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Page Special Abilities" Myklebust noted that the range of vocational choices by females was remarkably limited. "The three most common choices of interest were teaching, clerical, and housewife" But Myklebust was conducting his research in the mid
1950s, the height of the "Father Knows Best" era. Did he think that, had these females been hearing, they would have chosen physics, neurosurgery, and space exploration Myklebust was relieved that the deaf women had chosen such "realistic' interests;
he suggested that "their choices may reflect unconscious awareness that opportunities are limited or that deafness imposes a major limitation as far as many types of work are concerned" Boys didn't fare much better in Myklebust's study. After administering "the Stenquist Mechanical Aptitude Test, Test I the
Minnesota Paper Formboard, Series AA the Minnesota Spatial Relations Test, Boards A and Band the Minnesota Assembly
Test, Sets I and II" he observed that deaf boys would do well to develop skills in such trades as "printing, linotyping, metalwork, photoengraving, and woodwork" for "despite their limitations, the deaf are generally successful in vocational pursuits."38
Experiments have shown that when teachers are told that their students are "gifted" they often achieve far greater success with those students, even if the students have not been found to possess superior intellectual capacities at all. But the reverse is also true. Myklebust's text and others like it, dealing with the linguistic and psychological limitations of deaf people, were standard texts in teacher training programs. One can only imagine the effects of such negative input on teachers who would instruct deaf children. Researchers have since found that most of the tests used by Myklebust were either inappropriate or appropriate only if adequate communication between examiner and child could be guaranteed, through sign language or in writing. Nevertheless,
for more than twenty years, Myklebust's findings were accepted without question.39
Carol Padden and Tom Humphries, two of today's foremost interpreters of deaf culture (both former students at Gallaudet), note that Myklebust's "authority" was "enough to establish the tone of official thought. For the next generation of those influential in deciding how deaf children in America would be taught, Helmer Myklebust's Psychology of Deafness set the standard."40

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