[sw-l] Re: London based charity endangers SW programs in Nicaragua

[Antony Daamen]

23/05/05

oh, how my blood boils when I read this!!

Here is the website where we can protest!!

http://www.ciir.org/Homepage.asp?nodeid=89623 

Antony
 
-------Original Message-------
 
From: James Shepard-Kegl, Esq.
Date: 05/23/05 04:40:07
To: sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
Subject: [sw-l] Re: London based charity endangers SW programs in Nicaragua
 
Is anyone on the list familiar with a London based charity called the
Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR)?  This organization
pays travel expenses and provides a monthly stipend (about $1,000) to
professionals who wish to provide consulting services for Third World grass
roots social programs.  CIIR is a very large organization with a good
reputation.  Unfortunately, their personnel know nothing about Deaf
education.  In the case of Condega, Nicaragua, this organization for the
past three years has been paying an audiologist to advise the administrators
of the Deaf school there.

The Condega Deaf school, operated by an organization called Los Pipitos, and
the Bluefields Deaf school were the only Deaf schools in Nicaragua to employ
Deaf teachers and to teach SignWriting.  The CIIR consultant, who has no
signing skills, advised that Nicaraguan Sign Language was not a language at
all.  Consequently, he imposed a new curriculum based upon an oralist
approach.  The Deaf teachers were reassigned to work as cooks and quit
shortly afterwards.  (They now work as full time teachers at the Bluefields
school.)

I complained about this to Osvaldo Vasquez, the CIIR official in London
having responsibility over the program.  I asked for an investigation into
why a CIIR development worker, paid to assist a Deaf empowerment program,
would instead disempower the Deaf people (teachers and students) involved
with the program.  I urged Ms. Vasquez at the very least to question the
Deaf teachers involved as part of any investigation.  This he refused to do.

I thought that as users of SignWriting, you might be interested in some of
the comments of the two Deaf teachers.  (Although CIIR would not contact
them, I did.)  Tomasa Gonzalez writes (interpreted into English by the
Bluefields school's interpreter):

"...I went to visit the deaf school in Condega a while back, and all my
students asked me to come back and teach....Nestor [referring to Nestor
Pardo, the CIIR development worker] hired a new hearing teacher to teach
them that didn't know sign.  She was going to try to teach them through
oralism but these poor students just sat there.  They didn't know what was
going on.  All the curriculum that [Nicaraguan Sign Language Projects] had
provided (i.e., the SignWriting materials), all went to waste...."


Claudia Avila writes:

"...Nestor and Carlos [Los Pipitos administrator] informed us that the Deaf
teachers would now be cooking due to budget cuts....We were the only two
Deaf teachers there and no hearing teachers were put to cook....Afterward we
had another meeting, in which I told Nestor I was there to teach not cook. 
He asked to see what I was teaching and then told me that we had a new
curriculum and to disregard everything James [Shepard-Kegl from NSLP] had
said re: SignWriting and sign language.  After Nestor took over, things
really changed....If you teach a deaf child sign language, you give them
their own language.  Afterwards, when they know their language you can teach
them Spanish.  And they will be able to see how the two languages correspond
  Often the orally taught deaf children get made fun of.  Reading lips is
hard and often misunderstandings happen.  But if you have sign language you
are able to gesture well with hearing people.  In Condega right now there
are only hearing teachers.  How are the deaf students supposed to learn sign
from them?  There are not as attentive to their needs.  As Deaf teachers, we
understand their needs and are better able to teach them.  We are better
able to engage them and to interact with them as well as serve as language
models."


Incidentally, Harlan Lane, author of The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the
Deaf Community, contacted Mr. Vasquez via email to complain about the
dismantling of the educational program at the Condega Deaf School.

Personally, I am outraged that a charitable organization, after funding
someone whose ignorance has done such harm to Deaf children, would simply
deny any responsibility.  I can understand when local administrators with no
educational background in Deaf education can perpetuate the prejudicial and
paternalistic traditional approaches to schooling Deaf children.  I am far
less sympathetic when a large foreign based charitable corporation sends a
salaried consultant to advise such approaches.  And I am appalled that an
innovative empowerment program has been quite destroyed by the involvement
of such a consultant.

Initially, I was inclined to give CIIR the benefit of the doubt.  But, their
investigation entailed nothing more than interviewing the people who had
disempowered the Deaf teachers and students in the first place.  Moreover,
CIIR continues to fund their development worker.  I think this establishes
the viewpoint of this organization toward Deaf people, their sign language
and SignWriting.

I know many of you on the List have encountered similar frustrations, and I
just wanted to commiserate.  Since CIIR has a very substantial budget, and
NSLP (my organization) has effectively no budget at all, there is not really
much I can do about this tragic situation.

If anyone is interested, Osvaldo Vasquez can be contacted at osvaldo at ciir
org

-- James Shepard-Kegl






 
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