TTMW Issue #69
* Re: Jeanette Johnson I have a different logical interpretation than Jeannette Johnson does not just of MSD but of many schools with D/deaf students. Because Michigan is steeped in Oralism as are many states, probably a good deal of its hearing residents have been subconsciously taught to view deaf people for what they cant do rather than what they can do. Therefore schools hire many more hearing faculty than they do Deaf faculty because hearing people are subconsciously perceived as being better and able to do more. Meanwhile the Deaf staff schools do hire end up being largely low-level support staff as John Lee Clark wrote about in an earlier column in TTMW. So when meetings come up about Bi-Bi, who has the power and final say in what meetings will be about and when they will end? Hearing administrators who have the power to fire or place a great deal of negative pressure on those few deaf people who push the issues. They are directly backed up by overwhelming numbers of ignorant hearing faculty and indirectly by 'status quo' deaf staff who flee from all confrontation. Why? It is easy to label those two or three or strongly opinionated deaf people as angry troublemakers and the rest of the deaf staff do not want to be seen in the same way. And that is how you get a Deaf Community flooded with Crab Theory and backstabbers. What is my evidence? Cece Winkler entitling her article "The Final Chapter." Who is she to say this is the end of the discussion? By virtue of responding beyond her Final Chapter I have just proven that the discussion doesn't end merely because she says so. THAT is the type of arrogance I object to. And Beth Steenwyk talking down to me "as a hearing person?" As if that trait alone makes her superior? I am sorry, no. These administrators are not as free of arrogance as their supporters make them out to be. What is happening here is very similar to what happened at the South Dakota School for the Deaf. While employees at state schools for the deaf and other schools answer to their administrators, administrators are increasingly being forced to answer to the public, and they don't like it. But they're going to have to get used to it because times have changed and the sooner they learn that the old ways of doing things are over the sooner Deaf Education will move on from the rut it has been stuck in for two centuries. J. Stein
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