The fact of the matter remains, that no matter how agressively the oral only method is defended, and no matter how many ways they attempt to divert the subject to prevent answering direct questions, even with allt he accommodations provided through the ADA, deaf students literacy skills are still falling beneath the levels they should be. The decline began with the influx of oralism, and has seen a continued decrease. The scores began to equalize somewhat when early intervention programs utilizing sign language and TC programs gained in popularity, but have seen begun to decline again with the strong push toward complete mainstreaming and the rise in orlaism that correlates with the use of CI in the student population. So defend it all you will, it still has a negative effect on deaf studnet's as a group. One or two successes do not negate the overall negative effects. Perhaps there are those that find this situation acceptable as long as their own child is doing okay, but Ifind it, for deaf children as a heterogenous group, unacceptable.
Jillio when you talk literacy skills you have to remember that literacy skills have fallen for all children in public schools. Public schools basically teach to the middle/lower group of kids, (my dad taught for over 50 yrs so I do have knowledge in the changes that happened during that time) they are so 'afraid' of flunking a child because they might hurt their 'self-esteem' that they are failing all the children.
My oldest wrote a term paper, I read the paper that she wrote during her senior english class 12 yrs ago, even she was surprised that she got an A on it. The wording was that bad, not something that would have been worth an A even when I was in school 19 yrs before that.
Not all deaf/hoh children need to go to the deaf schools, not all deaf/hoh children need to have ASL in their 'toolbox'.
Not all deaf children in ASL deaf schools are literate, and not all those who are illerate are so because they were oral to start with.
Some kids both deaf and not are illerate because of other factors. one being thier parents jsut don't care. another would be that they do have some type of secondary problem, like dyslexia. I have 2 nephews and a great nephew who do have dyslexia, and they read on a elementry level. They stuggle, even though the stratagies they learned in school 'should' have helped them. With the youngest he was lucky that the problem was addressed and he was taken out of a phonetically based reading program and placed in a smaller group with sight words.
One of the problems with deaf children and reading is they to struggle with phonetic reading programs from what the sped teachers I've talked to at the deaf school say. But that is a problem like those with dyslexia where it takes longer then we'd like to decide that this program isn't working.
There is no one way to raise a child, deaf or not. Choices are made either your way or not.
Some will succeed no matter if they are taught your way or not.
Some will do worse whether your way or the other.
Life is not easy.
Just because the students you see coming through your office in college are asking for accomodations which they have never had does not mean they are not or did not do as well as the deaf who were taught using ASL. It does mean that they do know that ADA does give them options to use. Obviously some may need remidial classes, many of their non deaf counterparts need remedial classes and I'm sure that many of their deaf ASL conterparts need remidail classes. That says alot for our educational system, not the students that came through it.
