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From:  Valerie Sutton Date:  Wed Jan 6, 1999  6:51 pm Subject:  SignWriting In Bi-Bi Education

January 6, 1999 Hello Everyone - We have increased requests for information on SignWriting from Spain, Brazil and several other countries. The increased interest came from an article that was published in Spanish about the SignWriting Literacy Project, and this article was then distributed through a newsletter for educators of the deaf in Europe and other Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries. Suddenly, in the middle of December, I received a long list of email messages written in Spanish. I do not speak Spanish, but I can read it fairly well, so I have managed the best I can. (A side note....There is an interesting "bilingual issue".....How can a person understand reading Spanish without speaking it? If reading and writing is not a language, then what is happening when I read another language and understand it without knowing how to speak it? smile) Anyway...back to the issue of deaf education. People wrote to ask me about deaf education in the USA. Of course I am not an expert on this subject, but I did answer their questions the best I could. They wanted to know about our project, and how it "relates to deaf education" in the USA. Meanwhile I knew that I had to write to them in English. So I always told them that I wish I could write Spanish! So if there is someone who is fluent in Spanish, who would like to help me, we do need to make Spanish translations of some of the English articles that explain SignWriting, and I would be most grateful if anyone can donate some time to this. No rush, no deadline. It would be valuable for those who write in Spanish. So anyway, they clearly had to find someone who could read English to read my responses to them. Here is the general write-up that I wrote regarding deaf education in the USA. I know that some of you on the SignWriting List are true experts on this subject, so I thought I would send you this writing, with the hopes that you can give me the proper feedback. If we get a good write-up, I can post it on our web site for general information for the public. Here is what I wrote: _______________ QUESTION: Is SignWriting used in bilingual education in the USA, and what is the educational philosophy there? ANSWER: Yes, SignWriting "can be used" in bilingual education, and is being used in a few rare cases, but No, SignWriting is not an "official part" of the Bi-Bi Educational Approach in the USA, although I believe that some people are starting to consider to use it. Here in the United States there are many ongoing philosophies on how to educate profoundly deaf children. Some people still believe in oralism. Some schools still do not teach a signed language. Other schools have chosen to adopt Total Communication, which is an educational approach that combines signing and speech and other philosophies into one classroom. Total Communication got a lot of criticism, and it varies around the country. I suspect there is no standard way to teach Total Communication here in the USA. Some schools choose to use Signed English, placing ASL signs in English word order. Other schools choose to use SEE signs, which actually changes ASL signs by adding English endings, such as "ing" on the end of ASL signs. They change the ASL signs to be "more connected with English". But recently, a new educational philosophy, called the "Bi-Lingual, Bi-Cultural Approach", or "Bi-Bi" for short, started in a few schools in the United States. For example, the first Charter School to adopt the Bi-Bi-Approach was the Metro Deaf School in St. Paul, Minnesota. And the Metro Deaf School has all of our SignWriting materials. SignWriting is at the experimental stage there, and there is now talk that they may join our SignWriting Literacy Project. How is the Bi-Bi-Approach different than Total Communication? Total Communication essentially says "teach the child anything that works". Most of the time that meant that ASL was not a choice, because the teachers couldn't sign ASL well enough to present it properly. And I have never heard of a school using Total Communication that gave the deaf children "official lessons" in the grammar of true ASL. Perhaps that does exist, but I personally have never heard ot it. Most of the time, anyway, the signing used in the classroom is more of a "bridge" between English and ASL, and it is not the same ASL that is used by the native signing deaf children, when they return home to their Deaf native signing parents. So, even though researchers had been saying for years that ASL is a true language that should be respected equally with English, that philosophy had not been incorporated into the classroom until the Bi-Bi Approach was established. And the Bi-Bi Approach is still in its infancy. As far as I can see, the Bi-Bi Approach wants to present both languages, ASL and English, on an equal footing. It also teaches equal respect for both languages and cultures. But because this new philosophy of teaching was started before the school systems knew that SignWriting existed, generally SignWriting is not a part of the Bi-Bi Approach at the moment. But that is starting to change. And I am glad, because I feel that SignWriting can be used in the Bi-Bi-Approach as a useful tool. There is a new and special project that is researching the Bi-Bi-Approach, called the Star Schools Project, headed by Deaf educator, Steve Nover. Some of the teachers involved with the Star Schools Project, including Steve Nover himself, have expressed interest in experimenting with SignWriting at a later date. The Star Schools Project is a five-year project, and they have only completed the first year, so there is time to approach the use of SignWriting in the future. The teachers at the Texas School for the Deaf, who participated in our SignWriting Literacy Project in the Fall, 1998, are also participants in the Star Schools Project. This is all at the experimental level, and I have no idea where this will lead, but our SignWriting Literacy Project, which is free to any school interested in working with us, was established to help this process along. So if there is a teacher who is interested in participating in the SignWriting Literacy Project, please contact me and we can work out the details. All the best - Valerie :-) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Valerie Sutton at the DAC Deaf Action Committee for SW SignWriting https://www.SignWriting.org Center For Sutton Movement Writing an educational nonprofit organization Box 517, La Jolla, CA, 92038-0517, USA ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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