ASL Rose Newsletter
Vol. 2 No. 9
December 2008

Do people want 100%? Oh yes! Scientists want to see their work with 100% accuracy. Coaches want to see their athletes giving 100% effort. Church ministers want to see their congregation members abiding faith 100%. Citizens want to have their money 100% safe in banks. Politicians want to have 100% turnout for voting. Meat eaters want to eat 100% USDA-approved beef. Teachers want to see students making a 100% on the test. Consumers want a 100% guarantee return on a product. Would the aforementioned people be satisfied with 30% as the result? Definitely not!

It is really amazing to see that many educators of the Deaf in the past, present, and (more likely to continue in) future have been adopting a system where less than 100% effectiveness for Deaf children's language and communication is acceptable. A vivid example is young Deaf children who have cochlear implants that don't make them (we know) hear like their hearing peers. Young Deaf children with cochlear implants are still deaf, yet continually pushed into a direction of neo-oralism where, most recently, Auditory Verbal Therapy [AVT] is decidedly emphasized. The auditory signals that Deaf children receive in their deaf ears even with the aid of cochlear implants remain weak because they are biologically/physically deaf to begin with. It would never be 100% no matter how hard they tried to hear.

ASL Rose found it incredibly maddening with the AVT personnel who continue to dedicate their practice with hope that Deaf children will hear through intensive training. Their madly obsessive endeavor in making Deaf children hear is, without any question, a futility in exercise as far as Deaf children's education is concerned. Time spent on AVT for Deaf children with less than 10% effectiveness on hearing words is definitely wasted. To make the matter worse, they, most likely, are innocently steered to a miseducation. Needless to say, young Deaf children's education could be better spent elsewhere. In addition, it is beyond our comprehension that AVT continues its ride in today's education of the Deaf.

Only 30% of spoken words are visually distinguished on the lips clearly enough to the naked eyes of hearing people who share the same language. Even for the best Deaf lipreaders, they, realistically speaking, couldn't get everything through lipreading. For young Deaf children who couldn't hear the language of English, the Oral Method slightly fares better than AVT because they could fixate their eyes on lipreading that is, in itself, a visual means of communication. However, even the visual signals they, without hearing, receive from lipreading and try to interpret the meaning of spoken words are still too far from 100% effectiveness. Truthfully, the percentage is dropped significantly to nearly zero if Deaf children don't have a working knowledge of English. Why bother utilizing the Oral Method for educating young Deaf children? Likewise, signals emitting from the Manually Coded English [i.e.,Signing Exact English, Signed English] are not effective because such sign systems, albeit completely in the visual form, produce gibberish, grotesque, artificial signals to the eyes of young Deaf children who are attempting to pick up a first language. Many young Deaf children find nonsense in the MCE system. By means of no, weak, and confusing signals to the eyes of young Deaf children, AVT, the Oral Method, and MCE remain inaccessible to them. What is left that may work well for young Deaf children in their attainment of a human language?

There is no better signal, sending and receiving, than American Sign Language (ASL) for young Deaf children in the USA and most of Canada. Scientifically, ASL is recognized as a human language through its visual-gestural system. Since Deaf children's eyes and the visual-gestural nature of language in ASL go hand in hand, the potentiality of 100% effectiveness in language and communication is assured. ASL is one of many signed languages in the world. There are Deaf people around the world with different signed languages. The only way for proper advancement of education in young Deaf children in their home countries is nothing but early exposure to their signed languages. For example, young Deaf Japanese children should be exposed to Japanese Sign Language as early as possible. All signed languages have the following in common: they are real languages, not artificial; they are sensible, not non-sense; they are useful for their learning; not useless; and they offer meaning for their learning, not meaningless. All in all, young Deaf children are 100% empowered by using their signed languages for communication.

When a person signs ASL, he sends external linguistic and non-linguistic signals through his arms, hands, face, and upper body. It is completely different from a person who speaks English; he sends his signals from the internal production of sounds. For a Deaf person, he couldn't hear all of the speech sounds being transmitted but could see everything that is signed to him. Therefore, the power of ASL must be tapped for young Deaf children's first language acquisition because they see it 100%--input, comprehension, production, and everything associated with ASL. If young Deaf children are forbidden to sign ASL by means of steering them exclusively to speech training or artificial sign system, they are cheated because they get far less than 100% for their first-language development. Anything less than 100% is not acceptable, period!

"Have You Ever Seen...? An ASL Handshape DVD/Book" produced by ASL Rose Company is 100% designed for Deaf children to appreciate the beauty of the Deaf world and the playfulness of ASL. Deaf children, after reading the book and viewing the DVD, told us:

 They love ASL and the Deaf world more than ever!
 They experience joy in understanding themselves as Deaf individuals more than ever!
 They are happy in the sharing of the Deaf experience more than ever!
 Their spirit is vibrant for Deaf living more than ever!
 They feel peace in having ASL more than ever!
 Their hope for the acceptance of ASL and the Deaf world is higher now more than ever!

ASL Rose Company hopes for many more Deaf children and youth to have a copy of the "Have You Ever Seen...? An ASL Handshape DVD/Book" during the holiday season of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. Such a gift is going to be priceless for them because they will be reawakened about themselves as Deaf individuals with greater zest for being part of the families and the Deaf world. Happy Holidays!