RedFox

I got an idea about how to explain to oralists why we use sign language. Deaf people have only four good senses and oralists would like us to use the weakened or missing fifth sense. So, I thought of an analogy to give to oralists who ask us to speak, which goes like this:

Why ask us to use our weakest sense? It would be like intelligent dogs telling humans that they can't have good lives unless they used smells to communicate and that they had to be able to perceive all sorts of information just by smelling. And if your sense of smell stinks, too bad, you still have to try using it and never depend on speaking only and never use signs. If you fall behind in school because you can't smell anything well, too bad, keep trying and you will be Successful even if it takes you many extra years to do.

Any other ideas for how to explain why we use sign language?

Deafness

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RedFox

I thought of another analogy we could give to the oralists who tell us to stop using sign languages.

What if there was somebody who believed that seeing was the most important thing for living a normal life? They could force all blind and low sighted people to take classes to train them to recognize complex shapes and colors and slap their hands if they try to read Braille or feel things. Then they'd be insulting to totally blind people in the same way oralists are to totally deaf people.

Would the oralists get owned by that?

jenni-m

Good ideas.

They don't go to the root of the problem (people are simply bigots, in the end)...

But, it is good information to tell, regardless, in the meantime while we work on the other problem.

deafdyke

Believe it or not, most legally blind people ARE educated under a "gotta use all and any residual sight mentality." One of my friends is legally blind, and even went to Perkins and he was educated under a "gotta use any residual vision approach."

Buffalo

That could explain why many of us were in oral schools - "gotta use all and any residual hearing mentality".

Red Fox, I could say that we use ASL to solve the communication problem. We prefer to use ASL to make things crystal clear - no misunderstooding at all. Many words look alike on the lips so ASL take that problem away.

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It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
- Gilbert Chesterton

RedFox

Have they made up words for those people like the words oralist and audist that we use for those who want us to use our worst sense as our primary sense? Sightist? Visionist?

shel90

I would say why we need sign language because for us to have full 100% access to language for our language development, information, and literacy development just like the hearing kids have with spoken language. Why should we be put at the risk of not picking up fully on oral language and end up with language/literacy delays? Why do that to deaf children? That I will never ever understand cuz it is just plain cruel.

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~Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

Bebonang

Shell, I agree with you 100%. It would be nice if the hearing professionals or hearing teachers could use the earphones to muffle or quiet their ears to know what is like to be deaf. They need to use the ASL or sign language to be able to understand what the other person say. I hope to God that they will have a reality checks to realize how important it is to have ASL being use to able to function and understand what is going on in the classrooms. As for me, I will never understand why they want us to be oralists so bad after all we had suffered under Audists who think they know all about deafness which they don't have any experience of what is like to be deaf atall. Geez.