Changing the Rules (review)

Changing the Rules, Frank Bowe, Ph. D., 204 pp., $20.95 hardcover, $17.95 paperback, T.J. Publishers, Inc., Silver Spring, MD., 1986. It is fitting that Frank Bowe's book, Changing the Rules, arrived on the tenth anniversary of the enactment of the regulations for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. It was not until four years afterwards that the federal government was persuaded to approve the regulations needed to enforce the law. This was accomplished by vigorous activism and protest on the part of the American Coalition of Citizens With Disabilities (ACCD), which culminated in a massive sit-in demonstration for three weeks throughout the nation in 1977. Leading this civil rights crusade was Frank Bowe, profoundly deaf from early childhood, who served as chief executive officer of the ACCD at the time. In a sense, it was not unlike Martin Luther King Jr. and the NAACP quietly defying the forces of prejudice, ignorance and discrimination against black people and giving expression to his dream of a barrier-free America. The ACCD demonstration is the climax of the book which contains 13 chapters and an epilogue on the meaning and impact of Section 504 for people with disabilities . The greater part of this autobiography, however, tells how Bowe followed his dream of overcoming barriers in a world that can be insensitive, ignorant and unfair. This is told in an engaging style that is colloquial and witty, as well as thoughtully poignant. Often, Bowe makes one believe he is reading a novel. It is the story of Bowe, the only deaf person growing up in small town Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he is mainstreamed in both grammar and high school. His only support services are provided by his devoted parents at home who go through the agony and ecstasy of helping him struggle with speech pronunciation, develop a working vocabulary to communicate by lipreading, compete with his peers in Little League baseball and learn the rules of etiquette at home and in the company of others. How he goes on to develop "the reading habit" (the only key to mastery of English ), excel in Latin, fake his way through a required course in music, and secretly read novels during assembly program —all this and much more relate directly to the deaf experience and make the book both a manual for parents of deaf children and a success story to inspire young deaf readers . Bowe's Odyssey takes him through college and graduate schools. As the first deaf student at Western Maryland College , he joins a fraternity, captains the varsity tennis team and graduates summa cum laude. He finds his identity as a deaf person at Gallaudet University where he first learns sign language, finally enjoys the luxuries of interpreters and notetakers, and obtains a master's degree. After a two-year stint as teacher-coordinator of a special education program serving deaf and multihandicapped deaf children in Bloomsburg Pennsylvania, he enters New York University's School of Education, where he meets the hearing woman whom he later marries, and earns his Ph.D. in educational psychology. At this point, he is primed to start "changing the rules." That is just what Frank Bowe has done since his involvement as an activist leader with the ACCD. He has written more than 25 books on employment trends accommodations and demographics of handicapped people, among them, Handicapping America and Rehabilitating America. Most recently , by Congressional appointment, he chaired the national Commission on Education of the Deaf. Among his many admirers are Cabinet officials and congressmen, one of whom, Senator Robert Dole, wrote the Foreword to Changing the Rules. Robert F. Panara, D.P.S., L.H.D. Professor Emeritus National lechnical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester, New York Teaching and Talking with Deaf Children, David Wood and Heather Wood, 199 pp., $30 (approx.) hardcover, John Wiley & Sons, 605 3rd Avenue, New York, New York 10158,1986. The rather unfortunate title of this book may deter potential readers firmly committed to a pragmatic approach to communication. It raises the spectre of unquestioning allegience to oral communication regimes and a complete absence of semantic concepts. Contrary to expectations, the...