Cloggy
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Found the article below regarding Gallaudet, and wondered what the status is today, as this article is from about 9 years ago.
I recall reading somewhere that admission is more difficult nowadays, which resulted in quite a lower amount of new students...
I recall reading somewhere that admission is more difficult nowadays, which resulted in quite a lower amount of new students...
[From Otto Menzel, Ph.D. -- copy of his testimonial on the Education of the De f Act, entered into the record of the United States Senate Subcommittee on Public Health and Safety by Senator Bill Frist, M.D., Chairman, 2/12/98. The hearing was to reauthorize funding for the Education of the Deaf Act, which included authorization for Gallaudet.]
MEMORANDUM TO THE LABOR COMMITTEE, UNITED STATES SENATE:
Project: EDUCATION OF THE DEAF ACT, TITLE I, Part A -- Gallaudet
University
Submitted by Otto J. Menzel, Ph.D.
The purpose of this memorandum is to call attention to the gross misfeasance and deception on the part of "Gallaudet University" with respect to its obligations under the Education of the Deaf Act, as amended in 1992, and, more particularly, with respect to the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (as amended), all up for reauthorization at the present time.
The 140-year history of what is now euphemistically designated "Gallaudet University" is replete with deception of the Congress and of the taxpayers of the United States, purporting to be an institution of higher learning for the deaf. In fact, even today, Gallaudet admits students who are "half-fitted" and graduates them "half-educated," and even this is almost a glorification.
Admission to Gallaudet, even today, is open to students with no better than an 8th grade reading level, let alone reading and language skills commensurate with customary collegiate entrance requirements elsewhere. Indeed, according to a report of the Commission on Education of the Deaf (1988), "in spite of several decades of concentrated effort to improve the figures, the average reading level of deaf high school graduates remains at roughly the 3rd or 4th grade equivalent."
Among the Powers of the Board of Trustees of Gallaudet [Sec 103(b)(7)] is "to confer such degrees and marks of honor as are conferred by colleges and universities generally... as, in its opinion, may be deemed advisable and consistent with academic standards." Despite this, more than a few Gallaudet graduates are functionally illiterate, assuredly not qualified to teach, as implied by their degree from the Gallaudet School of Education and Human Services.
Indeed, Gallaudet graduates are not qualified for employment by leading corporate employers, a number of whom have notified Gallaudet University that they would no longer hire Gallaudet graduates because they cannot read and write, even at the most basic levels of literacy.
The "Deaf President Now" revolt of 1988 on the Gallaudet campus resulted in the appointment of the current president, who was chosen for his deafness, not for any leadership or administrative abilities. His salary, paid by U.S. taxpayers, is among the highest of any university president in the country. Under his tutelage, Gallaudet has deteriorated apace, chiefly by his yielding to, perhaps condoning, changes seriously detrimental to the education of the students. Most blatant among these changes is the policy advocated by a group of extremists on the faculty of using "American Sign Language" (ASL) for all purposes, to the exclusion of all other means of communication, including other forms of sign language based on English word order. This is being carried to extremes.
It must here be noted that ASL is a "gestural surrogate" (Scouten), a pidgin language that came into ascendancy when, after more than a century of use only informally, chiefly by children, as a colloquial form of expression, William Stokoe, a member of the Gallaudet faculty, "discovered" that ASL has a distinctive grammar [sign order] of its own, unrelated to English grammar [word order]. This otherwise trivial finding gave rise to inordinate pride on the part of many users of ASL and led to its coming to be viewed as "the natural language of the deaf," and touted by its defenders as equivalent to English as a vehicle for conveying the "same meanings, information, and complexities as English." (Hoffmeister).
According to Stewart, ASL, as linguistically defined, has nowhere near the power of English for receptive OR expressive purposes. ASL has its own merits... "but anywhere near as powerful as English for education, commerce, and all-around communication purposes it most certainly is not."
Under the present administration of Gallaudet, all teaching and communication generally has been ordained to be via ASL only! Even the previously prevalent custom of the teachers' speaing and signing simultaneously has been banned, with a "no voice" policy, even outside the classroom and even between hearing or oral deaf persons who rely on speech and speechreading. This is a clear violation of Section 104 of the Education of the Deaf Act.
According to Stelle, a professor at Gallaudet, "By extending offers of admission to potential students, a university establishes an expectation that its agents will make reasonable efforts to communicate in ways accessible to the greatest possible number of those students. Students and faculty come to Gallaudet at every point along the continuum from virtually perfect to virtually nonexistent receptive skills in both English and sign. Faculty members who sign without speaking exclude from access to their communication those who depend for their understanding on a speech component, just as surely as those who speak without signing exclude those who depend for understanding on a signed component. To pretend that neither of those choices is a responsible one at Gallaudet is to be wilfully negligent."
In 1995, the Cued Speech Center on the Gallaudet Campus was summarily abolished. Cued Speech was developed at Gallaudet by Dr. R. Orin Cornett in the 1960s, as a method to improve the English and speech skills of deaf students. The method was highly successful and was embraced, in 1975, by Gallaudet College as the answer to literacy problems.
The greatest weakness of ASL is that it has no written form. There is no such thing as textbooks in ASL, nor can students take notes in ASL, etc. With all instruction now being carried on in ASL exclusively, the sole source of information is what each student can absorb during the lecture and remember. He has no way of supplementing this, particularly because he has learned no English, and therefore cannot read English books on the subject matter, either. Obviously, once cannot learn science nor history nor any other academic subject this way.
For years, much of the efforts of teaching Gallaudet students has been directed toward teaching them English, though they should have had those rudiments prior to admission. This, naturally, came at the expense of academic subject matter, but command of the language had to take precedence over all else. (then!)
Now they are not even taught English. Instead, a very strange and utterly ineffective approach has come into use, not only at Gallaudet, but also at elementary and secondary schools for the deaf elsewhere. It is called the "Bilingual-Bicultural" method. In fact, it s neither bilingual nor bicultural in any sense. The theory is that by intensive instruction in ASL (NOT in English!), the student will magically acquire command of English, which of course does not happen. When he inevitably performs poorly in English, the "solution" applied is to intensify the ASL instruction.
The inevitable result of the ASL-only and Bi-Bi policies is the perpetuation of illiteracy among the students, already the greatest of their problems.
... :sure: ?
