Katawa Shoujo Forums

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/11325 ... ?viewAll=y


Particularly interesting was this part:

It may seem hard to believe that in an age of federally supported special education, people emerge into adulthood lacking a fundamental grasp of any language.

But 30 percent of deaf children leave secondary school functionally illiterate. Up to 15 percent of them can be categorized as having minimal to no language competence, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

Edit: Clicking the "Tweets" thing on a whim led to this; "Preserving Facts, Form, And Function When A Deaf Witness With Minimal Language Skills Testifies In Court:"

http://www.pennumbra.com/issues/pdfs/158-3/Tuck.pdf

I only really read some of the introduction, but skimming through part of it reveals that this is the source of the "night train" English->ASL->Pantomime example presented in the article (page 911).

Many American-born MLS deaf adults may know some standardized ASL signs
for commonplace concepts, which here could include TRAIN or NIGHT. Even then,
however, the spatial and temporal referents about the night in question and other similar
feats of syntax may not be among the signs or concepts widely used or easily understood
among MLS deaf adults. Courtroom use of concepts such as JURY or PLEA
exacerbate these problems.

Another edit: Been reading more of it and it's an interesting paper. To illustrate the lengths the courts need to go to accommodate an MLS defendant:

A guilty plea waiver of a trial by jury represents another legal concept that
does not lend itself to easy interpretation by CDIs. Timothy Jaech, a noted educator
for the deaf, prepared a videotaped instructional MLS version of such a plea, but it
took thirty times longer than the spoken English version—and it even assumed the
MLS defendant’s understanding of the basic concept of a jury, a concept that itself
would take several hours to interpret.

... Only in America, I'm inclined to think ">_>

Bloody yanks is all I can say.

So he had no way to communicate with... anyone? Truly a horrible way to live.

Napalm wrote:So he had no way to communicate with... anyone? Truly a horrible way to live.

Well it would be better than having all the people around you spouting death threats and insult, no matter where you go or who you meet.

Napalm wrote:So he had no way to communicate with... anyone? Truly a horrible way to live.

Sometimes doesn't we all live in a world like this?

okay, time for a lesson in Deaf-history then.


lets start at the relative start as to where this matter actually comes from. you see through the middle ages, the Deaf usually went through their lives in monasteries and stuff. it was the idle place for them, seeing how the church was not only the only institution that cared about them, but also the best place for them to actually communicate, vows of silence etc.

this is btw the origin of most european sign languages, monks who tried to get around that silence rule.

anyway as Deaf-history is rather poorly recorded. it's hard to pinpoint the level of education of the Deaf through the middle ages, but it is assumed to be comparatively high, as monasteries were the few places were writing was actually taught.


now the actual important part in Deaf-history, and I dare say a turning point for Deaf-education as a whole was around the middle of the 19th century.

sciences were starting to seperate more and more from the church, and Darwin was currently "in".

"Scientists" all around tried to force the principle of natural selection on everything, including languages.

that was quickly combined with the trend of that time, the "classic". intellectuals all around found it "hip" to explore ancient cultures, top of all of them, ancient greece. their philosophers and thinkers, like Aristotle were all the rage back then, and so were their ideas.

now don't understand me wrong, Aristotle probably was a smart man, but for the Deaf, he was kind of an asshole.

because what thought did he formulate?

in short: people think in words. as such the limits of your language are the limits of your mind. the more you are able to formulate thoughts, the higher your mind develops, away from animals.
he formulated the thought that the Deaf, who do not know what a word is, are unable to think, at least unable to think of anything more complex than "me hungry".

yes, to him the Deaf were instinct driven savages, closer to a dog than a man. like a dog they can learn some tricks, but their mind is underdeveloped.

as I said, kind of an asshole.


anyway, back on topic, people around 1850 were not necessarily assholes. they were just still deep in the "white race" mentality of the colonial times. you know slaves, race supremacies, that stuff.

and of course, they totaly bought in on aristotles ideas, and decided to "help" the deaf by opening schools only for them.

and here is where the important part starts.


with dwarvin being all the rage back then, dwarvinism was applied to that schooling system. the general line of thought was a combination of aristotles "you need words to be able to formulate abstract thought" and the "confirmation" of that "fact" through the idea: "Everybody in the whole world communicates through sounds. not through signs. thus sound is the fittest language, while signs are inferior. signs died out in the evolution of the social mind, as they were unable to keep up with the potential of the smart white brain. even niggers can talk and probably think more complex thoughts than a dog, so in order to help the deaf, "we must teach them how to speak".


yes, as ridiculous as it sounds, they tried to teach even children that were born Deaf, who have no way to actual comprehend what sounds and hearing are like to speak.

they tried their best to make them learn language by placing the childrens hands on their chest and letting them feel the vibration in their throat with...well you can imagine the results.

of course if you bring a whole bunch of Deaf kids together, they will develop their own sign language in no time. and having an effective way to communicate among eachother, any successes in teaching them how to speak of course quickly died down.

so what did they do ? to cure their savagery, most school forbid sign language, and some even went as far as putting the childrens hands into a cast, so they were unable to make signs.

let that sink down for a moment. they forbid sign language at a school for the Deaf.


now again, this sounds ridiculous, but try and comprehend the mindsets of the people of the 19th century. they did the same thing to left-handed children to cure them of their "sickness"


now the worst part however, is that this kind of mindset persisted for a long time afterwards. public schools for the Deaf were officialy forbidden to use sign language. if you wanted your deaf child to be taught in sign-language, you would need a private school, something that was often unaffordable.

and when did this change ?

the late 60s.

yes, it took that long. and don't think that is actually over yet. in some countries, like denmark for example, the ban of sign language in public schools...I think still persists



as a result the education level of most Deaf people older than 40 is usually abyssmal. thankfully that has quickly changed in the younger generations.
though I really doubts those figures that "30 of all Deaf children leave school functionaly illiterate". those sound like really old numbers to me. then again, I have no idea about the Deaf school system in the USA.


anyway, back on topic, I don't think that this actually was the problem for the man in question. in his case, I have doubts he even went to any kind of school. that also happens. the family, stuck up with their heads up their arses actually think "Oh no, a Deaf kid, what the hell are we gonna do? We can't show himt o our neighbours!"



if you want more detailed information, you can read up on this problem here

http://books.google.de/books?id=9K2v4ie ... &q&f=false

for the parts I mentioned, chapter 7 "Savages and Deaf-mutes" will be your target. but I suggest the whole thing

Darlat wrote:Well it would be better than having all the people around you spouting death threats and insult, no matter where you go or who you meet.

I'm not sure I follow. Why do you think that would be the case?

ElisaMasah wrote: Sometimes doesn't we all live in a world like this?

I assume you are talking about "fake" or shallow communication. Even so, this is different. The only way I can think about this man's case is being trapped in his head with his thoughts, except, of course, for sending and recieving trivial messages, while on the other hand, you don't have to try too hard to find someone who you can actually communicate with.

Napalm wrote:I assume you are talking about "fake" or shallow communication. Even so, this is different. The only way I can think about this man's case is being trapped in his head with his thoughts, except, of course, for sending and recieving trivial messages, while on the other hand, you don't have to try too hard to find someone who you can actually communicate with.

I don't have try too hard to find an hear that can decode the vibration i left in air speaking ... that the brain connected to that hear can really understand what I'm saying ... this is another story... humanity is unable to really comprend each other short of sudden development of telepathy and when you think a lot about it ... sometimes we do really live in a world not so different that this poor guy.

It may seem hard to believe that in an age of federally supported special education, people emerge into adulthood lacking a fundamental grasp of any language.

But 30 percent of deaf children leave secondary school functionally illiterate. Up to 15 percent of them can be categorized as having minimal to no language competence, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

Wait, people find this surprising? Did they completely ignore the part about the government being involved? Inefficiency is practically in the job description.

This really is horrifying, though, to think about what it's like to be this poor man. Completely shut off from all forms of communication? Makes me shudder...

ElisaMasah wrote:I don't have try too hard to find an hear that can decode the vibration i left in air speaking ... that the brain connected to that hear can really understand what I'm saying ... this is another story... humanity is unable to really comprend each other short of sudden development of telepathy and when you think a lot about it ... sometimes we do really live in a world not so different that this poor guy.

I understand what you're saying, but I don't quite agree. There ARE people who can understand you, just as there ARE people like you. And believe me, they are not so rare. You might have not met then, or you might have not given them a chance, but they exist. You shouldn't be so quick to dismiss hope in modern society.

Napalm wrote:I understand what you're saying, but I don't quite agree. There ARE people who can understand you, just as there ARE people like you. And believe me, they are not so rare. You might have not met then, or you might have not given them a chance, but they exist. You shouldn't be so quick to dismiss hope in modern society.

I beg to differ but I've deraild this topic enough.

Napalm wrote:

Darlat wrote:Well it would be better than having all the people around you spouting death threats and insult, no matter where you go or who you meet.

I'm not sure I follow. Why do you think that would be the case?

It was just a random example of how things could be worse, i don't actually believe it will be the case.

Akroma wrote:as a result the education level of most Deaf people older than 40 is usually abyssmal. thankfully that has quickly changed in the younger generations.
though I really doubts those figures that "30 of all Deaf children leave school functionaly illiterate". those sound like really old numbers to me. then again, I have no idea about the Deaf school system in the USA.

Keep in mind that knowing sign language doesn't count as being literate, much like how knowing how to speak doesn't count as being literate. People who were born deaf would have an extremely difficult time learning the grammar of written language seeing as how it's just the transcription of spoken language; sure, you could print the word "girl" under a picture of a girl and they'd get it, but how do you teach a deaf person how to "read" sentences like the ones I'm typing out now?

There was a long discussion involving this issue as well as many others when a deaf girl posted on these forums roughly two years ago; you can read it here. It provided a rare first-hand account of one of the disabilities depicted in KS and you definitely learn a lot reading through that thread.

OP updated with a thing.



Edit: And to expand on the point I made in my previous post:

Many courts mistakenly assume that the interpreter is providing
a word-for-word literal translation between languages, and they
attempt to shore up the risk of error by leaning on the interpreter to
“just tell him what I’m saying, word for word.”127 This assumption relies
heavily on what several linguists have called the conduit metaphor,
where words are mistakenly viewed as containers of meaning and
where, if the words are accurately transferred from the speaker to the
listener, the listener will be able to derive the intended meaning.128

Basically you can't translate spoken language word-for-word into a language that a deaf person can understand, which is why it shouldn't be surprising that 30 percent of deaf students leave school without learning how to read. And of course, leaving school does not necessarily mean that they graduated.