Plato’s Cave – …And the Truth Shall Set You Free.

“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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De’VIA (Deaf View/Image Art) coined by nine artists in 1989 helps to create a unique learning environment by bringing out the creative learner in all of us. It is able to do this in three ways. The first way is by not only being a fun but also an interactive way to learn. Second it can borrow and bring in other methods of learning that have already been discussed seamlessly, and finally it allows is to teach each other in a more comfortable environment. Let’s first take a look at why it is healthy and that is where I am a strong believer in Deaf Art. Also, art does use a beloved childhood of mine, but it allows for learning rather than the construction of Deaf mind is to take place. All those De’VIA done by Deaf artists are real also we give things like names, name signs, minor back-stories, etc. We come up with inventive stories of situations that they are going through, or that one is about to die from, and then share these sometimes complex and imaginative stories. That is what exactly Edgar Degas’s quote above points out important phrase to see through inventive stories, “Art is not what you see but what you make others see” touches all the bases.

We share them with our fellow people, often times showing a new or forgotten message that the person is more than happy to learn. A New Wave needs to develop and grow a stronger event with all of this preparation to tell their stories they have created for De’VIA the people are using they may have forgot to realize that they are using the methods they learned from Deaf artists to tell a story about their artworks. To get the ideas of what will happen in the story they may have used the creativeness they exercised during their thinking session into Deaf art, resistance, liberation, and affirmation.

The use of De’VIA for these types of things is not separate from the other things we have talked about today but instead a culmination. De’VIA is what allows us to help teach and learn from another person. If they use art to express their mind you do not understand you repeat the message and then you examine it more. That is the beauty of art. Today you have read why De’VIA helps to create a unique learning environment by bringing out the creative learner in all of us.

First by learning how the use of art as a learning aid can be used, second by understanding how artworks use other methods of practice, and finally you learned by working together. Art can be used to bring everything together and teach people of any age in a fun way. From my observation with De’VIA artists, they construct their experiences with the validity of Deaf experience and address what we the Deaf know, value, and be responsible for our own intellectualism. Our knowledge as Deaf people is chiefly derived from pure reason, which is the final principle of reality.

Our being Deaf is real and true without consideration for emotions. De’VIA has awakened reasoning in Deaf mind and our search for knowing, our desire, and our enlightenment of this vast Art world are but the fabric woven in these strands for many centuries from Plato’s Cratylus to 1880 Milan to Deaf people in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries to Deafhood Foundation.

De’VIA must bring the philosophy of Deaf art, resistance, liberation, and affirmation to a sharp focus; Those current artists does the same for Deaf world with strong message of bringing an enlightenment of the struggle. Those people are known to be in the pursuit of arete, which means reaching the highest human potential in Greek, even at the cost of their own life. For next 30 years, the stories must be carried on and they all come from the beginning.

I would like to paraphrase Michel Foucault (1926-1984) statement by advising Deaf people to purse and recognize the supremacy of arts which has made a difference. It is powerful, the stories of lies and the attempt to redeem the nature of being Deaf through the hearing restoration or invention of cochlear implants must be told. Foucault’s quote, “My general theme is not society, it is true nor false discourses: let me say it is the correlative formation of domains, of objects, and of discourses verifiable and falsifiable which are assignable to them; it is not simply this formation which interests me but the effects of reality which are linked to it”–it is about the organizing principle of power wherein De’VIA can be studied through technologies of power–not progress, not education, not conflict, not struggle and not resistance.

Power creates truth, and this truth produces a function of power. De’VIA creates truth with a function of power. It is impossible to imagine without De’VIA and their influences are most often identified with their topics rather than a method. It will challenge people to question their assumptions about truth for their resistance and stop the power dynamics of cochlear implants, Audism, Oralism, and all. The truth is that De’VIA for the next 30 years is critical because Deaf people exist. It is not an accidental at all and a reason to believe that it is necessary to garner success. Since 134 years ago, the dark side of Milan 1880, De’VIA are the recipe for success to find their magic of many more truth. We must become more committed to arts in support of intellectual freedom, the search for social justice, and find the responsibility for the sake of Deaf people. The truth is that De’VIA has spoken.

-JT

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Tag: Plato’s Cave

Gallaudet Students’ Pitfall and Administration Pitfalls