Editorial

EDITORIAL "Deaf" Press It is always encouraging to see growth in the quality and quantity of publications in deafness controlled by deaf people . The return to publication of The Deaf American and the improvements in The Silent News are examples of progress in this area. Another is the excellent journal Shhh which is published by Self Help for Hard of Hearing People. Shhh was started from scratch a few years ago by Rocky Stone and now ranks as one of the best journals in the field of hearing impairment. Other publications such as Vibrations, Deaf USA, The FRAT, WRAD News, etc., give deaf people voices in their affairs. Professionals in deafness who wish to get solid information about pragmatic aspects of deaf life need to read these publications. They provide an ironic juxtaposition of the ideas deaf people have about deafness and its priorities as contrasted with what hearing professionals see as primary. Sign Language and College Credit American Sign Language (ASL) was for years demeaned as not even a language. Oralists, 99 percent of whom knew no signs, were the most vocal in denying the linguistic status of ASL. Even sadder was the fact that many who knew and believed in the use of signs failed to recognize or stand up for its properties as a language. Finally, it was psycholinguists, initially Stokoe and Bellugi, who came to deafness as outsiders and described the linguistic properties of ASL. It was they who gave ASL full status with English, German, French, Spanish and other languages . Their work represents a major historical milestone in progress for deaf people. A hurdle we now face is having ASL accepted in colleges, high schools and elementary schools as a foreign language. Currently, signs and ASL are taught in many institutions of higher learning. In some, ASL is accepted as meeting the foreign language requirement for the Ph.D. In others, it is taught at the undergraduate level for credit. The key issue is that ASL is not being placed in the foreign language department where it should be. Foreign language instructors who in most colleges and universities are fighting to hold onto their jobs and to maintain dropping enrollments are threatened by ASL. They know that it has far more appeal to most undergraduates than does any language they offer. Thus, they actively oppose its acceptance as a course meeting the foreign language requirement for graduation. Such opposition is transparently defensive when we realize sign language is the third or fourth most widely used language in the United States. We see this at the college where I teach, at Gallaudet University, at the Rochester Institute of Technology (NTiD's campus) and all over the nation. Putting ASL into the foreign language departments of major institutions of higher learning throughout the United States is a necessary next step. This will not be easy politically or pedagogically. The political problem has been described . The pedagogical difficulty is in finding people who are understanding of the syntax of ASL. This grammar has been adequately described by Stokoe, Bellugi, Baker-Shenk, Padden and others, but few know this information, are fluent in the language and have the higher education degrees for faculty positions. Just as with English, many people (most of whom are deaf) are fluent in the use of ASL. This does not mean that they know the syntactical rules they use so effectively. Being able to use a language is a different matter from the competence to teach it. Dr. Malcolm Norwood Retires For many years, almost since the program's inception, Dr. Norwood has worked in and/or directed what used to be Captioned Films for the Deaf (CFD). It has now evolved into some new government acronym. Regardless, Dr. Norwood, along with answering countless letters for Congressmen, responding to complaints from the deaf community, and directing government projects such as NTID, has pushed forward with more and better captioning of films, television, and videotapes. Deaf people all over the United States owe Dr. Norwood a tremendous depth of appreciation for what he has done. Every evening when they see television news, entertainment and educational programs with captions, it should be remembered that the one...