Day 16: On Education

 OK, this topic is kind of hard because what I am going to write is purely my opinion and I don't have hard facts to back me up. I am no expert. If you want to argue, argue with someone with education background. I am simply stating from my experiences, and I base my opinion from my experiences.

Just to clarify before we start reading; American Sign Language (ASL) don't have a writing system, it is spoken language.

I grew up attending a Deaf institution and my first mainstream school was when I started going to college. So, I grew up in a signing environment at school and at my home. I used to had an ASL class in elementary, then that stopped. There was used to be an ASL studies but they were not required, I skipped out that class and I wish I didn't. I don't think we are being educated enough about our Deaf history, our rights as a Deaf person, and the culture of Deaf. Maybe that is different right now in schools (again, I don't know what it is like right now to be a high schooler at Deaf institution).

From my experience, there are many different methods of teaching Deaf students, and in my personal opinion, bilingual method is a way to go.

I mean, I am writing in English, and it is my second language. ASL is my primary language but in order to be able to achieve outside of my world, I need to know English and how to use it properly. I personally comprehend information through ASL, I think in ASL then I would need to talk to myself translating from ASL to English before I start to write. As you read this, you might notice that my grammar is not exactly right - English is just too complicated!! I was taught about English in ASL, and I am able to understand because I was taught in my primary language.

I think this method should start in very early in a child's learning experience. The earlier, the better. The young child's brain is more flexible than older children, so they would able to make connection between ASL and English better if they were taught at early age. ASL is visual and Deaf people are often visual learners, so at young age through visual learning of ASL, they would able to learn English. I just don't think teaching English through speech/oralism or any other methods than ASL would be as efficiently as teaching through ASL. I know there are plenty of people agree on this.

I often noticed those Deaf students are struggling to read/write English and are not advancing as fast as others are often left behind. They are not being taught properly because they are struggling slightly more than others. I sometime feel like education is dog eat dog world for Deaf people. If you are not able to keep up, you are going to fail and you are not going to get equal amount of education as other Deaf people who are advancing faster than you. It doesn't matter where you are getting your education from.

Deaf people who, maybe, have a learning disability are often overlooked because teaching Deaf students is hard enough. Those students need more help and they need more time to be taught by teachers. It is not fair to them to go through school without really being taught, just because their reading/writing level is not at their age level.

Education is a such sticky topic because I am struggling with education as Deaf, being a woman in STEM, and facing standardized test system that I hate so much (aka GRE). I can rant as much as I want but I don't feel comfortable with ranting without a strong background to back me up. I also do have teacher friends are currently working so hard to teach Deaf students. I know how much they work to just able to teach students while aligning their teaching to core curriculum. So, I am just simply saying what I have seen and what I think needs to be done.

There are so much that needs to be done with education for Deaf children, and I know there are good amount of people working toward this goal. Education is something that should be valued greatly and everybody deserves a fair chance for receiving an education.