There are some pointy-headed people who think that it is no use to beat a dead horse because embracing human diversity includes deficit thinking. OK, fine. Let's tell them that deficit thinking is not the pursuit of happiness.
The term deficit is neither a half full cup nor half empty one. Click here to read about deficit thinking that doesn't hold water.
There is no curriculum anywhere that includes objectives and result goals for deficit thinking. There is no organization that taps into someone's talent in deficit thinking. Nor is there a university that bestows an honorary degree upon someone for deficit thinking. Deficit thinking is abnormal and it is not a choice.
Something obviously is not right within the Deaf world. We are listening to things and could feel the panic. And we know the cause was 1880.
That's the 1880 Milan Resolution, an iron-fisted, anti-sign language proporal passed by the International Congress of Educators of the Deaf. The proclamation went to all government agencies and schools for the Deaf to stop using sign language for Deaf people. The proclamation's most controversial provisions make it a shame to use ASL in the United States and most Canada, and it still does.
Think of an enormous societal problem--no American Sign Language (ASL) for Deaf babies. Convincing parents to not use ASL can be a lot easier with the help of someone who neither knows anything about ASL nor is even a near-native user of ASL. These parents are suffering not only deficit thinking, but als erratic behaviors in communicating with their babies who need ASL.
We know deficit thinking doesn't come easy. However, in our country people do make a mess of their life, but then turn around and pull themselves together. We like to think so. It is never too soon or late to replave deficit thinking eith a good one and swear off 'listen and speak" fads in favor of principles that works for Deaf babies. Think wisely!
The term deficit is neither a half full cup nor half empty one. Click here to read about deficit thinking that doesn't hold water.
There is no curriculum anywhere that includes objectives and result goals for deficit thinking. There is no organization that taps into someone's talent in deficit thinking. Nor is there a university that bestows an honorary degree upon someone for deficit thinking. Deficit thinking is abnormal and it is not a choice.
Something obviously is not right within the Deaf world. We are listening to things and could feel the panic. And we know the cause was 1880.
That's the 1880 Milan Resolution, an iron-fisted, anti-sign language proporal passed by the International Congress of Educators of the Deaf. The proclamation went to all government agencies and schools for the Deaf to stop using sign language for Deaf people. The proclamation's most controversial provisions make it a shame to use ASL in the United States and most Canada, and it still does.
Think of an enormous societal problem--no American Sign Language (ASL) for Deaf babies. Convincing parents to not use ASL can be a lot easier with the help of someone who neither knows anything about ASL nor is even a near-native user of ASL. These parents are suffering not only deficit thinking, but als erratic behaviors in communicating with their babies who need ASL.
We know deficit thinking doesn't come easy. However, in our country people do make a mess of their life, but then turn around and pull themselves together. We like to think so. It is never too soon or late to replave deficit thinking eith a good one and swear off 'listen and speak" fads in favor of principles that works for Deaf babies. Think wisely!
With Aloha
Always From
Ka'lalau
6 comments:
I wonder if people are using the same definition for "deficit thinking." I understand that, according to how people introduced the term in the deaf community, that it refers to people who quickly or automatically treat deaf people as deficient beings, i.e., they want to only view deaf people as people who are lacking something.
"Deficit thinking", in that usage, actually refers to harmful types of prejudice. Prejudice is a concept that refers to people who do not identify reality properly and do not make proper value judgments.
Prejudice itself is not a value that we want to embrace. To "embrace" something means we want to encourage it to grow and become stronger. Do we want to encourage people to be more prejudiced? Of course not.
If there is a prejudiced person, we can try to find that person's good side and hope that his good side becomes stronger and his bad side diminishes, but it doesn't make sense to say that we should "embrace" that person's deficit thinking.
"Deficit thinking is abnormal and it is not a choice."
--this stopped me in my tracks. I am not sure what you mean by deficit thinking not being a choice. It could mean you're implying that it's something we have been conditioned to do--much like along the lines of Pavlov's operant conditioning. And because it's so habitual, we do not realize we are engaging and perpetuating it each and every time.
But in my mind, deficit thinking IS a choice--when you *know* and are *aware* that you're doing it. By introspection and self-analysis, we can begin to recognize the roots of deficit thinking and thereby arrest it before it manifests via our words.
BF
I think he meant that it's not a "viable choice."
Deficit thinking is not a choice. Why not? Let's first imagine parents being informed that their baby has failed a hearing screening test. Their deficit thinking begins, and they do not have any choice but assume what might be told about hearing restoration, "listen and speak" strategies, and many other things.
Our American society has yet to celebrate American Sign Language (ASL) for Deaf babies. Many schools for the Deaf across the country have their own ASL specialist or two for the entire school. The No Cild Left Behind mandatory doesn't include ASL at all.
Secondly, the police academy across the country and around the world does not include ASL. Police officers need to learn that signs have parts: hand configurations, palm positions, onset/coda locations, non-manual expressions, and modifier movements, all of them articulated simultaneously. However, the police is trained to watch hands only because it takes the hands to kill. Any funny movement of the hands justifies beating and restraining.
All in all, The lack of knowledge of ASL generates deficit thinking. Neither parents nor police officers who are unaware of ASL have any choice but begin deficit thinking.
The deaf schools didn't always have ASL specialists in recent years...I can say ours (state school for the deaf) hired our first and only ASL specialist (a hearing professor from an interpreter training program but highly experienced)... about two years ago!
Previous that, we had a SE (Signed English) specialist...before that a SEE specialist.
Do hearing staff truly know how other hearing staff sign?? ;)
Usually they don't...they only talk (flapping lips :) ) to each other and sign weakly/carelessly when deaf persons become present.
Passingthru
oops I think I posted in wrong blog..should be under other blog about "not deaf enuf" sorry. time for me to take a break. lol
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