That was a bit of a cop out answer, and completely didn't understand why BSL in schools would be a good thing.
Personally I believe ALL deaf/HOH children should have access to BSL throughout their education as it is a skill that many of us use and wish to extend further. Perhaps this would be a more reasonable objective in the short term. BSL is so much more useful than French or German in this country, and in the USA lots of people know bits of sign cos it is easy to do credits in it.
The government is being convinced by the mainstream teacher of the deaf lot who are mostly 'oralists' who claim successes where they perhaps ought not and fail to recognise where education for the deaf and HOH could be SO much better. They all find BSL hard, so don't realise its importance! They're still preaching that teaching sign damages spoken and written English ffs!
They're still preaching that teaching sign damages spoken and written English ffs!
Oh god they aren't are they? My only experience is from the other end, friends working in HI units where they want to teach sign and the parents won't have it - and half the kids should be in a deaf unit but the only way to convince the parents that the kid needs any help is to pretend that they can learn English.
Deaf and linguistical awareness is so needed. But I don't see any reason why BSL GCSE couldn't exist - it would just need an agreed syllabus, most easily harmonised with CACDP. Oh, 'agreed', that might be the problem - but if Bengali and Swahili and every other language can manage it...
Some people still are and some of them are far too influential in my opinion. I also see frustrated ToDs dealing with ignorant / scared parent too though. I think that having BSL GCSE would be a really good start and I am not sure why it has not happened yet, to be honest. My opinion is that there is not yet the political will to see BSL as a language, despite the fact that it has been recognised by the EU.
Mileage varies on the teaching sign and spoken English. The British research is improving, so sites such as http://www.deafnessatbirth.org.uk have summaries of current/recent papers by sensible/credible authors. But there is still this attitude that sign is only ever something to be used with small children and not something they can continue to utilise and use as a language in its own right
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it's obviusoly diffrent but my Mum's lip reading tutor seems quite anti-sign. It seems to be quite common in pople who wor with adults experinceing age-related hearing loss. She discourages Mum from using Makaton and finger-spelling to support heard to lip-read sounds ("we don't do that") which she used to find helpful. I can see that there's an argument for getting her to concentrate on the lip-reading because it's a more universal skill but Mum used to use makton when she was working as a SEN teacher and she taught it to me and my brother as kids so it seems stupid to tell her not to use it (particuluiary when we havving problems comunicateing because of my verbal dyspraxia). Of course hard-core BSLers would disapprove of makaton and fingerspeling to support speach too but i don't think that most prevously hearing people with age-related hearing loss are going to learn to sign "properly". It seems wrong that the dogma gets in the way of people using stragies that work for them
I think whatever strategies work for people should be supported and dogma is never very helpful in my experience. Lipreading teachers are usually quite strict on 'hand-usage'. I remember we had a lecture on lipspeaking and I got ask to sit on my hands as I kept using them!
I know. It is actually a lot better than it used to be and I have met many ToDs who are really supportive and even fluent signers. However, there are still far too many educators who see signing as a hindrance to learning spoken English :-( Unfortunately I have also seen signing being used as an excuse to teach a curriculum that was far too oversimplified and implied lower expectations of children who sign. I dream of truly effective bilingual schools but we are nowhere near that in this country... Of course the attitude of our current government does not help.
My mum is based in Manchester which is still more oralist than many other places. My mum's head of service apparently signs, but I don't know how well, but she's allegedly quite good, especially at supporting individual children by need not 'prescription
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Sounds sadly familiar (no funding, no requirements about BSL1 or 2 at least, etc...) I am really glad she is persisting though, despite the lack of support by her employer (who should be really paying for her training!) Leeds is one of the best LEAs in the country for bilingualism but I know they also struggle with lack of qualified staff and funding.
Well she originally tried to do her level 1 on top of her first year of the MA diploma in deaf teaching and due to health problems she ended dropping the sign and deferring the MA dip over 2 years
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I agree about bright non profoundly deaf kids, but I still think we would benefit from peer support and not being the 'only' deaf kid or whatever. The access to sign wouldn't have to be at school, but perhaps offered as something we could do outside of school.
But how do we deal with parents not wanting their children taught to sign - is this an area we should allow parental choice?
I guess parents have to be allowed to make *informed* choices for their children. If some doctors, educators, whoever still believe that any sign will damage the kid's English, then those parents need to be exposed to people with Clue, as do the docs etc. Although you'd also have to ensure that parents learning sign and signing at their deaf child also expose the child to English - I can imagine that parents trying hard to learn sign might end up not having the energy to lip-speak and read with a deaf child; maybe that's what these well-meaning educators are trying to avoid?
Well having something like Sweden's free 250 hours of sign tuition for ALL parents/family of deaf children would help. This would stimulate and encourage parent-specific sign classes where they would get support from other parents of other deaf children as well as signing and stuff. We all know BSL isn't cheap, and often isn't easy to get into in this country.
Personally I believe ALL deaf/HOH children should have access to BSL throughout their education as it is a skill that many of us use and wish to extend further. Perhaps this would be a more reasonable objective in the short term. BSL is so much more useful than French or German in this country, and in the USA lots of people know bits of sign cos it is easy to do credits in it.
The government is being convinced by the mainstream teacher of the deaf lot who are mostly 'oralists' who claim successes where they perhaps ought not and fail to recognise where education for the deaf and HOH could be SO much better. They all find BSL hard, so don't realise its importance! They're still preaching that teaching sign damages spoken and written English ffs!
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Oh god they aren't are they? My only experience is from the other end, friends working in HI units where they want to teach sign and the parents won't have it - and half the kids should be in a deaf unit but the only way to convince the parents that the kid needs any help is to pretend that they can learn English.
Deaf and linguistical awareness is so needed.
But I don't see any reason why BSL GCSE couldn't exist - it would just need an agreed syllabus, most easily harmonised with CACDP. Oh, 'agreed', that might be the problem - but if Bengali and Swahili and every other language can manage it...
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Of course hard-core BSLers would disapprove of makaton and fingerspeling to support speach too but i don't think that most prevously hearing people with age-related hearing loss are going to learn to sign "properly". It seems wrong that the dogma gets in the way of people using stragies that work for them
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But how do we deal with parents not wanting their children taught to sign - is this an area we should allow parental choice?
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