Gallaudet and it’s community have been given a lot of leeway and a lot of generosity over the years.

At least this “Furious” vlog did promote a lot of discussion among the community and it helped to open our eyes to see what was going on. We cannot continue to be deceived with all of vagueness from the Public Relations and/or Development Office at Gallaudet University.

I do not expect anyone who can do the incessant rant that is not productive or promote positive changes.

I feel that my so-called ‘incessant rant’ as you described, is a good one.

Thank you,
Amy Cohen Efron

After spending a couple days thinking about your story of when you started working in the oral program 12 years ago, i’ve come to the understanding that I find it hard to believe. you are going to have to forgive me for shouting “bullsh*t.” But I’m have a very hard time believing in this day and age, even 12 years ago a public school system would allow a teacher to throw a kid, deny development of communication. Unless, it’s a full class of mentally deficient and emotionally distraught kids OR it was back in the mid 20th century, I’m gonna have to be cynical that it’s all an exaggeration.

I mean I’m aware that some states are still a little behind in the social developments but the worse i’ve seen as I grew up was being put into a special ed program with ree-tee’s.

So… How about doing something more, like taking the next step with the ASDC thing? It was your idea, after all.

Not what I mean. When PunkyBrewster above was talking about how the only things worth fighting for are family, land, and one’s development, but not ideology… THAT’S what I mean. One’s own eventual development, and the development of his or her children, is ENTIRELY about ideology. Seeing deafness as pathology… as a medical malady… that’s ideology. Oralism is ideology. So is Manualism. So is Bi-Bi. Without ideology we’d have nothing to develop INTO.

People make choices not only about the ideology they will follow, but also about the ideology they won’t. And also about the ideologies they’ll partially follow, or else “kind of” follow, sometimes strongly, sometimes not.

All of which is fine until a certain series of choices leads to illiteracy in a deaf child. Then it’s not about identity anymore. Then it’s about setting up conditions that make it highly likely that what a deaf child otherwise COULD have done–read and write and acquire language–doesn’t get done. It’s very much like binding a woman’s feet when she’s very young to keep them from growing, because small feet are culturally valued. But at what cost? Now she can’t walk.

You can argue that we don’t KNOW what precise conditions contribute to illiteracy… after all, deaf people from oral programs can become literate, and sometimes profoundly deaf children from deaf families who are exposed to ASL from birth nonetheless don’t become all that literate in English. I’ve seen examples of both. So your argument would be solid.

But when administrators hire teachers for signing programs whom they know cannot sign, how are they not contributing to the process of illiteracy? Or how about when they hire their iffy-signing nephews or something? And when our state goverments are not passing laws making infant hearing screening tests mandatory, and what’s more, requiring parents to follow up when the results call for it, how are they not participating as well? And when a majority of attention and funding goes to oral methods and ASL is ignored–even when it benefits a lot of people–then how are the people who decide where that funding goes also not participating in the process of illiteracy?

See what I mean? There are a lot of things we’ll never untangle regarding ideology, but there are a lot of things we can. It’s just that we don’t. And that’s our own participartion in the process.

Aren’t you being a little narrow here? Too black-and-white, all-or-nothing? I’m appreciating the irony of your stance when I can see, with my own eyes, an abundance of literacy right here on DeafDC, yourself included. I ask you to not use words like everybody, when clearly NOT everybody is involved in this process. Can you accept my observation that I’ve seen a good number of programs where deaf education works pretty well? Just as I’ll accept yours that there are a good number of programs where it does NOT work well.

There are all kinds of reasons why illiteracy happens in deaf children, and not all of them have to do with educators “allowing” it to happen. Hundreds of teachers of the deaf in the US are doing their best, day after day, year after year, to make learning happen. Does the fact that some deaf kids are born very prematurely with a very low birth weight count for anything? How about deaf babies surviving illnesses that would have killed them 10 years ago? How about the normal distribution of intellectual abilities? How about the fact that 1/3 of deaf students today have an additional learning challenge, like vision, behavior, LD, or ED? How about the fact that the demographics of deaf people are changing rapidly? Just some food for thought here.

I’m not saying that these deaf children cannot learn, not at all. Just that one part of the ecological equation is the school, another part is the child’s innate abilities, another part is the family, and still another part is the community.

All due respect, but very little is well within this field. If there are deaf adults in existence who are literate AT ALL, in ANY language, then we know for a fact that deafness need not lead to illiteracy.

Thus a deaf person only becomes illiterate because WE ALLOW IT TO HAPPEN.

How do you report neglect and abuse–which is really what the process of allowing someone to become illiterate is all about–when pretty much everyone you know is involved in that process in some way (whether intentionally or not)?

Entirely correct. Hence my name when I post. My real, actual name. This is me saying, “No, that isn’t acceptable.”

Anyone else want to join me?

But you know, experiencing retaliation on a very personal level, then watching my mother go on to make a career as an advocate for the most vulnerable part of our community… I’ve come to believe this sincerely - that retaliation only works because you fear it.

You cannot imagine how empowering it is to stand up straight and look straight into another person’s eyes and just simply say something to the effect of: “No. That isn’t acceptable. I deserve to be treated better. I’m going to report you and hold you accountable for what you’ve done.”

Then THEY become fearful. Sure, there’ll be more retaliation. But you just gotta document it, and in the end, if you have a good support system, you’ll win and be vindicated. I’ve watched it happen countless times.

There IS a reason why my friends tease me about being the deaf community hitman, you know… :P