I think the fact many children deaf are spending more time at home is a positive. It creates a situation whereby parents who have mostly left communication to schools and others have had to adapt and make more effort themselves which can only be a positive.
For years deaf education and its community aspects created a sense of inclusion with deaf peers rather than hearing ones, and who became the 'family' of the deaf and as such encouraged a divide. This reinforced the deaf community in a negative rather than a positive sense in that the belief became 'hearing do this, and deaf do that..' etc rendering inclusion relative or even unnecessary as the 'community will provide'
It has to be said hearing parents accepted this too readily buying into various claims and campaigns this is the cultural right and only way for the deaf. But it meant opposition to the communication means to manage mainstream, adapt to further education, and to advance that way as hearing peers did. Rather than address that activists insisted inclusion was discrimination and against the deaf right and language thus hammering home deaf isolation was preferrable because hearing are against them.
The reality is despite many advances to deaf support and other attempts at inclusion deaf are treading water getting more paranoid and left out. Which feeds the activists message of paranoia and fear. If the deaf are still languishing in the belief they leave education barely at a stage an 11-year-old could achieve, then surely the answer is the cultural messages and language demands are all redundant?
It's been exposed many times that the language these deaf use is incomplete in itself to be used as a teaching aid, and even if it was, the immense support and of Interpreters they are going to need to make it work simply does not exist, because they aren't being trained, neither are ASL or BSL teachers who at best are insisting English (Or whatever host language they are used to), is off the list of requirements they are expected to teach. Priming deaf children for a hearing world that doesn't use sign language has to be addressed. In reality, there is no desire to do it anyway just 'how to use help' instead.
It would certainly exclude the deaf teachers themselves who lack qualifications to teach a curriculum based on that. Dumbing down is surely no answer to deaf empowerment? University levels in ASL or BSL won't count in a hearing job market. If deaf want to know why they cannot progress or communicate then perhaps the answer is to stop listening to their own doom-mongers.
