I didn't say it, Marsharck did.
Another quote from Marsharck's considerable psychological research:
The spoken language±sign language controversy has not gone away. Following more than 100 years of spoken language dominance in deaf education (led early on by Alexander Graham Bell, e.g., 1898/2005); however, recognition that signed languages were ``true'' languages, beginning in the 1960s (Stokoe, 1960/ 2005), led to their scientific study and their renewed use in educational settings. Importantly, today as 100 years ago, most deaf children have hearing parents who generally lack good sign skills or other means to effectively communicate with them. In the absence of access to early communication and language despite intensive ``oral'' training, most deaf children thus enter school with language delays of up to 2 years, and these lags often become greater with age (Geers, 2006). To early investigators who observed such delays (e.g., Pintner & Patterson, 1916, 1917), it often appeared that the lack of spoken language was
the cause of academic and intellectual challengesÐnot that it was the failure to acquire appropriate language skills in any mode that created barriers to deaf children's learning. Indeed, there was ample evidence then (see Lang, 2003) and there is now (see Marschark et al., 2002) that natural signed languages (like American Sign Language [ASL], Italian Sign Language [LIS], and British Sign Language [BSL]) can provide deaf children with normal developmental trajectories and academic achievement. Yet, only about 25% of deaf children develop intelligible speech (Beattie, 2006; Cole & Paterson, 1984), and specific difficulties with spoken languageÐand with speech-dependent literacy skills (Traxler, 2000) led to considerable difficulty in assessing deaf children's intellectual functioning using traditional tests and measurements.
Marsharck, M. (2006). Intellectual functioning of deaf adults and children: questions and answers. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology. 18(1), 70-89.
