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

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Page explains that in the oralists' view, "deaf people who identified with the deaf community were isolated pathological handicapped individuals" 25 The oralists looked for medical cures or technological solutions, for they could never fathom,
much less accept, the fact that deaf people not only desired but were capable of living lives "designed by themselves rather than those imposed by others."26
Not only had deaf people been deprived of the use of their own language, but control over their education had been taken over by people who did not even know their language, much less recognize and appreciate its value and beauty. As a result of these conditions, deaf people came to be viewed as deficient or handicapped, needing help and guidance. Jerome Schein explains that,
until the s, "the Deaf community accepted the general community's view of deafness as a pathological condition. From that it followed that education should strive to make deaf children as much like hearing children as possible. The curriculum naturally reflected these views."27
Nowhere are such views more apparent than in The Psychology of Deafness, written in 1957 by the psychologist Helmer R.
Myklebust. For years this book was the standard training text at schools of education for teachers of deaf students. Although
Myklebust was hearing, he felt fully qualified to inform others of "the provocative and intriguing ramifications of sensory deprivation."28
Myklebust warned his readers of "the probability that such a handicap might preclude actualization of true intellectual potential because of limited language" He claimed that deaf children were unable to perform on tests that require certain types of abstraction and reasoning processes. He noted inferior memory abilities in deaf children. He observed a similarity between deaf children and brain-damaged children in engaging in "concrete behavior" He perceived inferior abstract reasoning processes in deaf children, a 'verbal language limitation which deafness imposes" an "effect of deafness on divergent thinking and evaluation ability" an isolation caused by deafness, an inability to integrate experience, and a possibility that "the personality might be less structured, more immature, less subtle, and more sensorimotor in character."

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