Darlene Ewan makes a good point about DOE (Department of Education) that divides the Deaf community. However, I’d like to share my thoughts.
Tag: Educational Bankruptcy
Response to Gallaudet University P.R.
Dear ambassadors of Gallaudet community,
I would like to thank the (Gallaudet) University Communications Team, which is a public relations-appointed team to represent Gallaudet University. The communication is to represent the ambassadors of Gallaudet community with truth. It is extremely important to be aware about the truth.
Freudian slip.
“The difference between truth and fact is that fact is something that cannot be combated with reasoning, for it is logic itself. But truth is something which depends on a person’s perspective and experience”
It is important to seek healthy resolutions for the Deaf. There are plenty of Deaf alumni and alumnus experience being oppressed at Gallaudet. This brings to the question: How do we converse Gallaudet University into a new university so that we can embrace higher learning that best reflects our own intellectual freedom?
The University Communications Team writes:
“Gallaudet University is primarily for deaf and hard of hearing students, and has been since 1864. It has always welcomed hearing students who are bilingual and committed to learning in a signing environment. From time to time, there are challenges to this very notion, on social media and elsewhere. We recognize that these pieces represent a broader struggle that our community has faced for years in regards to discrimination, exclusion, or audism. As a community of Deaf people, it is important that we recognize this while a the same time separating facts from fiction.”
The thoughts to the oppression: discrimination, exclusion, or Audism, is much more serious ideological more than its own generosity. Gallaudet Deaf students had been the subject of the most serious oppressed group, and its ambition to weaken ASL and Deaf culture.
In Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking by H-Dirksen L. Bauman:
“The dynamics of audism principally take the form of colonial relations. Ladd and Lane have both explored parallels between colonization and the Deaf experience, through the eradication of indigenous language, education, values and history…..The history of deaf people comes to light, we see that it is bound up in the historical practices of normalization…”
In 2000, I believe that the survey asking Deaf students: Have they seen the word, “Audism” before? Very few Deaf students recognized the term, two years later in 2002, more Deaf students were aware about Audism.
That is what it is the core of the problem on the Gallaudet campus, not delivering enough awareness about Audism even today, the signing environment on the campus is not exactly ASL-centered enough, and the ideological had created bigger problems.
For example, the approval of cochlear implant center in 2006. Why cannot Gallaudet admit that the fact that it is creating the consequences of this misinformation are disastrous, not only for Deaf people, but for the entire world, especially social media?
Always with old habit and inertia, fear has much to do with keeping reality the same as it always was: status quo. The beloved ship we call Gallaudet, opening the way to unknown is hard for many of us to accept, yet it is only avenue into ASL and Deaf culture, our own world. We are aware that in a world of change that we are currently witnessing at Gallaudet University, there must be gain and loss. Our society judges gain to be good and loss to be bad.
Undergraduate Enrollment of Deaf Studies in the United States: Carrie Lou Garberoglio, Jeffrey Levi Palmer, and Stephanie Cawthon did a research sponsored by National Deaf Center on Postsecondary Outcomes:
“Postsecondary enrollment rates for deaf people have increased since the 1980s, in large part due to legislative action and increased accessibility of educational environments (Newman et al; 2011) Despite increased access to postsecondary education, fewer deaf people complete college degrees than their hearing peers (Gaberoglio, Palmer, Cawthon, & Sales, 2019a) National data show that only 5% of deaf people were currently enrolled in postsecondary institutions of any type, compared to 11% of hearing people (Garberoglio et al; 2019a)
Key Findings:
-Among all currently enrolled college students, 1.3% are deaf (Garberoglio, Palmer, and Cawthon)
-Deaf college students are older than their hearing counterparts, with an average of 31. (Garberoglio, Palmer, and Cawthon)
Why small number? The number of hearing student applications are increasingly more and faster, more power to meet the requirements as Deaf students which is much harder for them to meet the requirements, and hearing fare better in academics, writing, and such than the Deaf students in today’s Deaf Education. Not only that, but today’s Deaf Education around the country is Educational Bankruptcy.
The loss of Gallaudet Preparatory was the biggest hurt. For the pilot program in 2000 was the turning mistake. Before prior to 2000, Gallaudet University was home for Deaf students, before what happened, there were many minor losses along the way, and if we take a moment to think about these losses, we could easily see the pattern of gain and loss that ran throughout the university which was full of adversity, small or large. The gain goes to HUGS and the loss goes to the Deaf.
In 2008:
“PEPNet (Postsecondary Education Programs Network): Educational testing, test developers, language and communication researchers, academicians, K-12 educators and administrators; health professionals; and clinicians. Test Equity Summit—Test Equity for Individuals who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing.”
I understand that there were some group of faculty from Gallaudet gave some presentations.
The admittance of hearing students, the communication speculations have been misused to defend educational bankruptcy at Gallaudet, which shall admit that there is a linguistic and cultural colonialism; Think about it, prior to 2000, the power dynamics of Audism had been hidden in the Administration and Operations Manual. The perception of Audism in the signing environment, we shall examine how Audism socialization, uncertainty, and discrimination experiences influence the trust. Is this accurate or inaccurate?
Institutional Audism. Educational Audism. Systematic Audism.
As much as the liberty that CODAs (Children of Deaf Adults) had been highly motivated, to support Deaf community is no question at all, as Edward Miner Gallaudet was all these years, Gallaudet University is just more than a university; it is unique in that its products are scholars of the Deaf. At the same time, there are some CODAs who are also much struggling as Deaf students struggling because they also see the product of language oppression from hearing students who were not enough exposed to Deaf studies.
Gallaudet University is a well-known reference to the attitude of honest acceptance of Deaf people where the celebration of Deaf people for their achievements. That is the most valued community norm to embrace ASL and Deaf culture first.
The “facts” from the last two academic years: what is it that stands between the fact and truth such a state of confusion would loose in the mind and body of a person who believed it? Would you believe that Gallaudet University is renowned university for the Deaf? The content showing numbers is the quest of its public relations–is not important thing, is it not?
Even though there is no question the shortage of brilliant minds in Deaf community, oppression is still practiced at Gallaudet University.
Public relations, the University Communications Team, and campus of Gallaudet, and most importantly, the ambassadors of Gallaudet community, is it often argued that beliefs are somehow distinct from other claims to knowledge social justice of the Deaf? An analogy could influence the case of human memory, while Deaf people are dealing with the systematic Audis; decades of oppression have shown that it comes in many forms today at Gallaudet University.
The University Communications Team on the behalf of Gallaudet University, Audism is the biggest core problem; we were lied to, and even, being exploited. Today’s Deaf Education had failed Deaf students, and to keep Deaf intellectual life–who are worth fighting for, and living for. For example, democracy had been amplified the pursuit of happiness.
The idea of creating a pilot program for HUGs is the collection of message, problematic, and the blueprint for the privatization of Gallaudet University is the main focus of core problem. Nothing to do with hearing people, it is about systematic Audism being granted permanent on a private property, to decide what services to offer, what technical standards to create, or whether instead to sell Deaf souls. It is not a fiction. It is a fact.
“The forces of normalization seem to be the gaining ground, particularly in cases like Australia, where one researcher predicts the death of Australian Sign Language (Auslan) within the next few generations due to high rates of mainstreaming, cochlear implantation, and genetic testing and counseling that discourages parents from carrying deaf babies to birth”–Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking
Gallaudet University today: high rates of mainstreaming, cochlear implantation, genetic testing, counseling, and increase number of hearing privileges. We must embrace ASL and Deaf Studies more than ever. Remember the documentary, The End?
The instructions for the life of Deaf on Earth, shall not deal with linguistic and cultural colonialism. The Gallaudet’s mission, vision, core values, and strategic goals supporting the education and empowerment of Deaf, is falling into the wrong path. The core of the systematic oppression is so infinitely.
The facts had been shared accordingly. I refuse to be called a fiction or a fool.
Thank you,
-Jason “JT” Tozier
P.S. As we understand that the Gallaudet P.R. made a video statement that BAI students were not counted under the eight percent cap–only shown in 2018 figures and did not show any figures on year 2020 either. How come we could not able to see the projected 2020 figures in both fields: online students and BAI students, but they only show the HUGs figures projected for 2020 already and why is that?
YouTube Link:
REFERENCES:
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/8053/what-is-the-difference-between-fact-and-truth
Percival Hall: EMG’s Scary Thought
The library is a one-stop place to visit, read, study, and find the answers. The scary notion, which was revealed recently as I was reading a book written by Percival Hall, “Impressions of English Schools for the Deaf”
The book is the very rarest book around.
Percival Hall with no Deaf mother either Deaf father was second president of Gallaudet College, was also the second longest president-elected after Edward Miner Gallaudet (EMG), the namesake of his father’s greatest work as the longest president-elected in history. His mother was Deaf.
The notice of Oralism in human history had been failing plenty of Deaf people’s educational aspirations in the past and present time. Oralism had never been warned and is supposedly aimed to stop American Sign Language (ASL) from succeeding in the academic classrooms, it would mark ASL who had been posed as such threat.
Percival Hall writes: “It seems to be pretty well agreed now by the most experienced educators of the deaf that a large proportion of the deaf children can be as well educated by oral methods as by any other. Dr. Edward Gallaudet, himself, put the proportion at two-thirds.”
Two-thirds in percentage: 66.6666666666666%–with infinite line above the number is forever defined in Deaf Education. There are two meanings behind the definition of infinity.
Synonym: endlessness.
Mathematics: The symbol of infinity looks like ∞: is a concept describing something without any bound. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity)
The cultural trait of Deaf people is a sacred ground and nothing can take away from us. Today’s Deaf Education is viewed as educational bankruptcy in encouraging Deafness as endlessness to make Deaf Education suffer in the hands of Oralism. Deafness is a negative approximation.
Deafhood is an approximation.
Within Percival Hall writes that EMG claims Oralism is the best tool for Deaf students. That is where the buck stops there. Most Deaf students, no matter what their age or cultural background have experienced an amount of betrayal starting at very early age or young age.
Oralism is usually the first to betray Deaf students not knowing how to effectively deal with their Deafhood journey. Everyone in our world, on level, knows that ASL is the best activity to learn for higher education.
A year after disastrous Milan Resolution in 1880, EMG writes, How Shall The Deaf Be Educated?
It is a powerful piece, in the first place, he writes:
“First of all, class should always be spoken of as the deaf. The term deaf-mute should only be applied to such as are totally deaf and completely dumb.”
It was just Oralism who betrayed Deaf students. The Deaf students controlled by Oralism had been also the occasional method doing a “good job” with “most experienced teachers of the deaf”—the one who shamed Deaf students in front of their classmates often got promoted.
Deaf students should not be dealt with sense of shame and confusion when using ASL for their own pursuit of happiness and human right.
Further betrayal happened when, at Gallaudet College, Percival Hall writes: “Dr. Edward Gallaudet, himself, put the proportion at two-thirds.” in tenure as commander-in-chief at National Deaf-Mute College, secretly instructing professors explaining that sign language is inept in the language and culture of the Deaf and in facilitating between sign language and Oralism.
Did he change his mind after fierce debate with Alexander Graham Bell, the staunch chief of Oralism?
Deaf students in the past and present are betrayed by a society that continues to bastardize ASL and keep Oralism method as “successful” story and profiting. Not only that but it had disempowered Deaf students in classroom by denying them the language credit for their thoughts and ideas in ASL.
Human rights with using ASL in academic classrooms shall always preserve intellectual debates, symbols, and practices for the sake of their cultural heritage and the rights to use ASL.
If Percival Hall claims that EMG was secretly supporting the power of Oralism, then did it make EMG the chief distributor of the Oralism at Gallaudet University today?
Then it is a scary thought. The large statue of EMG stands on the campus makes a statement. Stigmatizing Deaf students as a threat to ASL everywhere for the rest of their lives seem not irrational, but that does not mean Deaf students who uses ASL will not ever fail academic studies. Even if Oralism is poorly designed to achieve its goals filled with lies, then that is rational enough for Alexander Graham Bell’s greatest work which is the basic test of failure.
Lastly, Percival Hall also writes at the very end sentence of the same sentence above:
“Some of our experienced English friends, who are, I believe, unbiased, after much longer experience in education than we have had, put the proportion at three-fourths.”
Whatever it means.
ASL will never be unbiased because education is the key to documentary path that exposes the truth how much successful ASL is benefiting today and tomorrow.
Oralism is biased. It is all but educational hardship. What’s the difference? The simplest way to put this is that today, in our world remains ignorant of Deaf education and their language and culture.
VLOG:
-JT
Copyright © 2019 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
World Mental Health Day: The Modern Struggle For Deaf Returning Citizens
I would like to share my reflections about World Mental Health Day yesterday (October 10th). My apologies not for finishing up a post on time. It is very important to share more awareness about mental health that impacts Deaf community—especially Deaf returning citizens in Deaf community.
Depression is part of mental health; the stigma connected with Deaf returning citizens is unbearable. The public consciousness about Deaf returning citizens has been a failure of an evolving cultural understanding of mental health among them.
The phrases may haunt them each day. All these years later, they may be struck with shame. The state of being Deaf returning citizens was an “easy job” to ignore and not reported as violating their human dignity and thrown away on the side of the road where the cars would run over them. There was no raised questions from mental health professionals who are hearing who claimed that they are experts in understanding Deaf world. It makes things worse.
Today, there is ONLY ONE Deaf-centered counseling center in America, Deaf Counseling Center. Without Deaf mental health experts (bless them!), Deaf returning citizens would feel paralyzed whether to share their struggles or not. There is a quote that should be seen:
Should you find yourself the victim of other people’s bitterness, ignorance, smallness or insecurities. Remember this, things could be much worse. You could be one of them.”-Unknown.
Mental health awareness helps to distract all the negative labels in their lives by getting themselves involved with educational jaunts, and Deaf-centered licensed therapists. Is it fair to use a distasteful mental image to prove a point, even if that mental image relies on stereotyping of Deaf returning citizens?
Labeling hurts the most. Mental health awareness can make all the difference to understand the gravity of their experiences. In the Deaf community, there are plenty of hardships that Deaf returning citizens suffer and even think it is OK to bully other Deaf returning citizens who were going through what they had been through. Deaf community ranks one of the highest percentage—lack of mental health awareness and educate the most serious consequences they would face with.
-JT
Copyright © 2017 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
No Human Rights Law Shall Expel ASL Ever
When I read all the letters Illinois Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (IRID) sent to the Honorable Julie A. Morrison, a senator for Illinois about SB0752 and HB1811.
IRID president, William Lee’s words: Requiring fluency in ASL does not need to be explicitly stated in the law in our opinion. It was a huge insult to ASL community that the power dynamics of Audism was allowed to oppress Deaf people. It is also a language hegemony. We do not need to deal with educational bankruptcy and struggle with human rights.
Illinois Association of the Deaf (IAD) followed up with Senator Morrison. I am deeply concerned about the ability of IRID to allow Audism against ASL. My concern has been compounded by the failure exhibited by the professionalism of interpreters to understand the nature of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural inquiry and the integrity of critical thinking in ASL.
President William Lee of IRID needs to look at these dismal facts portend a clear and present danger to the role of Deaf Education in the United States including Illinois that ASL is very important. Lee may filter this post out because it is about insulting Deaf people and witty put-downs of their language and culture. ASL that William Lee and the board of IRID should not continue to oppress.
I am sure just like Deaf students struggling to learn but getting nowhere without ASL, Lee has no business to fulfill his own desires and the best interests of Deaf community, never realizing that his effort is the problem, not the solution. His own insecurity is the motive to attack ASL and the best interests of Deaf community in Illinois for their language and culture.
Imagine this—can you imagine that for centuries Deaf people have suffered appalling language and culture abuses and the devastating consequences of educational and economic sanctions? Can you imagine that in a climate of language oppression, many Deaf students in Illinois would be neglected without ASL over the years in Lee’s words?
-JT
Copyright © 2017 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely coped in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
Let’s Grab Some Popcorn!
Watching Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump is like a set of movies in order or perhaps a sequence. Cutting 9.2 Billion dollars for Education is a big insult to the American people. LBTQA and Black students including Deaf students are America’s future students that should not be demoralized and oppressed!
Hearing Privileges and Hate Crime
Since Alexander Graham Bell (AGBell), America’s Master Spymaster in Deaf Community declared in his words that Deaf people are no longer they are Deaf—appeared to close match as it had opened—with sprees of human violence directed against Deaf people. It is perfectly good example of hearing privileges. The bigotry of American Sign Language (ASL) all stand as reminders that hate crime that kills are much more than an unfortunate chapter in American history—forgotten history. To date, hate crime has tended to be very secretive in its focus—making sure Deaf people are forgotten is exactly what AGBell wanted.
The wave of hearing privileges has been all over with the hashtags—#hearingprivilege is what we need to continue to challenge against AGBell’s lies. A great many of us the Deaf are disappointed by Deaf education which states too pathological these days because it is all about hearing privileges. Poor flexibility and excessive laxity within Deaf Education today that is failing Deaf people today, for example, lack of proficient ASL skills among administrators, educators and interpreters, can all contribute to the overall educational mediocre among Deaf people—wait, hearing privileges, hmm?
Do Deaf people today even with struggle to crave such systems, educational oppression, claims of the past, their words in the meeting inspired them to no end, their conduct of words to encompass human knowledge in their categories that must be corrected—all because of hearing privileges they have to deal with this everyday?
Socrates: the same holds true of written words: you might ask them what they mean by anything they simply return the same answer over and over again.
It is incredible that Deaf people are fighting to preserve ASL and Deaf culture today—overcoming hearing privileges. We need to appreciate the wisdom of Deaf people who enjoyed thousands of years in a land subsistent culture, in harmony with nature. Deaf culture flourished, because they took what they needed and no more, and gave back to the Mother Earth, replanted, replenished, and left enough for the other inhabitants of the Earth. Deaf culture also had been flourished until Western industrialization, capitalism, and poor environmental knowledge resulted in practices that forever harmed and changed their landscape, and subsequently, their lives—thanks to AGBell.
Yet, these land-based informants are the perfect “informal” teachers that can assist Westerners in understanding relationships between Deaf people and their planet. These Deaf people are wealthy in knowledge, and they are a rich educational resource that is devalued and under-utilized. Our future depends on the ability to understand these relationships, to learn to live in a way that does not deplete or make poor or inefficient use of limited resources, to live in harmony and maintain a rich quality of life that supports our local economies.
Just as I have evolved in my understanding to sense of moral responsibility, I believe that ASL can bridge the disconnect that people feel with nature and develop a sense of stewardship to protect and preserve our Deaf culture, ASL, our air, our trees, and the list goes on. Probably the most direct impact that environmental learning has had on me is its effect in learning about my interconnections with the Earth, its inhabitants and ASL.
AGBell is piece of shit. Hearing privileges is nothing now.
-JT
Copyright © 2016 Jason Tozier
This text mat be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
Gallaudet University: Hopes and Aspirations
Recently, President Bobbi Cordano sent out a letter with 2016 agenda for Gallaudet University. The most important keys are the last three statements:
“Racism, discrimination based on different identities, and other forms of systemic oppression, invest in and strengthen learning and discovery through academic programs, research, and community engagement efforts and celebrate the success of our students, staff, faculty, and alumni.”
Long before becoming president for Gallaudet, Bobbi was a former lawyer whom made a huge difference in Minnesota’s court system to make sure that a policy to provide ASL interpreters for Deaf people in courts is a huge key—but the problem is that there are many bad interpreters who does not even sign fluently or not at all and often ends up putting Deaf people in jail because of their gross negligence. It happens every day in American courts today and tomorrow.
There is plenty of Racism happening in courts where Black Deaf defendants could not defend themselves—on the lack of ASL interpreters. For example, Erica West Oyedele gave a presentation called “Missing Narratives in Interpreting and Interpreter Education” at Registry Interpreters of the Deaf (RID) Conference 2015 in New Orleans discussing lack of diversity within the predominantly White in RID—88% of RID interpreters are white and only 12% of Black or People of Color interpreters.
That raised a huge red flag. When Black Deaf defendants in court use their ASL, would White interpreters understand their language? No, I do not think so. Does White interpreters completely understands Black culture? No, I do not think so. Often Black Deaf would end up in jail by not receiving full accessibility to their language. So are Deaf White defendants, too. They often do not understand due process and end up thrown away without listening to their stories.
Inclusiveness is more complex and challenging but that is Gallaudet University we are talking about. We used to think of inclusiveness in terms of more than six principal groups——Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, CI users, Oralists, ASL users, Black Deaf, Deaf with another Disability, etc.; however there are over 1000 independent thinking students on campus who happen to be Deaf. We have to think about inclusiveness in a totally different way; a more complex approach but I think ultimately far more rewarding. Let’s not just throw out the concept of inclusiveness; let’s question it and more to a more sophisticated and develop approach.
What about Deaf returning citizens? A Returning Citizen is when they re-enter into the society with a second chance whether they are wrongfully convicted or not. At Gallaudet, Deaf Culture is as much a part of the inclusive landscape as anything else and it is ridiculous to try to ignore our language. Deaf Returning citizens cannot be ignored. They have been severely oppressed by Gallaudet University based on discrimination based on different identities, and other forms of systemic oppression.
How come Gallaudet University refuses to invest and strengthen learning for Deaf returned citizens and not to celebrate their success? They view Deaf returning citizens as menace to the society. They practice stereotypes and prejudices without question.
Let’s take a look at Institutionalized Oppression Definitions from Wiki.
“Institutions are fairly stable social arrangements and practices through which collective actions are taken. Examples of institutions in America include the legal, educational, health care, social service, government, media and criminal justice systems.”
The key word: Educational.
“Institutional Oppression occurs when established laws, customs, and practices systemically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups. If oppressive consequences accrue to institutional laws, customs, or practices, the institution is oppressive whether or not the individuals maintaining those practices have oppressive intentions. ”
The key word: Oppressive intentions.
Gallaudet University uses overt forms of oppression may be secret, hidden, and not openly practiced targeting Deaf returning citizens. How do we combat it without a notion of what inclusiveness is? Deaf returning citizens live our language, ASL. We can call it Deaf Culture but basically inclusiveness is talking about opportunity for oppression of ASL—the inability to include our language and culture with some kind of meaning. There are not enough academic line that is going to take us through to anything that we feel is worth accomplishing in our own language. That is an oppressive intention.
Inclusiveness is a welcome mat: Everybody is included; of course, it helps a lot if they were white, and hearing. Now I seem to be talking about white and hearing people’s power but that is what we are actually talking about. The fundamental question for inclusiveness is about dividing Deaf Returning citizens.
Inclusiveness is not a failed experiment. It is silly. However, we have to look at it as a reality to be dealt with in terms of white people’s power, which I realize, is a real fallacy, and then there is no real mutual respect. No one at Gallaudet University shall take Deaf returning citizens’ right to higher education away. Labeling is not cool.
-JT
Copyright © 2016 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only including this copyright message.
...And the Truth Shall Set You Free. 
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