Over and over - your discussions is not new to me - having heard this kind of thing discussed so many many time in my country in the down-under New Zealand.
I am Deaf - born to hearing parents - a boarder at school for deaf children at age of 4 n half years old in 1943.
Deaf children there signed all the time yet we were taught to lipread and speak. I had the sign language skills learnt in one term!!! But took me years to learn to speak and mixwith normal hearing children.
When as 23 year old, i worked with deaf children as a "minder" for boarders. i felt for them and i understood them no problem. I was sad to see some teachers would never totally understand these children.
But in the long run - my employment there as a first deaf person in that job has woken something up in some of the staff working there. i said "talking to children is very important as they learn from us all different people around them every day". One teacher didn't like what i said. She said she is teaching... I said what about talking about what's happening around us? The normal children listen to everybody every day, the bus driver, parents talking to one another, people taking in the shop and neighbours talking to one another - deaf child misses out... teacher didn't like me much...but
twenty years later after more and more deaf people worked in that school; the NZSL was finally introduced and being allowed to be used as an educational tool for all Deaf children in that school. (long story cut short here)
more than twenty Deaf people are now working as teachers, minders, sign language assistants and a museum person.
