Is oral deaf education really a threat?

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deafdyke

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So tonight I was really bored and decided to do some research on the enrollment of the oral deaf programs.Oral Deaf Education Schools Listed By Region (keywords: auditory, child, children, cochlear implant, talk, speak, speech, listen, hearing aids)
They are TINY!!!!! Including the ones that are P/K to 8 or early elementary
I couldn't find info on a lot of the programs listed on the oral deaf site.
One of them, Archbishop Ryan seems to have pretty much gone out of the oral business...I remember a few years ago they had a Sign track and a speech track. The school itself has been absorbed into a School for the Blind)
Clarke School (Noho) has 60
DePaul has 33
Magnolia Speech has 71
CID has 18 (and I thought that it would be bigger!)
St. Joseph's has 65
Memphis Oral has 13
Atlanta Speech has 309 (but then again they serve the whole spectrum of special ed. It is NOT just for oral kids)
Moog Center has 34 (and as an aside it's now early intervention-2...I vaguely remember back in college it went up to sixth grade)
Ohio Valley Voices 38
Omaha Hearing 38
Desert Voices 16
Presbyterian Ear Oral-22
Sunshine Cottage 116
Jean Weingarten 44
Oralinga School 63
A lot of the oral programs listed seem to almost be a part of general programs for kids with disablities. (but they have really good speech therapists so they're counted as oral deaf programs .I also see that a couple of AVT programs are listed to "beef things up" A couple seem to serve both dhh kids and speech impaired kids.
Compare those numbers with enrollments at Deaf Schools or Dhh formal programs, which compared to these numbers are HUGE. Most of the oral programs are preschools..One good thing about oral programs nowadays is that they're more open to going " Your kid needs ASL" sooner. Maybe that's why oral deaf education seems to be "improving" And yes, there are prolly a lot of oral sucesses a la me, shel, bajagirl who would love to learn ASL but are thought not to "need" it :roll:
I know too, it does seem like there are parents who are open to ASL, but just want speech as their kid's first language.....I really do think that if state Deaf Schools and oral experts collaborated, there would be a HELL of a lot more kids in Deaf Schools and Deaf programs.
 
Frisky Feline said:
Oh yeah I have witness too many children who become adults and their self esteems. I don't get it.
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But don't you know that this generation of deaf children are different and won't have those problems because they have the CI.:roll:
 
The threat is not about schools itself, its the child's self esteem.
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Very true. I do have to say that I think most oral advocates are kind of out of touch. Yes, oral skills are a great tool to have...but the constant emphasis on it...it's like school is an eternal speech therapy session for them.
What about deaf kids that went mainstreaming?
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Most of the oral programs are private preschools, not actual preschool to 8th grade programs like Clarke, St. Joseph's, and CID are.
 
But don't you know that this generation of deaf children are different and won't have those problems because they have the CI.
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... YUP!!!!! The CI has been around for twenty years. A kid with a CI is STILL HOH. There are still tons and tons of kids in Deaf Schools and programs with CIs (and many of those are functionally hoh) Yes, they're doing better compared to the old days when a preschooler only had a handful of spoken words. But many of them still need intense hoh support services. I do think that formal programs and schools for the Dhh should create outreach programs for oral kids who are having trouble in the mainstream. A lot of parents may think that Deaf Schools/programs are "only" for Sign users......like I do think more parents would opt for a Deaf School placement if they pushed themselves as " You can come here and be BILINGAL in both ASL and spoken English.
 
deafdyke said:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... YUP!!!!! The CI has been around for twenty years. A kid with a CI is STILL HOH. There are still tons and tons of kids in Deaf Schools and programs with CIs (and many of those are functionally hoh) Yes, they're doing better compared to the old days when a preschooler only had a handful of spoken words. But many of them still need intense hoh support services. I do think that formal programs and schools for the Dhh should create outreach programs for oral kids who are having trouble in the mainstream. A lot of parents may think that Deaf Schools/programs are "only" for Sign users......like I do think more parents would opt for a Deaf School placement if they pushed themselves as " You can come here and be BILINGAL in both ASL and spoken English.
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**nodding** But how many times have you seen a hearing parent who has a child with a CI say, "But my child is different! My child is deaf and can hear! My child won't have the problems deaf children had in the past!"

Denial, denial, denial. Hearing parents have said the same thing each time some new technology comes along. Gawd, they said it about FM systems! "Now my child can get everything the teacher is saying. No more problems in the classroom." Like I keep saying, it is history repeating itself. And denial is blinding hearing parents from seeing it.
 
jillio said:
**nodding** But how many times have you seen a hearing parent who has a child with a CI say, "But my child is different! My child is deaf and can hear! My child won't have the problems deaf children had in the past!"

Denial, denial, denial. Hearing parents have said the same thing each time some new technology comes along. Gawd, they said it about FM systems! "Now my child can get everything the teacher is saying. No more problems in the classroom." Like I keep saying, it is history repeating itself. And denial is blinding hearing parents from seeing it.
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:gpost: Bold statement: This is the fact that most hearing parents keep hoping that we can hear with an hearing aids, FM systems and CIs. CI can make the child either hard of hearing or deaf, no matter if CI give them clear sounds. I went through difficult time in mainstream school with limited deaf program (oral-only program) and they don't get it every time I tried to tell them that I need ASL in the deaf program. Yes, we need the full toolbox for us to choose so that we can understand what is going on in the hearing classrooms. Lipreading is no picnic and I am sure CI children will have a harder time to listen the words without lipreading. This is why the hearing parents plus the hearing schools need not put us through all over again even with new technology. :(
 
But my child is different! My child is deaf and can hear! My child won't have the problems deaf children had in the past!"

Denial, denial, denial. Hearing parents have said the same thing each time some new technology comes along. Gawd, they said it about FM systems! "Now my child can get everything the teacher is saying. No more problems in the classroom." Like I keep saying, it is history repeating itself. And denial is blinding hearing parents from seeing it.
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Exactly. Hearing parents and hearing adminstrators and experts act like hoh = essentially hearing. While we can hear pretty well, we can't hear like a hearing person.
And most of what we CAN hear is based on a best case hearing test The world is not a perfectly calibrated hearing booth. Yes, get your kid speech training...it is a speaking world ..BUT DON"T think that just b/c they have speech and some hearing that everything will be fine and dandy. It won't. The AVTers and AGBaders assume that hoh= stereotypical AG Bell member. Even the dhh kids who are high honor roll and are kind of stereotypical overacheiver very often have significent social emotional issues....and as you know, THAT is really the area that parents need to concentrate on......not whether or not wittle Smashlie goes to mainstream school with minimal accomondations.

And they said that about FM? Really? At least one good thing. This generation of parents may be a little more open to specialized schooling or a specialized placement since they may have witnessed their parents or a sibling struggling with the system.
One thing I absolutly HATE is the assumption that oral deaf/AVT means minimal accomondations (ie not even Resource Room placement) There are still a lot of oral deaf and auditory verbal kids who need "special ed" placements.
 
deafdyke said:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... YUP!!!!! The CI has been around for twenty years. A kid with a CI is STILL HOH.
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While I agree that if only more bi-bi schools developed an ASL + spoken English approach, they'd be able to address the needs of more deaf children, potentially providing a better environment for them from mainstream environments, but I have to disagree with your statement that a child with a CI is HOH. My child has 2 fully effective CIs, but this has not changed the fact that she was and is deaf. Not HOH.
 
jillio said:
**nodding** But how many times have you seen a hearing parent who has a child with a CI say, "But my child is different! My child is deaf and can hear! My child won't have the problems deaf children had in the past!"

Denial, denial, denial. Hearing parents have said the same thing each time some new technology comes along. Gawd, they said it about FM systems! "Now my child can get everything the teacher is saying. No more problems in the classroom." Like I keep saying, it is history repeating itself. And denial is blinding hearing parents from seeing it.
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So very true! It happens every single time every single new technology comes out. They just don't learn from past mistakes and keep repeating those mistakes and no wonder so many Deaf kids suffer lack of langauge and education for hundreds of years.

Only one good thing I can see happening in UK is that parents are very slowly starting to accept BSL would be useful language for Deaf kid not as last chance thing. Took many generations to reach this, and I hope next generation of parents be more accepting, etc.
 
GrendelQ said:
While I agree that if only more bi-bi schools developed an ASL + spoken English approach, they'd be able to address the needs of more deaf children, potentially providing a better environment for them from mainstream environments, but I have to disagree with your statement that a child with a CI is HOH. My child has 2 fully effective CIs, but this has not changed the fact that she was and is deaf. Not HOH.
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She meant functionally, not literally.
 
Speedy Hawk said:
So very true! It happens every single time every single new technology comes out. They just don't learn from past mistakes and keep repeating those mistakes and no wonder so many Deaf kids suffer lack of langauge and education for hundreds of years.

Only one good thing I can see happening in UK is that parents are very slowly starting to accept BSL would be useful language for Deaf kid not as last chance thing. Took many generations to reach this, and I hope next generation of parents be more accepting, etc.
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I hope so, too. It looked for several years as if progress was actually being made in that direction. However, with more children being implanted, I see people reaching back into the past and dragging up methods for communication that were never intended for such...such as SEE I, SEE II, Cued Speech, etc. It appears to me that organizations that are in a position of making a profit off of these things are one more time, trying to convince hearing parents of children with CIs that, now that the CI has become available, these methods, long proven to be marginally effective in limited situations, are suddenly more effective. And unfortunately, parents are buying into it left and right. Why? Because of the belief that their child is different because they have a CI.

The CI does not fix the problems of these systems. It wasn't lack of hearing that made things like SEE and CS nominally effective. It was faults in the systems themselves. The designers of these systems failed to take processing issues in the brain into account when coming up with these systems. They were designed on the fly, and they have been proven to create linguistic confusion. The CI does not change that. But parents everywhere seem to be hanging onto the belief (mistaken) that it will. I find it very, very sad. The CI could provide so much more benefit for the children that have it if it were not used, so often, as an excuse for keeping a child in a restrictive oral environment.
 
jillio said:
Huh? Functionally and actually are two different specifications. Are you saying that your daughter hears at the same levels with her CI as without?
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? Not at all. Without her CIs turned on she hears the same as she did before the surgery. Still deaf.
 
GrendelQ said:
? Not at all. Without her CIs turned on she hears the same as she did before the surgery. Still deaf.
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But with her CIs she hears more. That is her functional level. Without her CIs turned on is her literal level. So why she may i.d as deaf even with her CI, functionally, her levels fall into the same category as HOH.

The distinction is important to areas like educational accommodation and workplace accommodation.
 
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