Miss-Delectable
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- Joined
- Apr 18, 2004
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The Daily Advertiser - www.theadvertiser.com - Lafayette, LA
A recent article used the terminology "... is deaf and mute ...". This is highly offensive to the deaf community. These words were created by hearing people to define deaf people long ago in 1700 B.C.
At that time there was no equal education for deaf people. The hearing people assumed that deaf people can't talk, hear, communicate, write and so on. But today we have equal access to learning; we deaf people are highly educated as to communication and are, in fact, leaders in many academic fields. "Deaf-mute" is out of date terminology. "Deaf-dumb," "deaf-mute" and "hearing impaired" are offensive to the deaf community.
Deaf people are equal to hearing people in learning, education, communication, sense and expression of feelings. The proper words for deaf people are "deaf and hard of hearing."
The issue of American Sign Language is urgent for the Lafayette Parish School Board to understand because ASL is the visualization language for the deaf community. The Lafayette Parish School Board is determined to use SEE, or Signing Exactly in English. The board places pathological stress on the deaf community because they want all interpreters and deaf students to sign the SEE which is not part of the deaf culture. The reasons they prefer SEE instead of ASL is because of their theory that SEE will improve English grammar. This is totally false. The school board should respect the deaf culture and they should not fix the language of deaf students.
Yenter Tu, Lafayette
A recent article used the terminology "... is deaf and mute ...". This is highly offensive to the deaf community. These words were created by hearing people to define deaf people long ago in 1700 B.C.
At that time there was no equal education for deaf people. The hearing people assumed that deaf people can't talk, hear, communicate, write and so on. But today we have equal access to learning; we deaf people are highly educated as to communication and are, in fact, leaders in many academic fields. "Deaf-mute" is out of date terminology. "Deaf-dumb," "deaf-mute" and "hearing impaired" are offensive to the deaf community.
Deaf people are equal to hearing people in learning, education, communication, sense and expression of feelings. The proper words for deaf people are "deaf and hard of hearing."
The issue of American Sign Language is urgent for the Lafayette Parish School Board to understand because ASL is the visualization language for the deaf community. The Lafayette Parish School Board is determined to use SEE, or Signing Exactly in English. The board places pathological stress on the deaf community because they want all interpreters and deaf students to sign the SEE which is not part of the deaf culture. The reasons they prefer SEE instead of ASL is because of their theory that SEE will improve English grammar. This is totally false. The school board should respect the deaf culture and they should not fix the language of deaf students.
Yenter Tu, Lafayette