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Weird Thoughts in Great Minds
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Of Interest
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Here's a magazine introduced in 2014 by the California School for the Deaf. The name reflects the school's motto: Learn Experience Thrive. It contains poignant stories of thriving teen agers. You can download a copy (with some effort) and lots more at: http://issuu.com/csdthrive/docs/csdmagazine_360d9f5c54f2de |

The American Society for Deaf
Children has this magazine.
Take a look at:
https://issuu.com/asdc/docs/asdcfinal.fall_11
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Bizarre Multicultural Ideas ??
You brainy d/Deaf people know of Dr.-Dr. Harlan Lane (at left) for his writings. (That's no typo; he has two earned PhDs). He's been called "the chief theoretician of the deaf-culture movement". He has many admirers, and some detractors, one of whom we post below.
At the height of the Sound and Fury days, the excerpt below came from the respected Manhattan Institute scholar, John Leo (U.S. News & World Report, 3/25/2002 and elsewhere).
John Leo is one of those many misinformed people who find it incredible that anyone would reject the cochlear implant "that allows deaf people to hear" . (His words. Translation: to metamorphose into hearing people).
e needs to do meaningful research on the Deaf culture and community, and the kind of "hearing" the implant provides.
Quoting John Leo:
" In his book 'The Mask of Benevolence','……….. Harlan Lane lays
out the argument that American deaf people have been oppressed and 'colonized' like third world countries taken over by European powers. There is a great deal of talk about the 'medicalization of cultural deafness' and the 'blundering audist establishment'. This kind of thinking earned him a MacArthur Foundation 'genius' award of $325,000, proving once again that if you wish to become a MacArthur version of a genius, bizarre multicultural ideas are always quite helpful".
What Mr. Leo is deriding, is covered in great depth in
Dr. Lane's classic, The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community (Knopf, 1992).
You can read all of what Mr. Leo had to say, here:
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnleo/2002/03/18/disability_activism_turns_to_identity_politics/print
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Our Deaf MacArthur Fellow

The Deaf world is most honored to have its own MacArthur Fellow, Dr. Carol Padden, a Deaf sign language linguist. Her MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant was a half million dollars. She is the first and only Deaf MacArthur Fellow, Read about it here:
http://www.macfound.org/fellows/37/
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Nobel Prize Winners Who Became Deaf When
Relatively Young
http://www.macfound.org/fellows/37/
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Nobel Prize Winners Who Became Deaf When
Relatively Young
John Cornfortgh (left), British-Australian, shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1975. He became deaf before entering college.
Chas. Nicolle (right, d. 1936), French, Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1928 became deaf while a medical student. Quite a few d/Deaf people have made names for themselves in scientific areas. you can read about them at these two sites:
http://www.twu.edu/dsc/level_I_alphabetical.htm
http://www.twu.edu/dsc/
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Chas. Nicolle (right, d. 1936), French, Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1928 became deaf while a medical student. Quite a few d/Deaf people have made names for themselves in scientific areas. you can read about them at these two sites:
http://www.twu.edu/dsc/level_I_alphabetical.htm
http://www.twu.edu/dsc/
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How Common is ASL here?
How many people (including normal hearing) are reasonably fluent in ASL in the USA? Some decades ago, at least a half million was a common answer. Our country was 50% smaller then, so for today we’d settle today conservatively for almost
a million d/Deaf and hearing together. It’s a guess, but most likely in the ballpark. (We've heard of estimates going up to two million or more).
The number of those for whom ASL is a first (or sole) language, is at between 700,000 and 900,000. Again, we are guessing.
With the above numbers, ASL is at best the 8th most common known language here------after (in this order) English, Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Italian, and Tagalog.
ASL is the fourth most studied foreign language on college campuses, after French, Spanish, and Italian, and about equal with German. Almost 100,000 students here are studying it.
All the above is our own thought. ASL isn't counted in the US Census. and nobody ever did a private count. If you want to take a brainy dive into this, go to http://research.gallaudet.edu/Publications/ASL_Users.pdf
How many people (including normal hearing) are reasonably fluent in ASL in the USA? Some decades ago, at least a half million was a common answer. Our country was 50% smaller then, so for today we’d settle today conservatively for almost
a million d/Deaf and hearing together. It’s a guess, but most likely in the ballpark. (We've heard of estimates going up to two million or more).
The number of those for whom ASL is a first (or sole) language, is at between 700,000 and 900,000. Again, we are guessing.
With the above numbers, ASL is at best the 8th most common known language here------after (in this order) English, Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Italian, and Tagalog.
ASL is the fourth most studied foreign language on college campuses, after French, Spanish, and Italian, and about equal with German. Almost 100,000 students here are studying it.
All the above is our own thought. ASL isn't counted in the US Census. and nobody ever did a private count. If you want to take a brainy dive into this, go to http://research.gallaudet.edu/Publications/ASL_Users.pdf
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And BTW, How Common is Hearing Loss?
Considering all serious levels of loss, The Otological Medical Group, of Los Angeles, says:
"Loss of hearing is America's largest, yet least recognized, physical ailment. More suffer from it than from heart disease, cancer, blindness, tuberculosis, multiple sclerosis, venereal
disease, and kidney diseases combined."
The largest number we've heard so far, is 50,000,000. That's right on the cover of "Shouting Won't Help", an excellent recent (2013) book by Katherine Bouton.
A couple decades ago, it was said to be 27 million. Now it's fifty million? OMG!! That surely includes older people with presbycusis plus anyone else who can communicate reasonably on the phone but only with a hearing aid ---which is plenty.
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And BTW, How Common is Hearing Loss?
Considering all serious levels of loss, The Otological Medical Group, of Los Angeles, says:
"Loss of hearing is America's largest, yet least recognized, physical ailment. More suffer from it than from heart disease, cancer, blindness, tuberculosis, multiple sclerosis, venereal
disease, and kidney diseases combined."
The largest number we've heard so far, is 50,000,000. That's right on the cover of "Shouting Won't Help", an excellent recent (2013) book by Katherine Bouton.
A couple decades ago, it was said to be 27 million. Now it's fifty million? OMG!! That surely includes older people with presbycusis plus anyone else who can communicate reasonably on the phone but only with a hearing aid ---which is plenty.
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On American Sign Language
"ASL is able to convey the same meanings, information, and complexities as English".
R.J. Hoffmeister in a Gallaudet U. Press publication, 1989
[ In reference to the above ] "This is pure baloney. ASL, as linguistically defined, has nowhere near the power of English for expressive or receptive purposes. ASL has its own merits, some of them outshining [English], but anywhere near as powerful as English for education, commerce, and all-around communication purposes ----it most certainly is not".
L.G.Stewart in NAD's Viewpoints on Deafness, 1992
The Brainy Deaf Site's Response---
Not with such finality, please. English has been developed and endlessly refined through multitudes of generations in every field of human activity. ASL, relatively speaking, has just started to come of age. Many signs in use aren't even cataloged yet. A library's English word dictionary can be in two massive volumes, each 7 inches thick. The thickest sign dictionary we know of, is less than 2 inches ---and signs take up much more space than words. There are, for example, extant signs for "entropy" and "unstable equilibrium"
----but have you ever seen them cataloged? (See lower in this column).
The level one can reach with ASL depends on who's doing the signing. The creativity and flair of some signers are miles above the norm. We saw such a signer forcefully say "I'll need to remember that !!" with a single complex sign. Her sign lasting one second or so, consisted of three rapid, seamless movements of one hand. Her middle finger yanked a tiny, imaginary file drawer out of her head. Her thumb and forefinger dropped in an imaginary filecard, and the heel of her hand slammed it back in. And it looked exactly like all that.
A Deaf, way-out computer nut once explained to us, via his creative ASL in thin air, in a rumbling subway train, how hexidecimal vectors map out a
computer's RAM memory. We later checked it out in a textbook, through diagrams and techno-babble ----and yes, he had it correct and clear.
ASL will develop strongly as more and more Deaf people enter fields and activities they presently are sparsely involved in. We see that as the wave of the future.
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"Signers tend to improvise, to play with signs, to bring all their humor, their imaginativeness, their personality, into their signing, so that signing is not just the manipulation of symbols according to grammatical rules, but irriducibly, the voice of the signer".
Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks (U. of California Press)
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On relative illiteracy (below), one of our readers provided this opinion :
The Deaf Community shares some blame for Deaf illiteracy. To be sure, the Community is an important haven, capturing the majority of Deaf people right after school and for a lifetime. But it focuses on social events, sports, and entertainment. It doesn’t inspire improved or acceptable English for its members to fully function in the greater outside community. Its mindset is that with so many needs met within the Deaf Community, and ASL plus Deaf English the standard there, who needs English? The minimal members with worthy American English are often consulted for their skill
for practical ends, but are envied oddballs. I’ve been around the block and never heard of book clubs or English-improvement classes, or
English-anything, sponsored by or within that Community.
I do know of a few Deaf people who finished school without adequate English (which is quite another matter), read everything they got their hands on, and acquired fully functional American English. They did it on their own for various reasons; the Community afforded neither help nor inspiration.
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And a hearing librarian sent us this:
I have several deaf relatives and clearly see the literacy failure. You need your native language, any language, in which to be taught another language. I was taught in English to read Russian. My co-worker was
taught in Mandarin to read English. I read everywhere that ASL is a valid
teaching language. If those sordid illiteracy figures are the result, it has to be the method, not the language. I’m not involved in deaf education and might sound sophomoric with any suggestions. But I know when something is wrong, grievously wrong. How can this situation prevail decade after decade? Is there no solution?
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R.J. Hoffmeister in a Gallaudet U. Press publication, 1989
[ In reference to the above ] "This is pure baloney. ASL, as linguistically defined, has nowhere near the power of English for expressive or receptive purposes. ASL has its own merits, some of them outshining [English], but anywhere near as powerful as English for education, commerce, and all-around communication purposes ----it most certainly is not".
L.G.Stewart in NAD's Viewpoints on Deafness, 1992
The Brainy Deaf Site's Response---
Not with such finality, please. English has been developed and endlessly refined through multitudes of generations in every field of human activity. ASL, relatively speaking, has just started to come of age. Many signs in use aren't even cataloged yet. A library's English word dictionary can be in two massive volumes, each 7 inches thick. The thickest sign dictionary we know of, is less than 2 inches ---and signs take up much more space than words. There are, for example, extant signs for "entropy" and "unstable equilibrium"
----but have you ever seen them cataloged? (See lower in this column).
The level one can reach with ASL depends on who's doing the signing. The creativity and flair of some signers are miles above the norm. We saw such a signer forcefully say "I'll need to remember that !!" with a single complex sign. Her sign lasting one second or so, consisted of three rapid, seamless movements of one hand. Her middle finger yanked a tiny, imaginary file drawer out of her head. Her thumb and forefinger dropped in an imaginary filecard, and the heel of her hand slammed it back in. And it looked exactly like all that.
A Deaf, way-out computer nut once explained to us, via his creative ASL in thin air, in a rumbling subway train, how hexidecimal vectors map out a
computer's RAM memory. We later checked it out in a textbook, through diagrams and techno-babble ----and yes, he had it correct and clear.
ASL will develop strongly as more and more Deaf people enter fields and activities they presently are sparsely involved in. We see that as the wave of the future.
___________________________________________________________
"Signers tend to improvise, to play with signs, to bring all their humor, their imaginativeness, their personality, into their signing, so that signing is not just the manipulation of symbols according to grammatical rules, but irriducibly, the voice of the signer".
Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks (U. of California Press)
__________________________________________________________
On relative illiteracy (below), one of our readers provided this opinion :
The Deaf Community shares some blame for Deaf illiteracy. To be sure, the Community is an important haven, capturing the majority of Deaf people right after school and for a lifetime. But it focuses on social events, sports, and entertainment. It doesn’t inspire improved or acceptable English for its members to fully function in the greater outside community. Its mindset is that with so many needs met within the Deaf Community, and ASL plus Deaf English the standard there, who needs English? The minimal members with worthy American English are often consulted for their skill
for practical ends, but are envied oddballs. I’ve been around the block and never heard of book clubs or English-improvement classes, or
English-anything, sponsored by or within that Community.
I do know of a few Deaf people who finished school without adequate English (which is quite another matter), read everything they got their hands on, and acquired fully functional American English. They did it on their own for various reasons; the Community afforded neither help nor inspiration.
_____________________________________________________________
And a hearing librarian sent us this:
I have several deaf relatives and clearly see the literacy failure. You need your native language, any language, in which to be taught another language. I was taught in English to read Russian. My co-worker was
taught in Mandarin to read English. I read everywhere that ASL is a valid
teaching language. If those sordid illiteracy figures are the result, it has to be the method, not the language. I’m not involved in deaf education and might sound sophomoric with any suggestions. But I know when something is wrong, grievously wrong. How can this situation prevail decade after decade? Is there no solution?
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What's the Deaf Unemployment Rate?
We've heard as high as 70% in some regions. In a national estimate not too long ago, it came to about 48%, vs. 23% for normal persons in the 18-64 age spread.
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Technical Words in ASL
We've heard as high as 70% in some regions. In a national estimate not too long ago, it came to about 48%, vs. 23% for normal persons in the 18-64 age spread.
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Technical Words in ASL

Technical words finding their way into sign language. Presently, the technical signs in one school are usually different from those in another. Attempts have been made to catalog them, but there's a long way to go (think "iso-octane", "digital video stabilization" and "trans-state sublimation" -----the list is almost endless). Watch Lydia Callis on this: http://goo.gl/tHPCE
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On Deaf Education
A.G. Bell published this statement 1883 in his frighteningly-titled
Memoir Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race:
......deaf mutes think in the gesture language, and English to them is apt to remain a foreign tongue. ........they often write in broken English, as a foreigner would speak........ [Only a } few of the congenitally deaf are able to ....read books....... They are thus ....cut off from our literature......... The political speeches of the day, the leading editorials, etc., are often beyond their knowledge. This
[ illiteracy is ] another element that forces them into each other's society.
There are many who consider that statement, with somewhat less force, true to this very day.
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A.G. Bell published this statement 1883 in his frighteningly-titled
Memoir Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race:
......deaf mutes think in the gesture language, and English to them is apt to remain a foreign tongue. ........they often write in broken English, as a foreigner would speak........ [Only a } few of the congenitally deaf are able to ....read books....... They are thus ....cut off from our literature......... The political speeches of the day, the leading editorials, etc., are often beyond their knowledge. This
[ illiteracy is ] another element that forces them into each other's society.
There are many who consider that statement, with somewhat less force, true to this very day.
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In the book, Public Education in the United States (1919, Houghton Mifflin) it says, "The education of the deaf is one of the most difficult undertakings in our entire educational plan..." Note that this was a comparison to all educational plans in the United States. At that time, 1919, there were 69 state schools for the deaf and 12,000 students. Sixty-eight years later, on July 17, 1987, this appeared in The New York Times:
The average 12th grade deaf student reads
at a 4th grade level and does arithmetic.......
at a 6th grade level, Thus, most deaf students
leave school unable to read newspapers and
are grossly unprepared for our technological society.
Thirteen years later (on July 2, 2000), they printed much the same thing: "The average [pre-lingual] deaf 18 year old American cannot read above the fourth grade level"
(But read the article of the link below, as that 4th grade statement may not be accurate).
http://www.redeafined.com/2012/04/debunking-fourth-grade-reading-level.html
What defines proper education here? It is what prepares the child with at least the urgent basics needed for life in our American society after completing school.
Everything written about Deaf education could fill scores of filing cabinets. And the matter still actively flies around. There are lots of methods and systems, but there's only one bottom line.
Here's the bottom line---------
Did the Deaf person leave school reasonably numerate, and reasonably functional in written colloquial American English (or at very least plain English) as a first or second language? It's a yes or no question, with "reasonably" defined by the standards of the hearing world (the world that everyone lives in). If not, the education has failed. We don’t have to tell you that a relatively illiterate and innumerate person has limited prospects in our society. For almost anyone with literacy and numeracy, everything else needed will eventually fall into place.
"As a people, we have no obligation of any kind
to [educational systems] that cannot meet their
obligations to children. They should face the
market test: change or fail."
Denis Doyle, Hudson Institute (Indiana)
"School is not simply about children. It is the means by which society guarantees its own future..............we talk about the child's right to read. But in our society, the child also has an obligation to read. A child does not have a right to be ignorant."
Philip Schiechty, school reform activist
"A child mis-educated, is a child lost" John F. Kennedy
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We got this two-liner eMail from a reader, related to deaf education:
"Welcome to the chorus. Now get back to your little computer and enlighten us with your brainy solution."
Apparently, the reader doesn't have a "solution". Neither do we. There are
a lot of people in important positions within this matter, with impressive backgrounds. We have hope and faith that they will eventually accomplish much.
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The two letters-to-the- Editor below are from The New York Times of May, 1993.

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A Tale of ………….

Our reader, a deaf engineer, told us this one.
On graduation, he mailed his simple resume to a subsidiary of Sperry Rand Corporation. This was way back during the Cold War, when degreed engineers were in great demand. He quickly received by return mail, a salary offer and order to report for work. Because of the high demand, there was no interview.
One of the engineering Directors he reported to, was shocked at the deafness. Unfortunately, this Director was one of those rare people with totally unreadable lips. Visibly annoyed, he wrote rapidly on paper:
“We have over 350 people here and you’d be dealing with 50 of them a day, some by telephone. [He double-underlined “Telephone” ]. You belong in a much smaller outfit, not this one. I’m sorry. You can leave now”.
Our friend declined to leave, as he had the letter of acceptance. The upset Director dragged him off to a VP’s office. The clearly lip-readable VP shot a few questions at our reader, and was satisfied with the replies. The Director was ordered to begin the employment.
Happy endings are rare for such incidents, but this had one. At the point above, no one would have even dreamed that our reader would have this Director’s job eight years later, when the Director retired. Moreover, the one who nominated our reader to that position from many choices, was this Director himself.
Our reader said the original warning of “dealing with 50 people per day”, turned out to be more like only nine. And the telephone thing for internal communication, was similar exaggeration as well.
On graduation, he mailed his simple resume to a subsidiary of Sperry Rand Corporation. This was way back during the Cold War, when degreed engineers were in great demand. He quickly received by return mail, a salary offer and order to report for work. Because of the high demand, there was no interview.
One of the engineering Directors he reported to, was shocked at the deafness. Unfortunately, this Director was one of those rare people with totally unreadable lips. Visibly annoyed, he wrote rapidly on paper:
“We have over 350 people here and you’d be dealing with 50 of them a day, some by telephone. [He double-underlined “Telephone” ]. You belong in a much smaller outfit, not this one. I’m sorry. You can leave now”.
Our friend declined to leave, as he had the letter of acceptance. The upset Director dragged him off to a VP’s office. The clearly lip-readable VP shot a few questions at our reader, and was satisfied with the replies. The Director was ordered to begin the employment.
Happy endings are rare for such incidents, but this had one. At the point above, no one would have even dreamed that our reader would have this Director’s job eight years later, when the Director retired. Moreover, the one who nominated our reader to that position from many choices, was this Director himself.
Our reader said the original warning of “dealing with 50 people per day”, turned out to be more like only nine. And the telephone thing for internal communication, was similar exaggeration as well.
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