BY JANE OTTAH
Come to think about this, would you hire a teacher who doesn’t know how to speak English to teach your kid? Would you employ an educator who doesn’t understand English both in speaking and writing to teach your kids in public or private school? Would you be happy as parents when your children come home from school and complains that they didn’t understand what their teachers taught because of poor communication?
Well, if you answered negative to all the above questions and we’re angered by the thought, you will be able to imagine the anger in this post.
Deaf people have their own language. It is not English, not Hausa, not Yoruba, Igbo etc. their language is SIGN LANGUAGE, a language that uses a system of facial and body movements to convey meaning, as opposed to acoustically conveyed sound patterns.
Just like the hearing-capable kids take English (or other languages) to be the mother of all subjects in school, deaf kids take sign language as the be-all of all languages.
Surprisingly, almost all deaf schools I have visited, have a sizable number of teachers who don’t understand sign language. I once met a teache who’d been teaching in a deaf school for more than six years but still didn’t understand sign language. I asked him how he’d teach the children when communication is obviously impaired between them and how well they’d understand his subject and his response was, he just asks them to read on their own and sometimes calls someone to interpret his classes for them. I was livid at this and retorted; “you don’t deserve to be there, you are cheating them”.
Truth is, sign language is the language of the deaf. It is a very simple and universal language in fact that it has been said to be much simpler to learn than other mainstream languages. Thus my advice to all tutors connected with the education of deaf students is simple, even if you are a PHD holder in deaf studies and are employed in a deaf school yet you do not understand sign language, kindly pick your belongings and leave the school. You are cheating the government who employs you, you are cheating yourself as you will not live with a clear conscience and most importantly of all, you are cheating the deaf future.
There is ability in this-ability.
Yes, its #ThisAbilityNotDisability.
Adapted from Comr. Abubakar.
