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SIGN LANGUAGE: NOT JUST FOR KIDS

During my early college years, I learned Sign Language when I worked and lived at a School for the Deaf as a dormitory helper for primary-aged boys. It was very frustrating to work with these children, although I adored them. I loved being their friend, kissing them goodnight, and watching their little fingers fly faster than I was able to understand. at the time.

It is important to know that Sign Language is for the hearing impaired. To refer to all hearing impaired people as "deaf" is incorrect. Under the heading of Hearing Impaired, there are all ranges of impairment, from no sound at all to mild hearing loss. More people who are born with impairment or who lost hearing before they learned language are more likely to use Sign Language than those who have good residual hearing or who lost their hearing later in life. Sign language is also used by many people who are unable to speak, are autistic, or have other communication disabilities. Many deaf people can read lips and speak. If you converse with a hearing-impaired person, speak naturally; do not exaggerate your speech or speak loudly. Be natural, and be sure to meet the hearing-impaired person's eyes while you communicate.

There was a very frustrating problem - for me, and for the children - in our school. The children were not allowed to use ASL (American Sign Language); instead, they were expected to use signed English. (This was also a dormitory rule, but it was a rule we rarely followed.) Hearing impairment leaves one with a need for conceptual language. There must be a chair, for example, before it can be understood that it is blue. In English, we say, "the blue chair." The problem is syntax. First, the child is faced with "the." This word has no meaning. What is a "the"? Where is it? Then "blue" - what blue? Finally, signed English gives the deaf child a chair. Now this may begin to make sense to a frustrated child. Chair-Blue. "Chair where?" the child asks. The teacher, well indoctrinated by the school system then begins to further confuse the child with, "Where is the chair?" A simple ASL answer to, "Chair where?" would be to point to said chair, or to the place the imaginary chair is sitting. Instead, the child's head is reeling from describing a chair that does not exist except as a "the," whatever that is. No ASL was allowed in the classrooms at that time (late 1970's) in the state where I worked. In fact, it would be like teaching English to a person who knows

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