Paige's Pages: Literacy of the Deaf

I believe that learning English or the native language of their country is important for deaf and hard of hearing children, but learning a sign language is more important in the early stages of language development. After deaf children learn sign language, they can learn English or the native language of their country. Speech is a nice skill to have, but it is not as important as learning to read and write.

 

Let me emphasize that deaf children should learn a LANGUAGE. Not a code such as Signed Exact English or Cued Speech. It doesn’t help them and it wastes time that could be spent learning two languages. Yes. Deaf children need to be bilingual if they are to ever be a part of the hearing world. No. Teaching them two languages isn’t “confusing” for the child.

 

There’s one phrase in an article by Francois Grosjean that I really like: If the child is blind, language input must be auditory. If the child is deaf, language input must be visual. If the child is deaf-blind, language input must be tactile. There is a specific window for language development: 0-7. A child can learn language after age seven, but they will never be a native speaker/signer of the language. It’s hard to learn language, but acquisition is natural. I took a French class last semester, and I had to learn grammar and syntax through videos, exercises, and repetition. I was LEARNING a language and it was difficult. I’ve forgotten all the verbs and signs I learned so now it feels like the class was sort of useless.

 

There’s another phrase about language that I like: if you don’t use it, you lose it. Sign language should always be the first language a deaf child learns, but if they don’t learn English right after or at the same time they learn sign language, English won’t be a native language either. If deaf children don’t use English as much as they use sign language, then they won’t learn it at the same level as educated hearing children do. Deaf children must USE English and sign language. What happens a lot for deaf kids is that parents/the schools use too much of one language and not enough of the other.

 

Helen Keller said something like this that kind of disturbed me when asked whether she’d like to be deaf or blind: I’d rather be blind because it separates me from things. Being deaf separates me from people. This is not true. Lack of a language separates you from people. If you teach your child ASL and English at around the same time that a hearing child learns language, that barrier between your child and the rest of the world will shatter.

 

Parents of the deaf, please remember this when making decisions about your child’s future: if a deaf child is not bilingual, it will be hard for them to be part of both the hearing and deaf worlds.