< previous pagepage_148next page >Page 148
tinued to advocate what James Woodward describes as "a combined method of speech and signs that parallel English word order" 35 The findings of the LRL could not have pleased these people. Citing Markowicz and Padden, Woodward explains why the boat needed to be rocked:
Most Deaf children have not received meaningful Deaf cultural
input from teachers or family, since teachers and families are mostly Hearing. Authoritarian language oppression can very easily occur under these situations. As we have already seen, the schools have tended
to repress sign language, especially ASL, and input from deaf adults and . . . even those that permit sign language
discriminate against ASL, the language varieties that Deaf people normally identify with. Other minority group children often have a refuge in the home from such cultural and linguistic oppression. However, as we have seen, more than 90 percent of Deaf children who attended residential schools do not have parents who belong to the same minority group as they do. Thus Deaf children are much less protected from cultural and linguistic discrimination than children from other minority groups.36
Worldwide recognition such as that which Stokoe received at the 1980 convention of the National Association of the Deaf was in large part responsible for the continued functioning of the LRL.
At Gallaudet manual English, Cued Speech, and
Simultaneous Communication continued to be advocated for the classroom in preference to American Sign Language. Bill
Stokoe remembers that "every time I sat down with the vice president for research
and the dean of research, they asked me when I was going to retire It was becoming clear to Stokoe that the administration at Gallaudet would never make life easy for him and his researchers. He recalls, for example, that
During
the later years in the lab, when it was just me, Dennis [Cokely], Charlotte [Baker-Shenk],
a secretary, and a couple of part-time people, I had to submit annual reviews of our work.
After I submitted them, I'd get feedback from the administrators saying that I should sit harder on my associates Baker-Shenk and Cokely because they weren't really
Share with your friends: