Dear ASL Rose,
Would like to relay to you this 200 years old story about the Deaf. I am
sure you may be surprised to learn this. Hearing people are putting
words into these young innocent people their words not Deaf's own words.
Allow this to explain.
Please refer to the American Annals of the Deaf, Edward Allen Fay, vol
xxxix, page 38, 1894, print by Gibson Brothers, Washington, D.C. (its
quite thick with 500+ pages but thanks to computer that can narrow what
I want to read)
..."The principal of a South German school told me that the deaf did not
have use of language to express their own ideas, but merely to ask
questions; and so the class-room work was confined almost entirely to
interrogative exercises. This sounds strangely like the talk of a
hundred years ago. In a letter of the Abbe de l'Epee, written to Sicard,
and dated November 25, 1785, is a paragraph which I translate verbatim
(italic font): "Do not expect that they (the deaf) will ever be able to
express their ideas in writing. Our language is not their language,
which is signs. Let it suffice for you that they know how to translate
our speech into theirs, just as we ourselves translate foreign tongue,
without knowing how either to think or express ourselves in those
language."...
This sound strangely like the talk of a hundred years ago.
So these trying to "nail" (hearing or instructors nail and hammer
'action' to their heads - the deaf) their own language and ideals is
like brainwashing the deaf their words and thoughts. A. G. Bell wasn't
around to agreed on that and he wasn't even born yet, was he? Is the
hearing and instructor following the way A. G. Bell saying to teach how
to talk their own ideals not their (the deaf) own ideals?
So, "...'let it suffice..." meaning, let them go and learn.
Steve
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