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New Thoughts on Bilingualism
Contributed
by Roger Carver,
M.Ed. Eye to Eye series, November 1999
Last
month, I attended a conference on mainstreaming sponsored
by the Clarke School for the Deaf in Massachusetts. Clarke
School is probably North America's leading oral school for
the deaf (it is the first and oldest oral school in North
America as well). During this conference, I had the opportunity
to meet an old Deaf acquaintance who is the past Chairperson
of the Oral Hearing Impaired Section of the Alexander Graham
Bell Association of the Deaf. We both chatted about the various
issues happening in the field, and I realized we both had
more in common than differences. He was not anti-sign language
any more than I was anti-oral. In fact, he can use and understand
ASL, and his three deaf children are quite fluently bilingual,
both in ASL and English. He deplores the way oralism had portrayed
ASL and Deaf culture in a negative light over the years and
the way Deaf cultural militants have ridiculed Deaf persons
who continue to value their oral communication skills. He
believes that every Deaf person should be able to choose whatever
communication mode he or she is comfortable with and that
all within the Deaf community should respect this choice.
We agreed that we had more grounds for agreement than disagreement,
and where we disagreed, we could simply "agree to disagree"
rather than attacking each other.
This
conversation with this gentleman and the recent controversy
over the awarding of the Order of Canada to Daniel Ling, a
leading proponent of the auditory-verbal method for deaf children,
gave me much to reflect upon. Why is there so much emotion
and antagonism in this field? I believe Dr. Ling served as
a lightning rod for the anger within the Deaf community. It
was directed not so much against him personally, as it was
against the system that the Deaf community perceived Dr. Ling
as being a part of, rightfully or wrongfully. Irrational,
perhaps, but it is perfectly understandable.
For
over a hundred years, Deaf persons had been subjected to a
great deal of abuse and misery at the hands of oral educators
of the deaf in the name of oralism. They endured years of
emotional and physical abuse while trying to learn how to
speak, including yours truly. This training was done at the
expense of practical education and English literacy with the
result that so many Deaf persons left school inadequately
prepared for post secondary education and employment. To compound
this problem, many discovered that the "oral" skills
they developed in school were not good enough to communicate
with the hearing world in general. Even Dr. Ling has acknowledged
the failings of this oralist education in his writings. On
top of this all, the oralist system mounted an effective disinformation
campaign against the Deaf community, their culture and language,
constantly referring to them in disparaging and demeaning
terms. Oral programs posted pictures of apes bearing the legend:
"Do you want your deaf child to sign like me?",
encouraged its pupils to write essays on "Why sign language
is bad for me", counseled parents on the "dangers"
of their child being exposed to sign language, and so on.
The Alexander Graham Bell Association of the Deaf even once
initiated a letter-writing campaign against a TV network for
letting the famed singer, Nanette Fabray perform song in sign
language during prime time. This constant denigration of their
language and culture on top of their abuse at the hands of
oral educators and their inadequate education has left a deep,
smoldering anger within the Deaf community in general, and
it occasionally flares out as it did in the case of Dr. Ling'
s award. This kind of thing would not have been permitted
in Canada if it were directed at another ethnic or linguistic
minority.
There
are many parallels between the Deaf and the First Nations.
Both were subjected to extreme assimilationist pressures.
The "white" establishment tried to deprive children
from First Nations tribes of their culture and language, imposing
English language and British-Canadian cultural values upon
them, often with terrible effects to their self-concept and
with tragic results. Today, the First Nations are recovering
from this debacle, and authorities and churches are acknowledging
and apologizing for the mistakes made by their predecessors.
Interestingly, there seems to be a general trend among the
First Nations towards healing - not retribution. Mostly what
they want is that their pain be recognized as real and that
their oppressors say that they were wrong and that they are
sorry. Then can their healing process begin. I have every
reason to believe that the Deaf community would love to have
this same kind of consideration; they want their pain to be
recognized as real and that they were victims of misguided
efforts. If they received the acknowledgement that wrongs
were done to them, they can start putting their anger behind
them. Some governments have already begun this process such
as the provincial government in British Columbia, but I have
yet to see anything like.
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It Takes a Village to Raise a Deaf Child 
