Quote:
Originally Posted by jillio
Here is what I don't get. If you go so far as to admit that children implanted with CI still need visual input to develop language skills, why is it necessary to invent a new method of providing that visual input when you already have one? ASL accomplishes that and provides the benefit of bilingualism at the same time. And deaf of deaf still achieve the highest lieracy rates of all the groups. There is an obvious reason for that.
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I can see why deaf of deaf would get such good results. However, with 90% of children being born into hearing families how would the child get sufficient native exposure to ASL (or BSL or Auslan depending on where you live!) in the first critical few years of their lives? Parents are the main transmitters of language in that time and from what I have seen, it has to be fluent language for the child to develop appropriately.
It seems to me that with cued speech, one advantage is that it's very easy and fast for a hearing parent to pick up, whereas with sign language it takes a great deal of commitment and regular immersion to get to a fluent level quickly. It would require a massive shift in lifestyle to achieve it i.e. spending lots of time in a deaf club to allow the child access to native or fluent sign.
What would be your suggestion from a social policy point of view to overcome those practical difficulties when there are givens such as most parents are often busy with work, other kids, find it difficult to transition to a new culture, find it hard to pick up a new language etc. I know you might personally feel that if the parents are not prepared to do all the hard work they are selfish, but a social policy maker has to make decisions based on the givens.