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DANIEL ABBOU would like to discuss, from a personal point of view, the relationships that can be cultivated between the world of the deaf and the world of the hearing. I started out as a carpenter. I made various kinds of furniture and tables. Many deaf people like me have worked in manual trades, as painters, dressmakers , or printers. It was personally meaningful to me to be a workman and to be able to create a product. I could see the result of my work; thus I was worth something . There was something positive in me, and that belief helped give me confidence. Other deaf people have also experienced this satisfaction and confidence. I did notice that when hearing people first met me-a deaf individual-they seemed ill at ease. They also seemed to have some preconceptions about deaf people, and were quite surprised by my professional abilities. But the fact that I was able to compare an object that I had created with those of my hearing co-workers allowed us to establish an exchange based on work. I then realized two things: First, both deaf and hearing people need to allow a certain time to pass in establishing true communication in which the deaf individual can be acknowledged as a person. This is what I call the delay factor. This communication can occur despite language problems. Second, some kind of third-party intermediary element is needed in order to establish contact; this could be an object or an action of some kind. Later, I observed a similar process-the different feelings deaf people inspire, the delay factor, and the need for some intermediary element-in my other contacts with hearing individuals. For example, I participated in sports such as football and tennis outside of school, and hearing people would ask me, "Really, you play football? Where? You mean you play it with hearing people?" I got thousands of questions about my leisure activities. I resented hearing people's curiosity about me. I felt I was their equal in sports. I knew that I could adapt to any situation or individual. Unlike deaf people educated in the oral method, I was able to engage in social exchanges. Speech-oriented deaf people have difficulty getting to know either deaf or hearing people, because they are never comfortable with the delay necessary for their communication method to work. After working as a carpenter, I was hired by a special school for deaf children to participate in an oralist project held in a bilingual class setting. This was an outstanding opportunity for me, considering how hard it is to get a job at such a school without a diploma. I thought that I could assist the hearing specialists while working with the children. My experience as a teacher of French Sign Language (LSF) at the International Visual Theater had taught me that I could provide effective support regarding this particular Hearing-Deaf Relations language. However, as the sole deaf person in this large hearing group, I was soon completely beyond my depth. What a pipe dream it is to speak of integrating deaf children with hearing children when a group of hearing professionals can't even accept a deaf adult on their team! The lack of recognition of the deaf individual in this kind of school seemed very serious to me. Had I been hired only so that the deaf children could identify with me? At the same time, I asked myself a lot of questions about these deaf children and their future. Many things about the school bothered me. I kept seeing hearing people coming toward me with eyes as big as saucers, probably thinking, "What's with this deaf person ? What is he here for?" I also was asking myself what was going on. In my carpentry workshop, everything went smoothly; elsewhere, I felt tense. There were, however, several hearing people who knew a little LSF, particularly the person working with me in the bilingual class. The situation in this class was bilingual because there was a deaf instructor presenting LSF and a hearing instructor presenting written and spoken French. We knew what limitations we had encountered in respect to our class and could imagine what other classes had to confront. Nevertheless, I had to go see what was occurring in the other classes and exchange and test my ideas with my hearing colleagues . This was very difficult to do, and I had to make a big effort to...

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