Who is Qualified to Teach American Sign Language?

WHO IS QUALIFIED TO TEACH AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE? Jan Kanda and Larry Fleischer California State University, Northridge The field of sign language teaching is quite old, but professional recognition of American Sign Language (ASL) teaching is relatively new, spurred by the academic community's recent recognition of this form of communication - indigenous to Deaf people in the United States - as a legitimate language, grammatically distinct from English. With this recognition came federal legislation in the late 1970's mandating the provision of sign language-related services for deaf people. Since that time there has been a rapid proliferation of sign language classes offered at U.S. colleges and universities. What makes someone qualified to teach American Sign Language? The answer will vary depending on the level of education where the individual teacher is working which may include K-12, community college, college/university, or adult education settings. However, identifiable education and knowledge, along with certain skills and attitudes, are prerequisite regardless of the setting in which ASL teachers work. 1. Sign Language teachers must respect the language and its history Concern and discussion regarding the qualifications of sign language teachers is not a recent phenomena. Among the many responsibilities he assumed upon his arrival in America from France, Laurent Clerc considered the careful preparation of his colleagues to teach the language of signs primary. Hundreds of deaf and hearing teachers proudly said, "I am one of his disciples" (Lane, 1984). While many of those following Clerc maintained the beauty and quality of the language, concern was @ 1988 by Linstok Press, Inc. 183 ISSN 0302-1475 see note inside front cover Who is Qualified to Teach ASL? expressed by members of the Deaf community that the language was disintegrating in clarity, structure, and accuracy due to conditions in deaf education, negative societal attitudes, and poor sign language instruction provided to hearing people working with Deaf children and adults. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1847), recognizing that ASL was unique because it had no written form, warned that "the language of signs is not to be learned from books. It must be learned, in a great degree, from the living, looking, acting model." The teacher, then, actually becomes the text book resulting in an even more critical need for truly knowledgeable, skilled, qualified teachers of sign language. Concerned about attempts to restrict the use of signs and the emergence of "new signs", Dr. J. Schuyler Long (1918) wrote ...the sign language is very much a live language. It is impossible for those who do not understand it to comprehend its possibilities with the deaf, its powerful influence on the moral and social happiness of those deprived of hearing and its wonderful power of carrying thought to intellects which would otherwise be in perpetual darkness. In 1913, the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) began a project to preserve the integrity of sign language by means of film. In one of those films, George Veditz, then president of NAD, made an impassioned plea for the preservation of sign language, stating We must, with these various films, protect and pass on our beautiful signs as we have them now. As long as we have deaf people on earth, we will have signs and as long as we have our films, we can preserve our beautiful sign language in its original purity. It is my hope that we all will love and guard our beautiful sign language as the noblest gift God has given to deaf people. Outsiders, however, continued to discredit and even harm the language which Deaf leaders such as Clerc and Veditz tried SLS 59 Kanda and Fleischer so desperately to preserve. Early linguists misclassified it as a nonverbal means of communication - something that had no grammatical rules and which could not deal with abstractions or the evolving vocabulary needs of the Deaf population. English forms of signing began to emerge, misleading students of the language as to what the real language was or how it functioned. In 1938, another Deaf leader, Tom Anderson, said I believe that the sign language as it came to me through the acknowledged masters has suffered in the hands of people who have taken it up without proper...