Let them speak or sign their language

[Roberta Golinkoff]

Thanks Lorraine. I enjoy what you wrote.

YOu said, "The majority of children with CIs in my country are educated
orally alone. We are failing so many of them."  Where are you Lorraine? I
think in UK?  I have seen data on pretty good outcomes for CI kids in the
US - even if implanted later. I am attaching some papers.

Thanks so much for your great comments!
Roberta


On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 6:38 AM, Lorraine Howard <lorrhw at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Gisela & Roberta,
>
> I hope you do not mind my contributing to this thread. I am hugely
> encouraged by what Gisela has written below. I was in Deaf Education from
> 1987 until 2004. For part of that time I worked in an area which had a
> vibrant Deaf community & a very bilingual approach to the education of
> D/deaf children. I worked in other areas which had predominantly oral
> policies but had senior staff who nevertheless realised the value of
> bilingualism - putting value on the importance of giving children a means
> to communicate, to understand, & to develop symbolic thought -
> this overrode any philosophical blinkering towards speech alone.
>
> When I became a senior manager myself I moved to an area that was deeply
> entrenched in oralism. This was compounded by the vociferousness of the CI
> centres they worked with that signing would harm the children's ability to
> develop speech. The passion & confidence that I could help turn things
> around, given the experiences & knowledge I had gained, evaporated over the
> 5-10 years I battled against it. It was vicious & hugely demoralising.
>
> It heartens me that parental pressure is opening up the debate to the full
> spectrum of children with CIs & the plethora of their experiences in
> Germany. It is my hope that this will create a platform for truly balanced
> debate nationally & internationally. The majority of children with CIs in
> my country are educated orally alone. We are failing so many of them.
> Importantly, there is current research investigating pertinent areas, such
> as language & the devt of EF. The government has just announced more
> funding for investigating the continued issue of poor literacy in deaf
> children. However, wIthout the recognition that sign language (in its
> truest sense, i.e ASL/BSL not SE or SSE) is an important part of dealing
> with that question, we will continue to face the same deficits as were
> there in the 1960s.
>
> I still fear that the current turn in early language acquisition research
> towards spoken language & phonic memory is missing the point. Multimodality
> is as important now as it always has been. If we continue to deny true sign
> language to deaf children we deny them access to so much more. We are not
> Prof Higgins to Eliza Doolittle, we should be a gateway to the world & all
> the knowledge within it. By looking at bilingualism through an oral prism
> we will not develop the tools & methods required to facilitate change
> completely. I remain fervently hopeful that an openness to assess all the
> possibilities to equality grows.
>
> With kindness,
>
> Lorraine
>



-- 
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph. D.
Unidel H. Rodney Sharp Professor
School of Education and Departments of Psychology and Linguistics and
Cognitive Science
University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716
Office: 302-831-1634; Fax: 302-831-4110
Web page: http://udel.edu/~roberta/
Author of "A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool: Presenting the
Evidence" (Oxford)
    http://www.mandateforplayfullearning.com/
Please check out our doctoral program at
http://www.udel.edu/education/graduate/index.html
The late Mary Dunn said, "Life is the time we have to learn."

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/info-childes/CAFWLa7Lr0MOYNUG5CMh7Qt85Xu%2B-HHFu3CFhSjgyXSdBC8FQ2Q%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/info-childes/attachments/20140301/67c570d4/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: S21-30_Geers-Tobey (2)1.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 340212 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/info-childes/attachments/20140301/67c570d4/attachment.pdf>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: cochlear implants int 2014 Castellanos.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 167013 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/info-childes/attachments/20140301/67c570d4/attachment-0001.pdf>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: QUAL OF LIFE Loy et al 2010.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 204610 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/info-childes/attachments/20140301/67c570d4/attachment-0002.pdf>