For 128 years, it is time to Tear Down “BERLIN” Wall

If Hearing babies can learn sign language at the age of 4/6 months to 18 months to build their cognitive development while waiting for their vocal chord to be fully developed to be able to learn speech…so can Deaf Babies.

But AGBell/AVT and its associates built a wall “Berlin Wall” so that parents of Deaf babies will not know the whole truth about American Sign Language.

Many ASL students at University are learning more about Deaf Culture after reading MindField

Here is one of the ASL student’s reaction paper after reading MindField.

MindField Reaction Paper

ASL 3705

April 23, 2008

Sephanie

MindField by John F. Egbert made me ask myself, how would our country cope to having a majority of its citizens become deaf?  Moreover, with old age, almost all of us will lose our hearing at some point, so why not learn sign language now? Due to ignorance, the majority of the population is uneducated about deafness and assumes people should be able to read lips. It is quite obvious that if someone is expecting a deaf person to read lips they have little understanding of how difficult a task it really is. Reading this book was an eye-opening experience to how influential the government can be. People in a seat of power quickly make decisions. They are slow to admit what they do not know and can easily change our lives without ensuring it is the right choice.

There were many hidden messages in this novel. Overall, it was easy to recognize how the author used his language to depict how corrupt the government is. He explained how the government dealt with past epidemics and issues involving panic. It is understandable that during times of chaos decisions need to be made and made quickly, but many times the decisions made are not reasonable. MindField also really stresses how uneducated the general population is about deafness and American Sign Language (ASL). The author continually had characters explaining the most basic aspects of being deaf, being a member of Deaf culture, and explaining how ASL was a language separate from English. I feel that the hearing community was realistically represented as unfortunate as it may sound. Despite the lack of knowledge of what it is like to be deaf or Deaf, the government felt competent to make a huge decision that would impact millions of people. The Secretary of Education and many other people in the book pushed for oralism without having any evidence to back up their decision. There was a general message throughout the book how ignorant people can be and how easy it can be for people to make decision that impact people’s lives without having a strong research base to back up their decision. I think the quarantine of newly deaf people in the book was a metaphor for how many people treat deaf people today.

MindField reiterated lots of the controversies and topics of Deaf Culture I have learned in my four ASL classes and Deaf Culture class, yet this novel put beautiful stated what it must be like to go from living in a hearing world to living in a deaf world. I was moved by how the author described the transition; it was magical. People quickly accepted that they may be deaf for the rest of their life, and they all found more meaning to their life. People’s thoughts were no longer interrupted by all the noise in the environment. Also, people were better able to read others’ emotions on their face and see how genuine a person was by simply glancing at them. Next, I was influenced by how willing people were to learn ASL as well as how a simple blog could influence thousands of people to open their hears to teaching their language to others in need of a communication mode.

Although this was a fiction novel, after reading it I learned a little bit about the history of the United Sates, the government, and computers. I realized how important it is to learn about how our government has dealt with issues in the past to ensure these problems do not happen again. Like Egbert put it, it is important to put history in a glass box and to be aware of the mistakes we have made but not to dwell on them. I now want to go and learn more about past epidemics and quarantines to see how operations were conducted. In this novel I learned about how the Japanese were quarantined during World War II, and how quickly a civilized country can become poor and helpless to the government under martial law. It was also interesting to see how easily influenced people can be by media.

This book is anti-oralism. After many weeks at the Hearing Habitats, the diverse group of people who lost their hearing were still not able to communicate. The author was trying to illustrate how the United States continues to use oralism an effective method for teaching its youth despite its lack of success. The Secretary of Education kept fighting for more time to see the effects of oralism, but the truth was it simply does not work. The newly deaf people cannot hear; therefore, they cannot speak. Teaching them to lipread is a waste of time, for many sounds are not easily visible. Teaching people ASL allows effortless communication and encourages people to think for themselves, not act as a robot.

The government should have asked deaf people and established organizations for their opinions on what should happen after the widespread of deafness. They acted as if deaf people were aliens to this country. They should have realized that deaf people have been around forever, and there are already established ways of communication and education. There was no need for the government to come up with a brilliant plan; the research had already been done. The Secretary of Education’s way of educating her deaf oral child was just one way. They should have asked a deaf parent with a deaf child.

After reading this novel, my eyes are more wide open to the lack of education the general public has on deafness and Deaf culture. I now will make it my duty to educate people during any given opportunity. This book made me think of all the other cultures that have been told what to do and forced to learn English-only to be mainstreamed into society. This book taught me that every culture can teach you something that may improve your own way of living. For Deaf culture, it was appreciating our sight and seeing the beauty of nature and reading people by their body language. I will definitely recommend this book, for I think it will give the general population a better understanding of deafness and maybe even motivate people to learn sign language.

John Egbert    http://deafbilingualcoalition.com/

Posted on April 26th, 2008 by egbertpress
Filed under: Uncategorized