Audiologists – …And the Truth Shall Set You Free.

The Politics of Audiology at Gallaudet University

May 25, 2017 The Last HiccupLeave a comment

Few weeks ago, Gallaudet University held a graduation for 2017 graduates—and I attended and received the 147th Commencement Ceremony “catalog” ranging from Order of Exercises [Processional to Conferring of Degrees and to Recessional]—there was one page that caught my eyes very much. Doctor of Philosophy where students received their Ph.D in field: Two in Education, two in Critical Studies in the Education of the Deaf Learner, three in Interpretation, two in Linguistics, two in Psychology, seven in Education Specialist, six in Specialist in School Psychology……..23 in Audiology.

That’s a lot, 23—and do you think Gallaudet University is allowing the practice of Audism? It is an engrossing study of the nature of American Sign Language and the subtle ways in which it gets oppressed. The language war (battling between signed and spoken languages) is set for the Deaf deliberately by audiologists and cochlear implants advocates for example, sometimes, it is set inadvertently by ourselves. The Language war——creating all the faces of Audism explains three general areas: why, how, and what.

Day after day we the Deaf people struggle against Audism, a hegemony of being able to hear a little over being profoundly Deaf in our society. Deaf people are treated to more and more euphemisms that dismiss our being Deaf as being bad, being inconvenient, being deficient. Not All Deaf Students wants to be cured. We encounter innumerable ambiguties and indulge in a few ourselves. We need to explore the “oral” minefield, and explains how to spot a language and sound war—and how to avoid the face of Audism.

The burning question, since 23 people received Ph.D in Audiology at Gallaudet University, does the Department of Audiology gets commission and money flowing and help them rake up the politics of Audiology and applying the pressure on Gallaudet University should be willing to pool some cash for the Department of Audiology to get space ready to branch out? But what about ignoring Audism at Gallaudet? Is either Department of Audiology or Gallaudet University getting rich after handing out each Ph.D? What is allowed in that Deaf space?

new-design-5-bill-w-portrait-of-pres-abraham-lincoln-picture-id50702423.jpg

President Lincoln was the first Patron for Gallaudet University did not need his dollars rolling over at Gallaudet Univerity for Audiology at all. Lincoln made this a big dream for Deaf students to get higher education, nothing more!

On a side note: Why not Gallaudet University create Ph.D program in ASL/Deaf Studies? University of Bristol in England Deafhood Studies was 100 times better than ASL/Deaf Studies graduate program at Gallaudet. More Social Philosophy. More human rights. It is more Deaf-centered. Deaf students only. No Hearing students in the cohort. Why are Deaf people being plagued with lifelong damnation? In some instances—I am sure that is valid, but is there no process in place to clear up one of oppressing Deaf people on the campus of Gallaudet University?

There are the new 21st century elitist, American exceptionalism at its finest, progressive cochlear implant industries who are extremely dangerous as a group. They are fearful, uninformed on any true facts and not interested in receiving any factual information. They would rather believe in a “miracle” to cure Deaf people even in the dark just waiting for the big cash to flow into their bank accounts.

Because when people watch television, read newspapers that give one-sided, fact-free, fear based information, our educated minds will immediately go to the most primitive part of our brains and people will pull out the DNA implanted fear driven, emotionalized—“the big dinosaur is going to eat me” tape. Independent, questioning individuals are few and far between as we all want to be liked and be part of a group think environment.

During my GSO (Graduate Student Orientation) in 2013, I remember talking with a graduate student that was telling me a story that when she bumped into a graduate student who was majoring in Audiology, does not know ASL at all and she offered to teach her ASL, that person said, “NO THANKS!” and she asked her, “Why are you here at Gallaudet University for if you do not want to learn ASL?” and that person said, “Because Audiology is cheap to get degree at Gallaudet.” and that was pretty insulting to say that thinking that Deaf people are cheap and easy to fool them. Why do Gallaudet University really need Audiology for when the university was designed for Deaf-centered environment only? Battery economics?

The most dangerous and unthinking part of giving away 23 Ph.Ds in Audiology is that when you take away the voice for all facts to be presented, and decisions are designed through only emotions, when basic constitutional protection for ASL guaranteed in the Constitution under the Bill of Rights, did Gallaudet University turning a free society into something that in later years that Deaf people will suffer for? It would be SUPER COOL if there are 23 Ph.Ds in ASL/Deaf studies instead–of course, for Deaf students only.

-JT

This text may be freely coped in its entirely only, including this copyright message.

Do Not Give Up, Stand Up, and Read Up!

May 4, 2017May 4, 2017 The Last HiccupLeave a comment

A Not-So-Noble Cause to Support

January 24, 2015June 14, 2016 The Last Hiccup2 Comments

Please welcome Star Leonard-Fleckman as my guest of the day. When I asked my father a simple question, “were you swayed by the audiologists and doctors who gave you both their first “intervention”? And try to remember what exactly happened and maybe try with names and their presence means very much to me. Then he answers back,

I am trying to remember this when we found out you were deaf the doctors said that TMOS (Tucker-Maxon Oral School) was the best place for you because they could teach you how to hear with aids and visual help. There was a lady named Star Leonard and she was really good and helpful. The reason you went there instead of deaf school was that the doctors felt it was too much of a closed environment and would not be good fit for you, as you get older.

In this newspaper clip you see, Star Leonard “sweet-talk” and deceives my mother and father with the philosophy that I would be more “hearing” child and wipe off my Deaf identity. She grabs and holds both of my hands in this picture are very much clear of human rights violation!

Star Leonard-Fleckman breeds stupidity and seemingly comfortable with leading Deaf children where they want to go. LISTEN AND TALK. She seems to find the balance of oppressive policies that allows to please Deaf children in school who hopes for sound-oriented leadership the minute she took her office which indicates both of streak of fruitful oppression and a Deaf child’s value of compromise.

As in her biography, she writes “I had a bit of exposure, as my aunt’s sister had a son who was deaf and attended Tucker-Maxon in Portland, OR. Every summer, Bobby would stay with my aunt and her family for a month while she gave her sister a month of respite. Events just placed me with the right person at Oregon State in my senior year and he introduced me to the only oral teacher at State School For The Deaf in Salem. Once a week for my senior year I worked in Mrs. Taylor’s classroom. She told me about CID and the rest is history…”

[Human Being becomes…………………………………Human Doing]

“I earned a bachelor’s degree in child development from Oregon State University, a master’s degree in the education of deaf children from Central Institute For The Deaf in St. Louis, and was a Preschool Teacher and Parent Infant Coordinator at Tucker-Maxon Oral School in Portland, Oregon. “

Star was partially responsible for my parents’ divorce. After all, she said, “I love watching the whole family system grow stronger as they learn more about raising a child with hearing loss. Knowing that I have a knowledgeable group of professionals to support me great comfort”

It is funny how knowledgeable was written in there and that is how the profession of an interventionist trains to tell lies. Look at my mother and father how they smile including Star herself. Notice something missing? I did not smile. Click the image for bigger size.

Leonard-Fleckman is not a great early interventionist or an audiologist for this matter or good interventionist either, but certainly stupider than average. I like it when she speaks about policies, I disagree with her and the school’s values and I wish her well. Tucker-Maxon Oral School is a political center that brings an ax to grind to ethnocide Deaf children around and deal with this way.

Do not allow human body resistance again! American Sign Language shall be rejoiced!

-JT

Copyright © 2015 Jason Tozier

This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.

References:

https://www.listentalk.org/about/our-team/?vid=562

Ending The Legacy of Cochlear Implants in Media

May 24, 2014February 27, 2017 The Last Hiccup2 Comments

It is time to submit a new legislative bill that will be in the service of truth, fairness, constitutionality, justice and equality under the law as it pertains to America’s thousands of shamed, humiliated, ostracized and persecuted Deaf people. Nancy Rourke, the Deaf master artist painted this image above to show that cochlear implants has spilled toxic water on Deaf children everyday.

Few weeks ago, I was hanging out around National Mall and saw a group of cochlear implant users, the question popped up into my mind thinking, “why cannot people see that cochlear implant companies are the supermall of the confirmation culture, where people are instantly introduced to all of the lies and myths about Deaf people?” That makes a good target for Deaf babies; children and young people for greedy cochlear implant makers. Audiologists, speech therapies, doctors, hospital representatives, stockbrokers, teachers, government agencies and more to list do not listen to Deaf people very well. Aren’t the cochlear implant makers responsible for the “confirmation culture”?

The cochlear implant companies are freighted with insufficiently examined premises. Three examples will illustrate the point. The first is that the sign language is inevitable for the Deaf people. It is not accidental. A second premise underlying the cochlear implant companies broke with Deaf people: Deaf people became oppressed, and their language and culture suppressed. And third, to meet personal needs the Deaf people become supplicants of Audists.

Economic and personal financial ladder climbing is the disease at the heart of our today’s supposedly democratic system. We have forgotten to fight for each other for the benefit of our whole society: Deafhood. Instead, we have been sold on the idea that individual self-sufficiency is the highest philosophy for living one’s life. Cochlear implant makers are the favorite cousins in Capitalism that is anti-democratic by its very nature—destroying Deaf identity. It is the same system that will make those makers rich. Very rich. They control the political power. By using political power to shut up Deaf people is not democratically equal, cochlear implant makers are just another economic terminology that must never be allowed to supersede “greater political equality” in Deaf world. I’d rather live in a society of inefficient than a society of wealthy politicians and power brokers to take advantage of Deaf people today.

There is no technology or means of predicting the future actions of a Deaf person. To hold all Deaf children and people is to hold them hostage to the actions of cochlear implant companies that they have no control over. I know for a fact that the cochlear implant companies are spreading news through government agencies and schools for the Deaf to sell their products. I know that Deaf people had been a subject for a study for very long time. However, we are not rats that run and run through the maze, a little bit faster each time. Are we any closer to determining the reason of “the state of being Deaf?”

-JT

This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.

Tucker-Maxon Oral School Teachers Are Blameless

February 3, 2014March 20, 2016 The Last Hiccup3 Comments

That’s me. 1978. Tucker-Maxon School Playground.

My mother was only 18 years old and my father was 20 years old when I was born in the same year President Nixon had resigned. The majority of my relatives are hearing. Almost all except one person who could communicate with me in sign language with me was my younger brother. At age two, I was placed into my very first school, Tucker-Maxon Oral School in Portland, Oregon. The school was not cheap! I was a product of an oral school where their school philosophy that does not promote sign language on the ground which makes my education accessibility harder.

They were trying to make me to act like a prize horse with having my own audiologists, teachers, and speech therapists policing me around and learn how to use my voice and not to use sign language and lose my dignity. That is where I became myself as “another” and loses my sense as an individual. I was only two years old that time!

I can remember my first teacher, Chris (Wolf) Soland who told my parents that everything will be all right. What a big lie! Chris Soland and Alice Davis lied through their yellow teeth and tried very hard to make me successful. Their plan did not work at all. I was glad that I was a rebel kid. A friend of mine told me a story last year that a student also went to Tucker-Maxon, for the take-home final, he wrote “I do have good hearing friends but somehow, I try to make myself act normal and that I wasn’t deaf”–it broke my heart! He was taught about “hearing” people but they were not taught how to be “hearing”. Can you see the difference? It is so unfair!

I was thankful that I was asked to read a book called Cratylus where Plato had Socrates question whether signs by the Deaf are equated with spoken and written names or words. The answer is aye. About 2,500 years ago, in and around the area we now call Greece, a philosopher who may have called himself Plato began an experiment in writing that would shape the world of human intelligence. Embarrassed and heartbroken by the death of his mentor Socrates, Plato left Athens and went to live in Alexandria in Egypt for 20 years. Upon his return to Greece, Plato founded The Academy–the prototype of today’s colleges and universities.

Plato had inherited writing from the Egyptians who were always mindful of the fate of Thoth, the name given by the Greeks to the Egyptian god of writing and knowledge–of intelligence, reason, and logical–associated with learning, language, and literature. After Thoth presented his invention in the court of Pharaoh, he was removed from the chamber so his masterpiece could be examined and deliberated. It was decided that Thoth should be punished to die because written words cannot be questioned for the answers to Pharaoh’s quest for truth. Although the written words are keys to doors leading to truth, the doors are not opened and the truth beyond the doors are not perceptible to Pharaoh’s eye, which means no prior knowledge.

The whole point is that Tucker-Maxon Oral School knows that Oralism is not even part of intelligence, reason, and logical–again, associated with learning, language, and literature. Tucker-Maxon teachers are too stupid to know that sign language is very much part of intellectual discourse, while Oralism has NO knowledge and is not perceptible in our eyes! Also, cochlear implant companies as well as late Mr. William House, the father of Cochlear Implant, heavily appropriated Tucker-Maxon. In fact, Tucker-Maxon was the first oral school in America to offer cochlear implant program. Oregon is the home of the cochlear implanted. I will not name William House as Dr. William House, I will call him Mr. William House instead because he does not deserve the title of Doctor. He said, “Deafness is a such a horrible thing”, he told an audience at Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1997. “If a person can hear in their last years of life, I think it is worth it. I recently put an implant in a 95 years old man. He got married after that” What a gelding! His wife was exploiting his life insurance. That was the bottom line. By the way, Karl White was his huge supporter.

Even my Individual Education Plan (IEP) reports said that I couldn’t be successful student if I did not learn Oralism right. Ha ha ha! Tucker-Maxon needs to be shut down for good because there are thousands of violations with no sanctions for the teachers with weapons in their hands. The fact is for the oligarchy and their servants, there is no law against teachers who cannot be blameless as well as their money donors and media trolls to suggest that the society should lynch Deaf children’s hands and be judged by a jury of Audists. Póg Mo Éireannach Thóin! (Kiss My Irish Ass!)

-JT

This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.

References:

Plato, by Reeve, C.D.C. 1998. Cratylus. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/scimedemail/la-me-william-house-20121212,0,271457.story

http://www.hei.org/stories/articles/william_house.html

Tucker Maxon Oral School Pitfall: A Cult of Ignorance

January 11, 2014March 11, 2017 The Last Hiccup3 Comments

My beloved mentor Carl Schroeder has helped and taught me to promote awareness as a Deaf person to tell my stories about myself. Not only that, but he taught me to recognize the phenomenon of Audism. Stories must be ignited with a fireproofer with education inside us Deaf people. Now I would like to question “Tucker-Maxon Oral School Mission Statement” why Audism is not in the policy books. It is bully-alike against the Deaf students in oral schools that have long been part of the repertoire by which school administrators had reinforced their position of social and political superiority. Audism had been a way to assert hearingness as a sign of privilege. Tucker-Maxon’s policy is to ban sign language there. They are the worst language bigots in Portland, Oregon.

Click the picture to enlarge and see “Our students who are deaf do not use sign language.”

Isaac Asimov, a professor at Boston University wrote a powerful book called A Cult of Ignorance in 1980, “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”—is exactly going on in schools that teach Oralism for Deaf students.

Dr. Wallace Bruce lied to my parents very much that my parents thought I would be successful. I was featured in a newspaper called Oregonian dated December 9, 1976 where they wrote a story about me with my parents how Tucker-Maxon would change people’s life. It was the biggest lie in 1976 even today 2014, too. Dr. Wallace Bruce made a hoax statement in newspaper, “Research has found that amplification before the age of one means the child will function as the hard of hearing instead of the deaf.” Today my status is Deaf. Nothing will ever change me. Click the picture below to enlarge and read the article yourself.

What does it mean to be “hearing”? There is no beginning, the side of the book, to a history of “hearing” term; its roots take hold too firmly on the stories of the Deaf. Tucker Maxon makes sure that Deaf students must be “hearing” and profit them off for their moneymaking machine. They make Deaf students “hear” through high “hearing” technologies. The “hearing” practice scarification, putting cochlear implants in Deaf babies.

There was a teacher by the name of Alice Davis whom punished me by using a six-pack rings around my hands. During my lunchtime, my mother decided to surprise me, Alice did not realize that my mother saw the six-pack rings around my hands and that is when my mother freaked out and took me out of Tucker-Maxon school right away and enrolled me into mainstreaming schools. She was very mean-spirited teacher even though I can remember her very well when I was only four years old. Now both of ruthless Audists, Dr. Wallace Bruce and Alice Davis are deceased. They died within two months apart in October and December 2013. They were lovebirds at sight. RIP. (Riddance in Peace)

There will be always “sound-oriented” teachers, school administration, principals, speech therapists, and audiologists governing Oral schools for Deaf students. Allowing the elements of Audism in Oral schools like Tucker-Maxon is a social responsibility, not a private one. It is very important to know who have the key to destroy Audism and must be removed from those places. There will always be hearing people who hate our condition, that is, being Deaf, just there will always be Republicans who hate Democrats.

It is well known today that there is an invisible Audism in schools and it is our responsibility to remove the “assault” weapon. Anyone who looks up to the Audists must sign a private agreement, and it is subject to be disclosed for their own selfish and their hearing privileges. This is about stripping a class of Deaf students of their own human rights. After all, victory is only as great as one’s enemy, and we are not winning the war of Audism for the protection of our most valuable resource, DEAF RIGHTS. How much damages were done to me in the past. I thought that higher learning is what rescued me from insanity.

The first two years of my toddler years, I was forced how to learn Oralism and realized that it was a bruised ego. Even though I was taught several stereotypical notions about Deaf people. Will Deaf people get fair treatment by getting a pursuit of happiness that is guaranteed by Constitution? I refuse to get into “plantation politics” there and I know that the students can make all the difference if they are so democratic in thinking! They do not have teachers who are democratic. They are struck. I am a human being, not a farm animal that can go in and out of the gate. I am tired of being damaged over and over. I grew up by ignorant people and brainwashed by ignorant physicians, audiologists, educators, psychologists, and interpreters. I left the world of Oralism at age of four where my parents saw the list of abuses and immerse myself in the community of my own—Deaf community where the need is.

Stories will give plenty of hopeful pictures to give people to tell their experiences. It is part of healing. Again, there are plenty of stories about plantation politics also about mainstreaming schools that prevents Audism expansion, which is socialized insurance, went out without a hitch. Let’s search your souls and ask yourself if you would have the courage to defend yourself from dealing with bruised ego. What we really need from Oral schools and mainstreamed students are stories as sidewise arguments in literature that Oralism is a huge hoax.

Tucker-Maxon thinks politics and government do not affect Oralism where they promote ‘hearing hero’ month where a student would talk, listen, hear, and act like hearing person. Deaf students are colonized at best! Politics is the process of making collective decisions in a community, society, or group through the application of influence and power. United States Government can be a threat to our liberty by using American Sign Language (ASL), but we need to remove their private language bigotry first.

My blog is not academic discourse. It is for a general readership. I would not want anyone to kick me around.

-JT

This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.

Oralism Stole My Father’s Baby

June 13, 2013December 19, 2020 The Last Hiccup5 Comments

Resistance

-Permission granted by David Call-

[The image above explains that David Call as a young child with “Eye Hand” head to symbolize my natural instinct to be a person of eyes and hands. One of my hands got strapped and locked on the table but I continue to resist oral speech lesson by using my free hand with a hammer to smash the wind-up oral chattering teeth toy.

This is a message that some Deaf children today are still trapped in oral classrooms across the country like I once was.]

When my father was 15, he began to save up his money for his prize car, 1970 Chevy Chevelle SS 454 with 450 HP V-8–a model manufactured by Chevrolet for only 800 dollars. That car was undefeated beating every muscle car in the book. After my father got his license at age of 16, this car became his very first car ever. Easy to remember it!

My father met my mother in high school, and after they set up their first date and he took her in this rare car. My mother was very lucky to ride in his baby! Three years later, they got married. My mom was only 18 when my father was 20 when I was born in the same year President Nixon had resigned.

At age two, I was placed in the Tucker Maxon Oral School. The teachers, speech therapists, and audiologists loved to teach me face-to-face until I lost my dignity. The school was private and very expensive.

My father had to give up his most prized car due to excessive costs of gas—45 miles each was to and from the school. My mother would have to drive me to that school five days a week, and you could easily imagine how expensive the gas it could be! My parents made a wrenching decision to sell the car and bought a 1971 baby yellow Volkswagen bug due to cheaper gas price and for safety reasons, too. My father literally cried about his prize car for years.

At age of four years old, my mother and father had to make a decision to place me into mainstreaming schools, which made it even worse for me. Although It was never my parents’ fault, it was the society that failed to facilitate them.

I survived the hearing-oriented teachers. There were many subjects I wanted to learn but they were never considered important. Oral method of education was always important and it neglected me completely, without love. I felt like a piglet being left out in the mud.

The chief educational goals were to make sure I had mastered speech—listening and speaking. What was more was that the school itself gave me permanent scars with emotional, physical, and intellectual injuries, all at once to make sure I forget my own identity as Deaf being.

Alexander Graham Bell, the Deaf-hating father said that, “We should try ourselves to forget that they are deaf. We should teach them to forget that they are deaf.”

Tucker Maxon Oral School is being watched by Alexander Graham Bell Association (AGB). The school philosophy used “up twinkles” wiggling their fingers in the air that it was in favor of banishing sign language.

One hundred and thirty-three (133) years ago on September 11th, the Congress of Milan changed everything forever that made Deaf people look like puppets. The Congress of Milan also known as Milan Resolution, I believe violates Deaf people’s intellectual lives.

Let me begin my story: I was born into hearing family where 95% in that small town where loggers were. The name of the town, Yacolt, where I grew up means the valley of the demons or the haunted place because it was named for a Native American about three children were on their path to pick out blackberries but they were never seen again. It was believed that evil spirits had taken them.

The same town I lived was full of bias where my childhood life racked up with emotional abandonment and was filled with fear growing up and hating myself due to the fact I am Deaf.

The small town that time was only 500 people which is not known very well for its audistic (Audism-alike) tolerance so infiltrated with those people I had to deal with that I did not realize that I looked down on others unlike me until I moved out and begun my Deafhood journey from there. I had been confused all my life for next 35 years until couple of magic words showed up in my life that changed overnight that made myself a human being. The magic words were: DEAFHOOD and AUDISM.

It shows exactly why the Alexander Graham Bell Association is a hate group and should be abolished. They had been gone virtual lynching, armed with myths they herald as gospel. People who works for AGB chapters are “bad-cats” believing what they want to believe in spite of the facts, so instead of listening to reason, they create an attack site and proclaim it as truth, with hearing-minded hillbillies adding to the mix. The AGB association is poison, those who support it are mentally unstable and in dire need of education. Enough said.

We are living in year 2013. The stats shows that 80% of mainstreamed Deaf children in schools suffer high percentage that scored below the academic achievement than hearing students receive the royal treatment in classrooms. Deaf children will never taste the royal treatment in their lives. If you want the proof to see 80% of Deaf children fail their goals, you can find it in the National Center for Special Education Research. Harassment and bullying against Deaf children are invisibly reported and damaged as well. It is 2013! 2013! 2013!

By the way, that prize car of my father, 1970 Chevy Chevelle SS, would be worth $100,000 at any auction bid today. My father bought that car for $800. Oralism took advantage all of his money. It is no wonder why my father is still crying for this baby.

-JT

This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.