What if Sign Languages is only done by a small percentages

Lighthouse77 said:
hey, I'm just trying to get some parents to think about what they are doing when they exclude ASL from their life. And what they are doing to kids who need it. they probably won't have that many deaf to communicate with.
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The problem with the Deaf community is that... we're so small, most people wouldn't listen to us because our voices are so tiny. Most of the best things (and some of the worst) that happened to us are from the top-down (which is partly why I am being cynical about my libertarian belief system right now.)

Kinda hard to do it from the bottom-up when you can't really tell other people what guideline to follow.
 
souggy said:
Eh... I wasn't really meaning they will learn ASL at college, but when they leave the bird's nest. You have to remember, ASL wasn't offered back in the 60s, 70s and 80s yet somehow the oral deaf were able to find Deaf culture and become part of it.
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That says a lot doesnt it? Also many CI users are also repeating that pattern as I see many of them coming to AD wanting to interact with other deaf people and learn ASL. :hmm:
 
I think every CI user is different and respond differently.

Does EVERY CI user find a forum and try to learn sign? Probably not.
Does every hearing person find a forum and try to learn sign? Definitely not.
Do i think it is valuable to try to teach children multiple languages? Yes.

I grew up bilingual English-French. My parents spoke no french. My kindergarten through grade 3 were completely in French, no english education. Grade 4-6 were half day in each, and 7+ was certain subjects (switching every year so we became fluent in all subjects). I believe this approach should be taken with all children unless they are specifically struggling with language (I had a friend growing up who had to move to an English-only program because it was too difficult for him). I would love to see hearing, CI and Deaf kids all in this type of program, however, thats not going to happen. To me, ideally, i would have Deaf, CI and hearing kids in a mixed classroom, learning ASL and English (with Cued Speech, not SEE or PSE).

Just my opinion.. and i didn't grow up deaf, so what do i know, eh?

*EQL*
 
souggy said:
Eh... I wasn't really meaning they will learn ASL at college, but when they leave the bird's nest. You have to remember, ASL wasn't offered back in the 60s, 70s and 80s yet somehow the oral deaf were able to find Deaf culture and become part of it.
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Wasn't offered by whom?
 
Reba said:
Wasn't offered by whom?
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Mainstream schools; oral schools. Colleges. Not every "Deaf school" that we know of nowadays had ASL as well.

The Deaf adults I spoke to said that there were no formal classes for ASL until the '90s. If you wanted to learn ASL, you had to go to a church or socialize with the Deaf themselves; provided that it wasn't banned in the institutes.
 
souggy said:
Mainstream schools; oral schools. Colleges. Not every "Deaf school" that we know of nowadays had ASL as well.

The Deaf adults I spoke to said that there were no formal classes for ASL until the '90s. If you wanted to learn ASL, you had to go to a church or socialize with the Deaf themselves; provided that it wasn't banned in the institutes.
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Then there were also the medical "professionals" who were quite vocal about not having children learn ASL who may have benefited from it.
 
KristinaB said:
Then there were also the medical "professionals" who were quite vocal about not having children learn ASL who may have benefited from it.
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I was one of them! :mad:
 
Yes, I believe there are kids who will have no problems with language learning. They will grow up using only spoken language, they will never fall behind, and they will do great. They will grow up and never learn ASL and they will still be perfectly happy,
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Yes, but is that a sizable amount of kids?
There have ALWAYS been kids who have done well and not felt the need to learn ASL.
However, even with the kids who are mildly hoh or who were oral sucesses, they feel that ASL provides something that oral speech doesn't. Heck, almost all oral kids have significent social issues b/c they have to work so hard at speech.
Will the CI increase the number of monolingal speech only kids? Maybe, maybe not. There were kids with hearing aids who were monolingal....and yet, even with all that......a lot of oral kids learned ASL as a second language.
 
Also many CI users are also repeating that pattern as I see many of them coming to AD wanting to interact with other deaf people and learn ASL.
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AMEN!!!! If the CI and oral speech completely equalized dhh kids, you wouldn't see a lot of CI and raised oral folks here. History is just going to repeat itself (especially around high school, since high school is a horrible misrable time for many dhh kids)
 
deafdyke said:
AMEN!!!! If the CI and oral speech completely equalized dhh kids, you wouldn't see a lot of CI and raised oral folks here. History is just going to repeat itself (especially around high school, since high school is a horrible misrable time for many dhh kids)
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Isn't it true that the VAST majority of people with a hearing loss never learn ASL? I think the stats say 33 million have a loss and about 500,000 people use ASL. That means almost all are "coping" without ASL.
 
Where did they get their informations of who know ASL? Deaf schools?
 
Isn't it true that the VAST majority of people with a hearing loss never learn ASL? I think the stats say 33 million have a loss and about 500,000 people use ASL. That means almost all are "coping" without ASL.
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That is b/c most people with a hearing loss are late deafened, and ex-hearing. Only about 10% of the dhh population is pediatricly dhh.
And even with the late deafened population, there are still some people who use ASL. Heck, with the generation that grew up seeing ASL as "cool" aging, I wouldn't be surprised if there was an uptick in late deafened people learning and using ASL.
Yes, most dhh people don't use ASL, but that's b/c they're ex hearing and don't really feel an affinity towards ASL or Deaf culture. They function as ex hearing "without hearing" rather then as strongly visual..
 
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