<div dir="ltr"><div><div>Thanks Lorraine. I enjoy what you wrote. <font><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)"><br><br>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.<br>
<br></span></font></div><font><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">Thanks so much for your great comments!<br></span></font></div><font><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">Roberta<br>
</span></font><div><div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 6:38 AM, Lorraine Howard <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lorrhw@gmail.com" target="_blank">lorrhw@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">Dear Gisela & Roberta,</span><br></div><div><font><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)"><br>
</span></font><div><font><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">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. </span></font><div>
<font><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)"><br></span></font><div><font><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">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. </span></font></div>
<div><font><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)"><br></span></font></div><div><font><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">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. </span></font><div>
<font><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)"><br></span></font></div><div><font><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">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.</span></font></div>
<div><font><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)"><br></span></font></div><div><font><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">With kindness,</span></font></div><div><font><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)"><br>
</span></font></div><div><font><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">Lorraine</span></font></div></div></div></div></div>
</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div dir="ltr">Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph. D.<br>Unidel H. Rodney Sharp Professor<br>School of Education and Departments of Psychology and Linguistics and Cognitive Science<br>
University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716<br>Office: <a href="tel:302-831-1634" value="+13028311634" target="_blank">302-831-1634</a>; Fax: <a href="tel:302-831-4110" value="+13028314110" target="_blank">302-831-4110</a><br>
Web page: <a href="http://udel.edu/~roberta/" target="_blank">http://udel.edu/~roberta/</a><br>Author of "A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool: Presenting the Evidence" (Oxford)<br>
<a href="http://www.mandateforplayfullearning.com/" target="_blank">http://www.mandateforplayfullearning.com/</a><br>Please check out our doctoral program at <a href="http://www.udel.edu/education/graduate/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.udel.edu/education/graduate/index.html</a><br>
The late Mary Dunn said, "Life is the time we have to learn."</div>
</div></div></div></div>
<p></p>
-- <br />
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group.<br />
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to info-childes+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.<br />
To post to this group, send email to info-childes@googlegroups.com.<br />
To view this discussion on the web visit <a href="https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/info-childes/CAFWLa7Lr0MOYNUG5CMh7Qt85Xu%2B-HHFu3CFhSjgyXSdBC8FQ2Q%40mail.gmail.com">https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/info-childes/CAFWLa7Lr0MOYNUG5CMh7Qt85Xu%2B-HHFu3CFhSjgyXSdBC8FQ2Q%40mail.gmail.com</a>.<br />
For more options, visit <a href="https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out">https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out</a>.<br />