All over the country, we have a law that we must have early and unbiased evaluation of hearing loss in school-age children and unbiased evaluation of deaf children using a variety of communication methods.

Many of us know that this is a joke because typically someone will talk all day about oral program and two minutes about ASL or bilingual which can be legally to say that the choices of communication to the parents were not biased.

Here is another thing that we should understand is the categorization of a true language and other tool communication methods which are not the same.

The communication tool methods are the oral speech, lipread, cued speech, S.E.E.(signed exact English), total communication which are not part of the bona fide learning language category.

Another words, ASL(American Sign language) should be the visual learning language that must be established first…. before learning the tools in choices that parents make for their deaf child to use such as oral speech, lipread, cued speech, etc.

To metaphor this,

It is like getting a new computer and the very first process to get the computer to function is to download an “Operating Software System program”(bona fide learning language-”ASL”) so that the computer will understand any new program, information, etc(speech, lipread, rudimentary sign language).

Otherwise the computer would just crash, freeze, or have limited ability to function to its potential capability.

Now you see why many oralist got so fed up and started learning ASL later in life.

And most of them ask their parents, “Why and who told you that oral was the best way to learn before learning a cognitive language to learn?” or “I wanted to learn English language but why was I denied to have a cognitive language to learn it”

How can we get this simple concept into the minds of naive parents across the country!

Bilingually yours,
John

Posted on May 2nd, 2007 by egbertpress
Filed under: Uncategorized