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Redlands Daily Facts - Bridging connections between hearing and deaf topic of presentation
Human rights advocate and author Susan Schaller walked to the center of the Casa Loma Room stage at the University of Redlands Thursday night and began gesturing wildly and "speaking" at the audience.
She didn't make a sound.
As her silent rantings continued for a few minutes, the students and professors in attendance sat and stared, utterly lost.
Schaller finally broke the silence by asking, "What does it feel like when you're expecting something and receiving nothing?"
The theme prevalent throughout her presentation - co-sponsored by the University of Redlands College of Arts and Sciences, the dean's office, and Diversity Affairs - was Schaller's question of what it means to be human for someone without language.
In a documentary documentary film that she presented, anthropologist Oliver Sacks states that language is a "quintessentially human attribute," a notion Schaller attempts to tackle in her first book, "A Man Without Words," and in her upcoming book, "A World Without Words, People Without Language."
Schaller addressed the challenge of mainstreaming deaf students into regular hearing schools.
"It's called inclusion for policy," Schaller explained, "but it's exclusion for deaf people."
If mainstreaming in actuality was like the sign that represents it - a display of equality and integration, a "coming together" - then inclusion would be a wonderful bridge between the deaf community and the hearing community, he suggested. But because there is a significantly disproportionate number of deaf students and virtually no deaf teachers or staff members, the deaf student is not actually assimilated into the interactions, he said.
Senior Myra Avina reacted strongly to this statement.
"Compartmentalizing, not just with deaf people, but with race groups and economic standing, sums up how the United States works and it needs to be changed," she said. "There needs to be integration."
Schaller showed another documentary that she and Sacks worked on together, "In Search of Lucy Doe." The film paints a portrait of two narratives, the first of which is a Mexican-immigrant family with 10 children, five of whom are deaf. The oldest sons have no shared language with anyone, as their parents could not afford to send them to a school for the deaf. The sons have no spoken language, no early exposure to sound, and no form of established sign language.
The second story in the film is that of Lucy Doe, a young woman who was found wandering the streets of Los Angeles without a name or any form of communication outside of her own gesturing and others' guessing what she meant.
When asked about the process and hurdles of getting her book published, Schaller recalled that the publisher had tried to get her to omit the chapters profiling deaf communities.
Believing those to be important to understanding life without language, Schaller stood her ground, and the publisher finally agreed to leave them in the final version.
"The medium can't be more important than the subject," Schaller argued, saying that it should not be simply about what will sell but about best communicating the story of people with limited communication.
"A lot of what she has to say about this absence of language is so important because it's true," said senior creative writing major Danielle Mitchell. "I took two years of American Sign Language, so that was my initial interest in being here, but this is a pressing and important issue to consider."
Human rights advocate and author Susan Schaller walked to the center of the Casa Loma Room stage at the University of Redlands Thursday night and began gesturing wildly and "speaking" at the audience.
She didn't make a sound.
As her silent rantings continued for a few minutes, the students and professors in attendance sat and stared, utterly lost.
Schaller finally broke the silence by asking, "What does it feel like when you're expecting something and receiving nothing?"
The theme prevalent throughout her presentation - co-sponsored by the University of Redlands College of Arts and Sciences, the dean's office, and Diversity Affairs - was Schaller's question of what it means to be human for someone without language.
In a documentary documentary film that she presented, anthropologist Oliver Sacks states that language is a "quintessentially human attribute," a notion Schaller attempts to tackle in her first book, "A Man Without Words," and in her upcoming book, "A World Without Words, People Without Language."
Schaller addressed the challenge of mainstreaming deaf students into regular hearing schools.
"It's called inclusion for policy," Schaller explained, "but it's exclusion for deaf people."
If mainstreaming in actuality was like the sign that represents it - a display of equality and integration, a "coming together" - then inclusion would be a wonderful bridge between the deaf community and the hearing community, he suggested. But because there is a significantly disproportionate number of deaf students and virtually no deaf teachers or staff members, the deaf student is not actually assimilated into the interactions, he said.
Senior Myra Avina reacted strongly to this statement.
"Compartmentalizing, not just with deaf people, but with race groups and economic standing, sums up how the United States works and it needs to be changed," she said. "There needs to be integration."
Schaller showed another documentary that she and Sacks worked on together, "In Search of Lucy Doe." The film paints a portrait of two narratives, the first of which is a Mexican-immigrant family with 10 children, five of whom are deaf. The oldest sons have no shared language with anyone, as their parents could not afford to send them to a school for the deaf. The sons have no spoken language, no early exposure to sound, and no form of established sign language.
The second story in the film is that of Lucy Doe, a young woman who was found wandering the streets of Los Angeles without a name or any form of communication outside of her own gesturing and others' guessing what she meant.
When asked about the process and hurdles of getting her book published, Schaller recalled that the publisher had tried to get her to omit the chapters profiling deaf communities.
Believing those to be important to understanding life without language, Schaller stood her ground, and the publisher finally agreed to leave them in the final version.
"The medium can't be more important than the subject," Schaller argued, saying that it should not be simply about what will sell but about best communicating the story of people with limited communication.
"A lot of what she has to say about this absence of language is so important because it's true," said senior creative writing major Danielle Mitchell. "I took two years of American Sign Language, so that was my initial interest in being here, but this is a pressing and important issue to consider."