Educators of the Deaf – …And the Truth Shall Set You Free.

Percival Hall: EMG’s Scary Thought

June 30, 2019July 3, 2019 The Last HiccupLeave a comment

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

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In Our Own Eyes: Under the Moons of Phobos and Deimos

August 12, 2016February 12, 2017 The Last Hiccup3 Comments

Champ Art by Mbalenhle!

Apologies for any evening ruined, did you know that Alexander Graham Bell (AGBell) became the biggest political contributor to develop a secret patent to demonize Deaf people? As I write, the post of AGBell’s bones unfurled before me and stretched since his death appears in the same year, 1922 when Ireland signed a treaty to an agreement about peace and created a national flag, and it has revealed itself to be more than writing. His death in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, a small island in Eastern Canada, has sparked the finest educational oppression establishments in America and its neighbor, Canada to make so sure that Deaf people are forgotten.

AGBell do not want you to know about his other hobby. I have written it because I believe the truth is necessary to stop his hate practices towards Deaf people today. He was deeply troubled for writing Memoir Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race in 1883 and had profoundly caused serious problems with human dignity, mortality, adherence to ethnical standards, and professionalism.

In that infamous speech in 1883, when AGBell found a way to destroy the life of Deaf people into the land of America, his theories had been riddled with problems.

Let’s follow with history what happened today on August 11^th almost 140 year ago. “In 1877, the two moons of Mars were discovered by Asaph Hall, an American astronomer. He named them Phobos and Deimos.” (link: http://www.on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/aug11.htm)

Asaph Hall was father for one of the last babies for Percival Hall who later become president of Gallaudet University. Percival was an important figure in Gallaudet’s moons; he knew that the moons were taught to protect Deaf people for its exceptional education—especially at Gallaudet University. “Phobos is named after the Greek god, Phobos, a son of Ares (Mars) and Aphrodite (Venus) which was the personification of Horror.” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_(moon)]

The personification of Horror reminds me of AGBell whose its soul appearing on Mother Earth into darkness of his words, “the idea they [deaf people] are dangerous, morose, ill-tempered…he is sometimes looked upon as a sort of monstrosity, to be stared at and avoided” [Bell, Memoir, 43.] meets the twin brother of Phobos: Deimos.

In a definition about Deimos, “In Greek, Deimos was the twin brother of Phobos and personified terror. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deimos_(moon)] The personification of Terror. AGBell terrorize Deaf community by greatest language bigotry possible and tricked them well for the last 100 years+ making him the world’s worse terrorist ever. The same year, Asaph discovered those moons, “Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated how to call long-distance by calling The Boston Globe.” in 1877.[http://www.poynter.org/2015/today-in-media-history-in-1877-alexander-graham-bell-made-the-first-long-distance-phone-call-to-the-boston-globe/319227/] a first long distance call.

I wonder if there are any one who worked for Boston Globe had personal connections with AGBell that time and helped spread lies about Deaf people in Bostonian newspaper for political favors.

As In this American society, it is time to be aware of his proclivities. The silence in Deaf community has been a tradition for so long that needs to be broken at all costs. Hate crimes is here to stop and would need your help as part of community accountability. Is hate crimes driving Deaf community apart? Why or why not?

These days, Deaf community struggle to each other a lot with their hands—mashing out over 136 years ago from infamous 1880 Milan Resolution. Are Hate crimes not the first human oppression blamed for ruining personal discourse and common courtesy among Deaf people today? A British newspaper, Chambers’s Journal quoted in 1899, “It does not improve the temper, and it engenders a feverishness in the ordinary concerns of life which does not make for domestic happiness and comfort.”

Is it time for Gallaudet University to tell Alexander Graham Bell Association for Deaf and Hard of Hearing to move away from Deaf people ——very long distance call…..leave them and let them heal from educational oppression they had endured. The moons are our shadows and we are no longer known as ‘long distance call’ to AGBell’s headquarters anymore. Lies, enough, lies.

With the discovery of Phobos and Deimos, words have such power that they can bring respect or they can bring disrespect, as is shown by AGBell that has referred himself as a terrorist and had alienated Deaf people, and his words could never help us concentrate on our own nature. His words are associated with the charging of ongoing oppression.

This is another crucial point to make about words, which we do not wish to talk about? However, we need to talk about our nature of being Deaf. What is wrong with that? One of the reasons we need to focus our nature of being Deaf and believe in—even when it has been demonstrated to us—is that AGBell made it happen by losing our connection to the nature of being Deaf. The words of AGBell’s expressed enough hate, would be unlikely to hold true for most Deaf people today, even at Gallaudet University, for the way we think of nature has changed.

After reading the book, In Our Own Hands: Essays in Deaf History 1780-1970 by co-editors, Brian H. Greenwald and Joseph J. Murray, I decided to share my thoughts what I had read one of the chapters that caught my eyes, Revisiting Memoir Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race: Alexander Graham Bell and Deaf Autonomy by its own editor and an author, Brian H. Greenwald. I respectfully disagreed with his views that AGBell was a good man with strong morals and a “life savior” for Deaf community.

This post is dedicated to Mr. Greenwald and remind him to revisit the growing pains what AGBell actually left Deaf people intellectually alone for the rest of their lives. Did AGBell deserve as an icon the way he cared about Deaf community? Perhaps, it is time to think of nature as the state of being Deaf as something outside and separate from AGBell’s lies. With AGBell’s hearing tests, his practices are not conductive to understand Deaf people’s pursuit of happiness.

The moons, any word that is connected to it should be Greek. Thank you, Phobos and Deimos, to understand who AGBell is really about. We will carry on and be strong to remember our state of being Deaf and no more to be living in horror under the terrorist, AGBell— celebrate Phobos and Deimos’s birthday behind our eyes and our mind, ASL seems dreams of other—Deaf and no longer lost people!

AGBell—a secret society established with intention of slaying ASL is not welcomed anymore. We grow in size, strength, political clout, and wealth of ASL and……overcome hate. The burning question, what are the Deaf community perceptions of the climate and the motivations that facilitate hate crimes?

The book was worth reading and I encourage you to buy and read. Any moon is in our own eyes and reading is in our own hands.

-JT

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References are above.

Gallaudet Students’ Pitfall and Administration Pitfalls

December 10, 2015March 12, 2017 The Last HiccupLeave a comment

“In human hands, our intelligence has enabled us to overcome the restrictions of our biological heritage and to change ourselves in the process. We are the only species that does that.”- Ray Kuzweil, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed.

Today is the last day (December 10th) of Clerc-Gallaudet week. Next year, it will be 200 years in celebration of their arrival from France for America. It is forever legendary! It means that there shall be a huge change in the face of Gallaudet University starting on January 1, 2016. Within new president-elect coming in, Roberta “Bobbi” Cordano already has been visiting Gallaudet campus and listen to the changes. 59 out of 180 faculty members showed up for a productive meeting along with Bobbi in the audience last Monday, December 7th afternoon that they are not happy with the administration that holds 90 people. 11 people in President’s cabinet. They voted for a change of administration. They are tired of status quo. They really are.

They say only the administration sit on their hands, happy with the status quo. With that in mind, they want to see Gallaudet change with the positive vision. No more bullshit. No more gimmicks. They do not want to have another president in line for another major hardships for Deaf students, but all that has changed now with Bobbi in the mix. I just hope she keeps it gone long enough to get out the vote. The administration is the worst I had ever seen.

As a Gallaudet alumnus, I have some questions I would like to put to some people in the administration who agrees with Donald Trump’s hate-speech policies. How do you think Deaf returning citizens will treat when they are students at the university? Do you think they will be rounded up and put on reservations that lack proper well being for Deaf returning citizens? Do you think Deaf returning citizens will be profiled around? Do you think Deaf returning citizens will be looked upon not being good enough to earn a higher education degree—whatever that means these days?

Why—we might ask—do the administration think they are qualified to belittle Deaf returning citizens whenever they are walking around? Do they, for example, train and tell professors how to perform oppression against them? They apply that reasoning to the teaching profession. The administration needs to stop hiding lies—they do not ever respectfully listen—all of us—to what the administration say about their profession and its many needs. Do they call it and continuing education at Gallaudet? That is why it needs a new blood in the administration.

To paraphrase Socrates in Plato’s Republic, Gallaudet University we have known can never grow into a reality or see the light of day. At Gallaudet, possibilities must be limitless. Deaf returning citizens who are strive to be students are limited. The research has shown that the returning citizens, who have turned their life around for the better, are the best students, because they value the opportunity.

Without an education, the path toward rehabilitation and economic security is far more challenging—they do not need cruel punishment anymore. This sort of action in support for Deaf returning citizens would provide education—adding their intellectual, experiential, and cultural diversity within the student body.

-JT

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Deaf Mainstream and Suicide

December 8, 2013March 20, 2016 The Last Hiccup7 Comments

Aristotle known as the Audist Philosopher

“Nothing haunts us like the things we don’t say”-Mitch Albom

I have some more to write about my childhood experiences, especially in mainstreaming settings, after I read about Fautso’s death, which I admit, is still haunting me to this date. I realized that I had experienced a plenty of subsequent educational hardships all those years and the likelihood of graduating from high school was difficult after receiving many threats, harassment, bullying, and faced adverse consequences including stigmatization and differential treatment. During my senior year in high school, a month before graduation, I wanted to drop out of high school like everybody in my family did until my father got a phone call from somebody at the school that I was about to drop out, but my father got off work early and drove 30 miles to show up at my high school and caught me in a hallway and begged that I will not give up my education. He said to me, “Son, do not follow my footsteps and you are better than that”. At first, I was disgusted with my father’s appeal because he did not understand what I was going through then I realized that my father was doing the right thing for me. “Be a leader’, he said.

I skipped classes so many times during second semester and partied much and that is where I was couple of credits short from graduating high school. That was where it did not stop me from achieving my goals to graduate from high school. I ended up being in the “fifth” (senior) and skyrocketed my grades by getting five A’s and one B’s during first semester then second semester, almost got perfect grades only because I did not do well in pottery class and ended up getting B for the class. My grandmother said if anyone got perfect grades would receive $50. I really wanted $50 then my grandmother saw what I was going through, she decided to give me $50 for my efforts! In my previous blog, “My Personal Struggles in Mainstreaming America” in which I mentioned the CODA interpreter who interpreted for me in fifth grade until she moved away. We reunited again in my “fifth” year senior. That made a huge difference. Yes, even I got suspended that time for five days after getting in fight with a bully student named Kevin. My brother was there and he was in awe how much I suffered social satire everyday in hallways. He would hear other students’ mocking at me while I walked by. They just did not know that I was his big brother. I had to set an example for my brother at some point. I could not let bullies and bigots fail me and made sure that my brother could not ignore my education’s fundamental premise.

Mainstreamed Deaf students have as much right to seek higher education as non-Deaf students do. There is no secret that mainstreaming system is very much one-sided and the system has alluded Deaf students’ dignity from becoming normal and full Deaf-minded students. Mainstreamed Deaf students should not get characterized by their neglect, I am sure that the stress is so great that affects families as well, too that they experience similar social stigma what they were going through with greater personal isolation.

Is Audism part of conservatism? Definitely yes, Audists know it because they oppose to the idea of radical changes. They play dumb, but they know it! There is so much ignorance in the mainstreaming settings that leaves Deaf people very much invisible what they had been profiled around. Why not Deaf students grow up with a strong mind and ASL? Mainstreaming settings are meant to keep Deaf students from looking at hearing students in their eyes. The problem is that it is not a Deaf cultural thing, but it is a hearing supremacy thing. The Audists are out in force today. Deaf people’s existence causes a cognitive dissonance in their eyes. Many Deaf schools are closed in North America and other parts of countries. The systematic denial of receiving resources for Deaf students in mainstreaming settings still exists.

Aristotle was the one who said Deaf people are incapable of their intelligence. Thanks to Thomas Aquinas, a philosopher and a priest in 12th century, found Aristotle’s work after buried deep somewhere since third B.C. because Aristotle had committed suicide, the Church did not recognize his work. Imagine if Aquinas did not find Aristotle’s work, would the world be different and treat Deaf people with respect and dignity? We need to stand up in the public and continue to reinforce the fact that mainstreaming settings is not the answer. Let’s make an example of the problem.

Denying Intellectual Audism is in a new vogue. How can Deaf people not deal with enormous sense of shame and stigma by being Deaf? They should not felt demoralized at all. Mainstreaming has become a collateral consequence to Deaf people’s lives. Audism makes sure that Deaf people are liable for their consequences for their actions no matter what happened to them in the classroom. Various factors have contributed to many more problems. Remember Paddy Ladd’s research in his book, 80% of Deaf children do not have formal education on the earth. Audists would say that Ladd’s published research findings are false and disagreeable. They need to think that “listening and speaking” is individualistic, like playing some musical instruments.

In the United States, we need to utilize the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to change discriminatory state laws that affect Deaf students in mainstreaming system. In U.K., 96% of Deaf children are mainstreamed and in Canada, high percentage as well, too. We will not become Aristotle’s children. I know that there is high percentage of Deaf children who committed suicide and yet it is invisible in the media world. We need to collect newspaper clippings even if they say “hearing impaired” instead of “Deaf” and other documented information to prove that suicide among Deaf young people exist. Educators of the Deaf today are completely trained under the powerful influence from 1880 Milan Resolution Conference to make sure mainstreamed Deaf children are overlooked and dismissed as nonexistent in the society.

Ladd’s quote, “…parade a single Deaf ‘success’ in order to exemplify the miracle made flesh, and to thus claim all Deaf children were capable of these achievements. That the examples in question were usually drawn from deafened or partially Deaf children was something that was hidden from view” and his other quote, “Isolated from contact with other Deaf people, the experience resulted in ‘academic success’ but was traumatic both socially and emotionally” both quotes were written in 1979.

-JT

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