Maybe the better question is do the hearing people in general really respect the Deafs' choices?? It is absolutely unfair for the government to allow the hearing people to decide on the education, jobs and even the reproductive rights for the Deaf population. Even they allowed parents to have CI put in the infant's head (scalpel to the head) so the kid can be more like hearing just like the parents. The government didn't stop it after the first death from CI-related complication(s). When those two American lesbians want a deaf child, one of them got pregnant the old fashioned way (where is the scalpel???) when they found a guy with 5 generations of deafness. Guess what? The British is trying to chip away the deaf population's reproductive rights with the Clause 14. I won't be surprised if the USA and other countries tried to emulate that. The Chinese government already required the Deaf Chinese to get the proof of sterilization before he/she can get married.
The fact is that the hearing people have too much power over the deaf popluation. I believe that it is time for the Deaf Education to be under all-Deaf school board, not all-hearing school board. The hearing people had over 100 years of oralism and doesn't have much to show for it. The fourth grade reading skill of the average Deaf people? That is the proof of failure. The hearing people aren't going to relinquish their control of Deaf Education over to the Deaf people. The hearing people still don't listen to the Deaf people on the education for the Deaf. They listened to Stokoe (hearing) when he announced that ASL is a language in its own right. To me, TC is a long hesitant before the switch over to Bi-Bi. According to this link- (
Sign language may help deaf children learn English) they are changing to Bi-Bi after hearing psychologists made this finding. Nothing is new under the sun.
I find that very odd that you want us all to respect each other for different opinions. I have seen how snippy some of you guys can be, including you. I have seen your posts where you touted the oral education. It sounds like that you forbade your kids to learn ASL until much later on. You even told Vampryox that ASL should be the deaf person's personal choice (as in when the deaf person is older). I doubt that you would ever agree that CI should be the deaf person's personal choice (as in when the deaf person is older). I see the CI is a big gamble as no one can be sure of the outcome. That is why I think the ASL should be there from the beginning so to improve the deaf child's education and should be there as a safety net if the CI is in the picture. After all, ASL does improve the hearing child's vocabulary so why deny the same thing to a deaf child.