LOCATION: AG BELL CONFERENCE, DATE: JULY 27TH AND 28TH

AG Bell’s Ideology: The Root of Pressing Problems in Deaf Education

The Alexander Graham Bell Association (AG Bell) is having a conference, including a workshop on AVT, Auditory Verbal Therapy (http://www.listen-up.org/edu/options1.htm) on July 27th and July 28th in Arlington, Virginia.

The Deaf Bilingual Coalition believes that the ideology of teaching deaf children speech only, i.e. teaching them to focus on sounds only through the AVT method, is harmful.

A positive new trend called “Baby Signs,” is backed by research which proves that an infant child, whether deaf or hearing, can learn to communicate starting at the age of 4 to 6 months. Speech development capabilities, however, do not start until the age of 18-plus months.

We believe that it is crucial for all infants with hearing loss to start learning sign language, i.e., American Sign Language (ASL), at the age of 4 to 6 months. The Alexander Graham Bell Association, however, continues to promote an outdated ideology, and attempts to convince new parents of children experiencing hearing loss to forbid the use of sign language with those children and limit their communication to the use of residual hearing and speech.

The Alexander Graham Bell Association operates on a colossal scale, using its multi-million-dollar budget to to promulgate its outdated and ineffective ideology which would deny Deaf children the opportunity to learn American Sign Language. AG Bell has had the financial means to create publicity blitzes, which typically allows them to reach parents who have not yet been exposed to the issues. With AG Bell’s public relations machine in full swing, including their use of lobbyists and lobbyist groups, they are able to keep their ideology alive in the media and at various levels of government–an ideology which denies children with hearing loss the opportunity to develop their cognitive skills–which those children would be able to do otherwise if they were allowed to be exposed to sign language at birth.

Please visit this site:

http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/talktoyourbaby/signing.html

Our upcoming demonstration in Arlington, Virginia may not change AG Bell’s dogma of forbidding the use of American Sign Language with babies and young children. Yet, the Deaf Bilingual Coalition will be there to educate the media, as well as educate new parents of children with hearing loss, educators, and other individuals who can make a difference for our children in this country.

Since the 1880 Milan Convention, AG Bell has promulgated what amounts to being a genocidal-like level of mass destruction as it regards Deaf people’s opportunity to learn ASL as a first language, which is their right. AG Bell’s colonialistic stance has resulted in 127 years of decline in deaf education, and deaf people have declined in their abilities in both English and ASL. Speaking is a skill which is not central to the idea of language. Placing inappropriate and undue stress on speaking skills prevents Deaf people from experiencing and mastering the English language in an authentic way. The mere ability to speak, without the associated depth of the authentic sense of the language itself, is only a skill of limited utility. True literacy in the English language would be difficult to attain thereby. Proper cognitive development must take place before deep skills in literacy can be acquired. For Deaf children, the only way to accomplish this is by learning American Sign Language as soon as possible after birth.

Prior to 1880, deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals were able to experience a golden age and were able to thrive, being taught by educators who were fully fluent in both ASL and English. After the 1880 Milan Convention, a type of dark ages ensued, the effects of which still loom before us.

The purpose of our demonstration will be to educate, in order to help reinstate correct and logical thinking on the topic of language acquisition as it involves deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Through our demonstration, we hope to ensure that deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals will no longer be denied access to and the use of a natural, visual language.

Please visit these four important sites:

http://blog.deafread.com/abcohende/2007/03/17/the-greatest-irony/

http://blog.deafread.com/abcohende/2007/07/13/through-ag-bells-eyes-the-birth-of-deafhood-movement/

http://deaffilmblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/gift-of-deaf-bilingual-coalitiontrue.html

http://deafprogressivism.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-could-it-be-unbiased-as-claimed-by.html

More information will follow in subsequent press releases.

John F. Egbert

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John F. Egbert

visit: http://www.deafchildrenandsigning.com/index.html

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Posted on July 16th, 2007 by egbertpress
Filed under: Uncategorized