Quote:
Originally Posted by jillio
Why in the world should Deafies forego a salary for teaching ASL as a second language in high schools when Spanish teachers and French teachers are being paid for the same work? That in and of itself places not just ASL in an inferior position, but the deaf teacher in a devalued position.
If a Deaf individual teaches ASL as a second language to high school students, they are to be paid at the same level as any teacher that performs the same function.
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I am sorry if that sounded that way. The proposal I was thinking of (and I could be very wrong, that is why I am asking) was to start ASL in preschool, and all the way up on a volunteer basis. Once it was shown to be successful, of course the teachers would be paid. Maybe do an experiment with a couple of schools for a year voluntarily until you could prove it was a success. I was thinking that seniors and Codas could help. Like I said, once it was proven that the kids could learn it fairly easily, (age appropriate) then it could be adopted as a regular curriculum. I am just trying to think of something that would work that would infiltrate the system. America needs a visual language for a seond language instead of a foreign language. But if administrators think it will cost a lot to do it, they never will. Do you have any suggestions of how to get ASL into our public schools that I can try to promote here in Oregon? It has to start somewhere, and it is so needed, especially since there are so many children being mainstreamed? I don't mean to sound ignorant, but I really can't think of a way to do this. Do you think it would be a good thing to have ASL as a national, secondary language? I really want to know what everyone thinks.