School Administration – …And the Truth Shall Set You Free.

The Ethical of Forgotten Mainstream Deaf Students

July 16, 2015March 20, 2016 The Last Hiccup1 Comment

Marvin Miller’s class project [Click me for bigger words to read]

Mainstreaming has often been labeled as the greatest cultural success in the eyes of school administration when they said that Deaf schools are a wasteland of academic fraud and face plants worthwhile only for those moments in life of great procrastination. The face plants are often the people who works in media and school administration that are too lazy to admit that the oppression inside mainstreaming schools around the country is the reason that mainstreaming students are struggling for the best academics available.

Added to the condemnation is the spirit uproar of Deafhood framework, which serves big purpose, but to open the door with the truth that the author Paddy Ladd writes in page 152,

“It can be seen from the previous sections that the last 20 years have produced an enormous number of changes, for both better and worse, which have been enacted upon and in turn reacted to by what is a small Deaf community. These various wave have resulted in a tremendous increase in Deaf discourse and cultural ferment, with both positive and negative outcomes.”

What does it mean to me? The last 20 years has changed a lot—for example, in the special education report by the Department of Education and that is in America alone, 80% of Deaf students in mainstreaming struggle to meet with the state standards, for example, test scores in English, math, reading, science, history, and several subjects as hearing students excels. It shows that the society did not really pay full attention and they are responsible for the depression and the pursuit of happiness. The key word in the quote is enormous number of changes.

Is it hopeful or hopeless? Look a little deeper in Ladd’s book Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood, and one can find a glowing patchwork of literature masterpieces, available to any and all who wish to break free from severe academic oppression in mainstreaming by students themselves, if only for a moment, into 20^th century discourses, for example, new Deaf discourses, 1975 to date, the Oralist response, 1980 to date. The following discourses, for whatever reason, appear full length and for all to see what the media did not reveal the TRUTH in the first place.

A quick disclaimer—the discourse is here one day but may be gone the next. As of this writing, there is available, but the future is uncertain. Now, in no particular order, there is an important discourse to focus on. Little more can be said about Deaf community fighting enough to keep Deaf schools open. This stuff is old enough now to be in the public domain, and there are days and days of severe academic oppression in mainstreaming schools for all to see. Within full-fledged mainstreaming comes into my life, the whole life, so it should be no surprise if some of it is hard to grasp. There is a good reason why I remain on the cultural compass for so long, however, and it is never been easier to explore my life and work.

However, it is very important to see primary source documentation with education in 2015 looks like. Let Mr. Marvin Miller be your guide with his latest project—a splendid work! The image above that will guide you to understand the adversity that Deaf students face today and tomorrow, even when the society disagree or when they are not able to support them as much as they would like because all of the things they are pulling this way. As shown in Marvin’s project, 75% of Deaf kids that were neglected category and none were in the popular category found in Gina Olivia’s book—is pretty much true to my experience in mainstreaming schools.

Along with Miller’s project, my concerns that mainstreaming students are having difficult time to be a human, and there is not enough encouragement despite their deep struggle. Now Deaf people are above and beyond the sun, in the brightness of the universe and the darkness of the cosmos waiting for the Big Bang. The collision of being Deaf so immense that they could never explain, so small that the Deaf people will never recover truly from it. We know that it is there; we know that Audism is coming back in the cycle over and over. Are Deaf people coming? Yes, they are coming!

Thank you, Marvin for your project that shows that Deaf students are the warriors of passionate protectors amongst the beasts the society created from dirt, water, and soul. Deaf people are the rib from that reason. Deaf people are the day, night, water, and air that the reason they were created before something created us. They are the flame and shine a light whose worth is only appreciated in the darkness. It is appropriate to stop Audism in mainstreaming schools! -JT

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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

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My Personal Struggles in Mainstreaming America

November 27, 2013April 10, 2017 The Last HiccupLeave a comment

Nancy Rourke’s System Fails

After reading an article about Fausto Delgado, a Deaf mainstreamed kid who decided to take his life two weeks ago in California, and it hit me hard by bringing my memories back.

News flash: I never shared this with anyone but only two good friends know about it. When I was 14, I was so fed up with my life, I was a very unhappy individual, unable to express my own frustrations through sign language, and no one could really understood what I was going through. I grew up mainstreamed all my life and I could easily vouch that it was one of the most brutal experiences in my life.

One weekend in late April a long time ago, for example, I went inside the barn on my family’s property, I saw an opportunity by putting the rope on the beam around my neck, so I could commit suicide until my grandfather was walking up to the barn, I hid the rope right away and acted like nothing had happened. I could even remember my grandfather’s face, looking bit puzzled, and he asked me what I was doing there. Only that he did not know sign language. Home-signed “nothing” by shaking my head.

No one knew about this until now. That was in 1988, few weeks after Deaf President Now (DPN).

Why is it being labeled as the most misgiving in human life that being Deaf in mainstreaming is not normal? I had been subjected to limit ASL from being natural Deaf. My “sound-oriented” teachers, school administration, principals even most of my interpreters were deficit thinkers. I had one interpreter who was a Child of Deaf Adult (CODA) and she tried to help me so much she could then one day she moved away. I never knew what CODA meant until I was in my late 20’s. I can still remember my middle school principal, Mr. Hicks who was a mean-spirited bully, and he had one of the worst and poor flexibilities within Deaf Education that made my education to suffer. He allowed students to bully me as much as they could.

Mr. Hicks made sure that I was suffering from my own emotional insecurity and destroy my intellectual development within receiving fair education. From going through K-12, I was the target of bullies at the same time; I was suspended from school 18 times just for protecting myself. There were many stories to share.

Once, when I was in the third grade, I disobeyed an order from my interpreter “X” telling me to slow down because she did not like the fact that I was good in solving fractions so quickly in front of the other students making her look bad. But I was natural in mathematics then she actually slapped my face in the hallway and dragged my hand to go see my principal, Mrs. Gloria Pappas and I cried so hard asking, “WHY?! WHY?! WHY?!” and I ended up in detention for two days. My father never knew about this. When I was 17, I had a chance to visit Deaf school; I admit that I was shocked. I really wanted to go there, but I did not.

The mainstreaming system failed to release itself from the grasp of the bullying methods by permitting them to have as much influence in “power-struggling” Deaf students down in their faces. Once the bullying is granted to a fair and constant price more people will choose between bullying and intimidation. More Deaf students will have to suffer with their afflictions for lack of being to protect themselves, and lastly, more bullies will be able to find a way to belittle Deaf students that they are deemed to impossible to fight back. Mainstreaming schools for Deaf students will realize that the words of those bullies do apply to school administration and their families.

The Deaf body can be resilient but also frail and fallible and they are people, too. The mainstreaming is a dark pot into which activities that relates to many Deaf mainstreamed kids being bullied everyday. It is time to minimize aggression, bullying, threats, and distress. Why being hesitant by supporting bullying against Deaf kids that now are deeming to be ineffective?

It is evident that Deaf children in mainstreaming schools experience higher percentage of emotional abuses more than hearing peers. The safe haven in classrooms does not exist at all. The mainstreaming schools fails to make a cardinal decision by protecting Deaf students with public safety efforts and grant them freedom and protections. The problem is that the society is too ignorant. Will mainstreamed Deaf kids ever rehabilitate from emotional scars? Maybe. Maybe not.

One of my favorite authors, Barbara Perry wrote,

This historical example is a reminder that acts of discriminatory violence and intimidation—hate crimes—are not new phenomena in the United States. It is important to keep in mind that what we currently refer to as hate crime has a long historical lineage; the contemporary dynamics of hate-motivated violence have their origins in historical conditions. With respect to racial violence, at least, history does repeat itself, as similar patterns of motivation, sentiment, and victimization recur over time….”

It matches perfectly what mainstreamed Deaf kids experience discriminatory violence and intimidation—intellectual Audism. History does repeat itself…..

Remember that CODA interpreter I mentioned? Well, I bumped into her in Las Vegas in summer 2012 during World Deaf Expo, it was very nice to see her after 20 years and she said that I grew up so much and knowing I had very rough life and she said that she really wished she could have helped me out more to escape from dark rooms in mainstreaming schools. It was heartbreaking to see her say that. Maybe I could have better life. The society failed me. The mainstreaming system failed me. Even today they are still trying to make me a failure. The million-dollar question, what is the effect of dehumanizing Deaf students in mainstream classrooms?

Third grade. Front row. Fourth person on the right with black watch (That is me) See first three boys in the very back on the left side. Bullies. In the second row, second person on the left, a boy who loved to taunt me. Years later we bumped into each other in high school at a wrestling tournament where we faced each other on the mat. Guess who won? By a majority score. Good times.

-JT

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