveraged that language basis in speech therapy so they could exceed the verbal communication skills of even those who were subjected only to oral methods and forbidden from using sign language.
If I were to separate my thoughts into different points, and add a few more on top of it:
1. Language is the basis of one’s ability to think, understand, and be understood.
2. This ability is the foundation for obtaining a good education or learning yet another language.
3. Communication is vital to learn any other skills — speech/lipreading skills included.
4. For every ‘success’ of the oral method, there are just as many that did not make it. Why gamble with these kid’s life and education when we could have far higher success rate using another approach?
5. It might not be most convenient approach for the parents or others in the short term (since they need to learn a new language for their kid), but life should never be about what is most convenient. Rather it should be about what is best for the child mentally, physically, emotionally, and perhaps even spiritually.
6. To parents: don’t limit your kid, allow them to explore the world, express their interests, and unfold their potential naturally just like any other kid. There is no reason why deaf kids cannot go on to accomplish the same or maybe even far more in their life as their parents achieved.
