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Originally Posted by deafdyke
Indeed....the abilty to go "boo be bah" isn't equal to the abilty to really have the meat and potatos of a language.
I've noticed that one major reason why a lot of deaf people abandon the Deaf community, is that they complain that academic standards aren't exactly the best in the world. However, acceptance of low academic standards is NOT exclusive to the Deaf world.......Hey, I have a friend who went to Perkins (blind school) and he said that the acadmics were really crappy and they discouraged you from going off to college. A lot of blind schools are like that.......they tend to have more MR and multihandicapped kids rather then just blind academic kids. I can understand how a Deaf school might push you away from college..........but being mainstreamed, unless you're a superstar you very often get the same thing!
I definitly think schools for the Deaf should really promote speech and hearing.....just as an additional tool. As a matter of fact, most kids are given speech........ASL onliers are a very small percentage of Deaf people!
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That's why I am so
by all these people's comments about how bad deaf schools are like it is us teachers who dont want the kids to do well or we lower our standards. From what I see at my job, that is not the case. It is the kids that come into elementary school or the kids being referred from the mainstreamed schools who are so language delayed that is what makes it seem like the deaf schools are bad. That's why I push for exposure to signing immediately instead of waiting to see if the child picks up on oral language or not. I think that view is just ridiculous and because of that, deaf schools end up looking bad.
BTW..our deaf school has 4 speech therapist and a CI program that uses spoken language so why are people complaining about deaf schools discouraging the idea of spoken language too unless there are other deaf programs that discourage it? That I cant imagine..