Curriculum: Thirty Years Later
Blackburn
language models and based on those interactions, concluded that deaf people would not be
qualified or willing to help parents learn ASL.
In the same edition of Sign Language Studies, Robert Clover Johnson (1990) wrote a
thought-provoking commentary about Unlocking the curriculum based on observations and
interviews he conducted on Gallaudet University’s campus immediately following the distribution
of the paper. I strongly recommend everyone take time to read and reflect upon Johnson’s remarks
(1990). While I do not have the space to delve into some of his discoveries here, there is one gem
that is essential to share for the purposes of this commentary. This gem relates to a meeting he had
with the second author, Scott Liddell, seeking clarification on two points that were creating a sort
of cognitive dissonance for him.
To begin, Johnson was clear that Unlocking addressed the flawed language and
communication policy that had been supported to date, instructing parents and teachers to use
Signed Supported Speech (SSS) with young deaf children for the purposes of language acquisition
and communication access. Users of SSS believed that hard of hearing students would benefit from
hearing what they could of spoken language, while profoundly deaf students could acquire English
by seeing signs that had been distorted to represent the morpho-syntactic structure of English. RCJ
questions pertained to the two recommendations (listed below) from Unlocking. These
recommendations may have been confusing at the time because of their stark contrast with SSS;
and their full focus on natural languages for classroom communication and instruction, rather than
the splintering of them based on each student’s degree of hearing loss:
1. “hard of hearing as well as profoundly deaf students would best be served in
classrooms in which instruction is conducted in ASL…” (Johnson, 1990, p.
298).
Based on this ASL-as-the-language-of-instruction policy, the authors stipulated the
2. “… effective use of ASL would significantly raise deaf students’ average
achievement levels in school.” (Johnson, 1990, p. 298)
Liddell’s response affirmed both of Johnson’s questions stating, “…since ASL can
communicate as much information in a visual channel as spoken English can through an auditory
channel, then anyone with any degree of hearing trouble who can see clearly would be best advised
to learn through ASL.” And then regarding this new language and communication policy, “…‘we
believe this proposed program would bring deaf students’ achievement levels right up to grade
level” (Johnson, 1990, p. 298).
Hindsight is 20/20
Johnson’s (1990) questions for the authors of Unlocking provided us with a taste of genuine
foreshadowing about the future role of ASL as an academic language. In short, he asked the
questions that were on everyone’s mind. The authors suggested a Universal Design for Learning
(UDL) framework for deaf students long before the term was officially coined in educational
circles.
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