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

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Page more years with educational achievements far below the national averages" Schein pointed out that this had not always been the case:
At the start of this century, hearing and deaf students went onto college at about the same rate, which proved the feasibility of Edward M. Gallaudet's idealistic thinking. But within a few years, college admissions for the general population rapidly accelerated, while those for the Deaf population remained nearly constant. By 1950, the ratio climbed to over 8.5 to students in the general population attended college overtimes more often than deaf students. LS. Vygotsky, the Russian psychologist whose theories have had a profound impact on educational practices, observes that
The acquisition of language can provide a paradigm for the entire problem of the relation between learning and development. Language arises initially as a means of communication between the child and the people in his environment.
Only subsequently, upon conversion to internal speech, does it come to organize the child's thought, that is, become an internal mental function.22
This theory has obvious implications for deaf children being taught in a language they are not biologically suited to understand or employ while being deprived of access to a language that is entirely suitable to their biological characteristics. Yet oralists refused to recognize the cognitive deprivation resulting from the implementation of their theories they continued to espouse the philosophy of oralism, which "declares deafness as something that must be overcome and insisted that their methods offered the only proper preparation "fora full life in the hearing society When deaf students, as a result of the cognitive deprivation of oralism, performed dismally on achievement tests, in the classroom, and in the workforce, and when they chose to associate with other deaf people rather than struggle to comprehend and be comprehended in a hearing society, the oralists nodded knowingly such behavior simply bore out what they had said all along. James Woodward, a sociolinguist who specializes in the study of sign languages,

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