[QUOTE=~*Kaelei*~;1001205][COLOR="Purple"]
I don't know what you guys would call me. But I'm Oral, I have ever since my parents enrolled me into Tucker Maxon Oral school when I was 16 months old. However I've been using ASL since 8th grade whenever I'm speaking to Deaf people/friends.
I remember ever since as a little child, and my friends from Tucker also remembers this, if we ever use any movement of our hands or gesture with our hands, we get into big trouble like teacher would slap my hands just because I used movement of my hands as I was talking. Once I remember, I told the teacher that I needed to go to the bathroom and as I was saying bathroom, I also used the sign "bathroom"...boy wasn't my teacher pissed. After I went to the bathroom, I was sent to sit in the hallway for ten minutes just because I used the sign Bathroom.
Even my parents didn't want me to learn ASL, because they want me to speak like a normal hearing person. I don't regret that my parents has sent me to Oral School to learn how to speak because I do truly like to speak and I'm able to speak to my hearing fiance. But I just wish that my parents would accept that I'm deaf and that ASL is my culture too. The weirdest thing is that all the people that I met from Tucker that were students there are using ASL too...they have learned ASL after they left Tucker and we would sign to each other, even though we can speak.
Last time I went there was two years ago and I was signing to Heather, a friend of mine who also went to Tucker, we were there visiting a friend of ours who's still attending there, the professors/teachers were pissed that we were signing...
never less Heather and I quite enjoyed it that we were signing where it was actually forbidden when were students there!
Here's a saying, "You may prolong something from us but you can never forbid us to learn what we want to learn."
That actually true to me and the students that has attended to Tucker, because eventually at the end, we end up learning/using ASL around each other (deaf people) It's our culture, we feel drawn to it.
Exactly what happen to me when I was in the oral only method in the mainstream elementary and high school (both of them in oralism which I hate that) back in the fifties and sixties. I am for the spoken English with ASL which is fine and I support that but not oralism, no way. The audists had make my life miserable and I could not lipread that well, but some hearies said or still saying that I do lipread very well. Not true, as lipreading is not one hundred percent accurate. I get misunderstand a lot more on lipreading than ASL. I love to use ASL so that I can understand with visual better than lipreading. Yeah, the audists are still at it with them and trying to put them through oral only approach today to our deaf children in many schools whether in the regular schools or deaf schools. It make me want to throw up, because it is not fair to have us go through pressure from audists and hearing parents, too. It is going to be a long battle to fight oralism. How can we get through their stubborn mind that we really need ASL more than oralism only method? They don't understand that we are perfectly happy with ASL along with Spoken English. It is the visual that helps us understand better than lipreading, so there I have said it. All hearing people are dreaming and trying to fix us many times over and over and over that I am sick of that.
