Educating the American Sign Language Speaking Minority of the United States: A Paper prepared for the Commission on the Education of the Deaf

EDUCATING THE AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE SPEAKING MINORITY OF THE UNITED STATES: A Paper prepared for the Commission on the Education of the Deaf Harlan Lanel Northeastern University The Commission on the Education of the Deaf has an historic opportunity to bring outmoded educational policy into line with recent scientific discoveries in linguistics and psychology, and thereby to right great wrongs in the education of a large percentage of America's deaf children. Over the past decade there has been a rapid accumulation of evidence that the sign languages of the world are fully developed autonomous natural languages, with grammars and art forms all their own. Accordingly, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization has concluded that such languages should be "afforded the same status as other linguistic systems" and play "an active part in.. .educational programmes for the deaf."2 American Sign Language has received particular study and informed scholars agree that ASL is one of our country's indigenous minority languages. 3 Several states have recently passed legislation providing for the teaching of ASL in their IThe author is grateful for assistance given in the preparation of this report by Dr. Charlotte Baker-Shenk ofWestern Maryland College's Sign Language Program, Professor Rudolf Troike ofthe University of Illinois's Department of Educational Policy Studies, and Mr. Sy Dubow, Director of Gallaudet University's Center for Law and the Deaf. 2 Consultationon the DifferentApproachesto Educatingthe Deaf Paris: UNESCO, 1985. (ed/84/ws/ 102) 3 There is now a substantial literature: see for example H. Lane & F. Grosjean, Recent PerspectivesonASL Hillsdale. NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Asscociates 1980; R Wilbur. AmericanSign Language:Linguistic &Applied Dimensions.San Diego: College Hill, 1987: J. Van Cleve (ed.) Encyclopediaof DeafPeople & Deafness.NY: McGraw-Hill, 1986. @ 1988 by Linstok Press, Inc. 221 ISSN 0302-1475 See note inside front cover Educating ASL Speakers schools on the same basis as other indigenous and foreign minority languages in the United States.4 A second body of scientific investigation has demonstrated that a child who is unable to use language fluently at home and at school is severely disadvantaged in cognitive development and education.5 The Congress of the United States has passed two types of statutes in recent years to remedy the disadvantage experienced by language-minority students who cannot communicate freely in the classroom by using their primary language: (a) The Bilingual Education Act (P.L. 89-10. Title VII, 1965 revised 1984, P.L. 98-511) provides funding for a wide variety of programs promoting the use of minority languages in the schools; and (b) civil rights statutes (P.L. 88-352, Title VI, 1964, and P.L. 93-380, 1974) impose an affirmative duty on the schools to afford children who speak a minority language an equal educational opportunity by lowering the English-language barrier. Thus, there exists legislation to protect language minorities; there is also legislation to protect the handicapped; but those children who become members of a language minority because of their handicap are not protected: they have fallen into the crack between two bureaucracies. Lacking the recent evidence that ASL 4 E.g. California Assembly Bill 51. See also Selover, this issue. 5 A.Willing, A Meta-analysis of selected studies on the effectiveness of bilingual education. Review ofEducationResearch55 (1985), 269-317. There is a substantial literature on the advantages accruing to deaf children from homes in which family members sign; see the review in M. Rodda and C. Grove, Language,Cognition& Deafness.Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987, pp. 304 ff.. In a paper presented to the Tenth World Congress of the World Federation of the Deaf in July 1987, A. Weisel and J. Reichstein reported that Israeli deaf children of deaf parents had higher levels of reading comprehension, better emotional adjustment and selfimage , and were more motivated to communicate with deaf and hearing people than their peers (matched on hearing loss and socioeconomic status) with hearing parents. SLS 59 Fall 1988 is a minority language, the Federal agencies entrusted with promoting the education and the rights of minority language users have heretofore dismissed deaf ASL users as merely handicapped, while agencies charged with ensuring effective education for the handicapped have, understandably, dismissed the...