The risks of learning ASL as a first language

Transcript:

In Mike McConnell's blog, he's looking for the "risks" of learning ASL as a first language. I sent in my comment, and he decided not to publish my comment. I will not be discussing that here. (Interrupted by bout of coughing) (drinks water) That feels better. What I said are the risks of learning ASL:

1) Hearing Parents and other family members will have to learn another language. That's terrible! Here in America, people know only one language. We can't have people learning more than one language!

2) Deaf children and parents will enjoy a closer bond (can't have that in our American society, with its increasing alienation between people! We can't promote closeness!)

3) Deaf children will understand what's going on around the dinner table and at family gatherings (no more "Family Dog Syndrome")

4) Deaf people will attain full linguistic competency in a language (putting a lot of SLPs and psychologists out of work)

5) Deaf people will attain age-appropriate cognitive, academic and linguistic skills (laying waste to a whole system which pathologizes Deaf people, requiring IEPs, SSI, VR, and so on. There will be no need for any of those services).

6) Deaf people will have enhanced cognitive skills and mental flexibility as a result of knowing two or more languages. (We can't have that. We have to restrict people to using only a limited portion of their minds).

7) Finally, Deaf people will stop grumbling about recollected abuses, problems, audism, and the like, which means the "Nattering Nabobs of Negativity" like Mike McConnell and others will have nothing to blog about.

The point: only in a monolingual setting (which are a small minority of the world's population -- most of the world's peoples know two or three or four languages), is knowing another language viewed as a problem, liability, or risk.

But (ironically) many people encourage their children to learn Hebrew, Spanish, French, German, and many other languages as a second language. So why is learning ASL viewed as a risk or problem? Why look for problems associated with learning ASL, when with other languages, they are NEVER viewed as being a potential problem? NO!

Note: Thanks to Shel Potma for pointing out that learning spoken languages is never viewed as a "risk"

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• ASLRisks

[dominicerrigo]

Don,

Here's the quote ..."If you risk nothing, then you risk everything".

Russell

[DrDonGCSUS]

@dominicerrigo A good quote to think about, Russ!

[Salticid68]

You're great. If you publish newspaper, I would subscribe to yours without a thought! Lol. Great vlog, again.

[DrDonGCSUS]

@Salticid68 I'll keep the newspaper idea in mind....

[ASLElla]

Thank you! Thank you!

[DrDonGCSUS]

@ASLElla You're welcome, you're welcome!

[NLDesierto]

Oh pooh,..they'd be left with nothing to blog about,..we wouldn't want to deprive them, now, would we? *smile* Such risks,..tsk tsk tsk... Gracias a el Doctor!

[shelpotma1]

Well- said. Heh, Don. Re: the bad cough and hand spasms you had. gee... Hope that's not contagious!

Another irritating issue I had with McConnell's topic is that he and others KEEP referring to ASL as a communication method. WRONG! NO spoken language has ever been referred to as a communication method. ARGH.

[Banerika]

You are THE BEST!!! Ha ha ha! Your coughing fit ... eh heh heh! Imagine the knock-off effects of the family learning ASL, too. I know a few CODAs who are multi-lingual (Spanish, French, Portuguese, English, ASL, German) ... hearing family members risk having all of the proven advantages of bilingualism or multilingualism thrust upon them too. They may have more flexible thinking, better learning capacity, etc. My God. The horror.