Cover next page > title: Seeing Language in Sign : The Work of William C. Stokoe author

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Page deaf community would cure not only ills in special education but also the wasting disease of our whole educational effort;
as Hall (1974) puts it, "A general failing of Northern European cultures, one that we are gradually overcoming, is our attempt to deal with virtually everything out of context."
Even reading, writing, and arithmetic, the "three Rs" of the past, which some educators want to go back to right now, are absurd in 1975 if they are taught in the fashion of 1880. For instance, in our recent affluence and technological explosion,
the easy availability of pocket electronic calculators makes many school arithmetic drills and lessons a waste of time. But this technology could be used to make the abstract principles of number and counting and calculating much more interesting, because hours of paper and pencil work can be replaced by minutes of careful and intelligent key pressing.
Again, the captioning of film and TV programs can make more material more completely available to deaf persons than ever can be done by efforts to improve hearing aids and individuals' lipreading skills. The fact is that culture is changingnot just the general culture of industrial nations. Yet enculturation for all who are not born into one of these cultures must proceed from full, comfortable, and satisfying participation in some viable subculturewe all have to start from where we are.
E. T. Hall (1974) has quantitative evidence of how much working-class blacks (WCB) and middle-class whites (MCW)
differ on such basics as language, the use of the eyes, the sizing up of situations, attitudes toward questions, and expression of affect. In all this, one cultural difference is all important the MCW tries to read meaning inseparable, out- of-context, discrete symbols, and tries to find the key to a situation in language e.g., "But he said so and so" The WCB
may find language a minor detail in the same situation e.g., "Yeah, he said that, but he was lookin' way off and the other guy's brother was standin' right there, and did you see how he was shiftin' his feet and his shoulders" The "meaning" that each of these observers finds in the same situation differs because of cultural difference.
In educational programs now in effect for deaf children,

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