American Sign Language and Gallaudet
Gallaudet University is a college designed for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing. All of the programs are designed for the advancement of the deaf community. The majority of students and faculty are themselves deaf or hard of hearing, although a limited number of students without these disabilities are allowed into the school each year.
The university began in 1857 when the 34th Congress approved the institution of what was then called the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind. The year before, a wealthy philanthropist and former United States Postmaster General Amos Kendall became aware that there was a large group of young people in the Washington D.C. area who were not receiving proper care because they were disabled. He had the court declare the children his legal wards and donated two acres of his property to have a house and special school built for them. This land would become the institution we now know as Gallaudet University.
The intent of the university was never to segregate the deaf community from the outside world. Instead the purpose was to create a place where deaf and hard of hearing individuals could receive the higher education that they had heretofore been denied. In his Presentation Day Address to the students, then University President C. Alphonso Smith stated:
America does mean opportunity. But...
There is "evidence that deaf children benefit from early exposure to sign language points to the need for in-depth sign language training for parents and other caregivers, with special attention to underserved populations such as those in rural areas," (Marschuck 2001 p 9). Parents should not rely on external schools at later developmental stages, when the damage to the child's cognitive and linguistic abilities could have already been done. Chomsky's
Fingerspelling As children learn new languages they are taught how to sound out words in order to be able to write it correctly when the need comes. Language development in children takes on the traditional form of first experiencing the language, listening to the language, and then viewing the language in written form in order to fully understand what specific words stand for. This is however not possible for all children.
Laurent ClercLaurent Clerc was an important figure in the history of Deaf education in America. He was born in 1785 in a small village in France. When he was just a year old, he fell off a chair into the fireplace in the kitchen. He was badly burned on his face and his sense of smell and hearing were totally damaged. The accident left him Deaf (Laurent Clerc Biography).Laurent grew
These churches include the Pilgrim Lutheran Church of the Deaf, International Deaf Mission, Los Angeles Deaf Church., Holy Angeles Catholic Church of the Deaf and the Grace Bible Church of the Deaf, to mention a few. There is also a presence of the Jewish deaf community. When it comes to education, the Los Angeles area has a sizable program at the California State University Northridge with a National Center
Deaf Culture In any given country, there is a dominant and prevailing culture that tends to be more pervasive than others. However, there are also cultures that are counter or parallel to the dominant culture. One of those common subcultures is that of deaf people. Even with the fact that deaf and hearing-impaired people live in the same dominant cultures as everyone else, they have to exist and act in a
"Co-enrolled classrooms," they advise, "represent a promising additional possibility for increasing student social access to peers, as well as increasing achievement. A co-enrolled classroom typically consists of an approximately 2:1 ratio of hearing and Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) students. A team of two teachers, a general education teacher and a teacher of DHH students, collaborate to provide instruction. In many CE classrooms, the teachers and students frequently use both
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