"The education of deaf students in the United States is not as it should be." This observation from Gallaudet University’s Robert Johnson demonstrates his gift for understatement. The average deaf high school graduate reads at about a fourth-grade level. And that doesn't even say anything about the literacy level of deaf high school dropouts, of whom there are far too many. (I don't mean to put down deaf high school dropouts. I'm one, myself. But in general, I think most people are better off finishing high school.) I find this problem a national disgrace. I can't solve the problem in this space, but I hope I can shed a tiny ray of light on the issue.

I think the deaf can be helped by learning technologies even more than hearing people can. Many CBTs, WBTs, and online classes provide environments in which hearing isn't relevant. So do many educational games for children, although some of the preschool-level ones are useless for deaf children, because their directions are in audio. (It always annoyed me that I couldn't help my kids with these.) The big problem I see with these educational games is that few of them seem to be based on educational research. Their failures are especially relevant to deaf children. As Kenneth Goodman observes in What's Whole in Whole Language:

Many school traditions seem to have actually hindered language development. In our zeal to make it easy, we've made it hard ... primarily by breaking whole (natural) language up into bite-sized, but abstract little pieces. We took apart the language and turned it into words, syllables, and isolated sounds. Unfortunately, we also postponed its natural purpose--the communication of meaning--and turned it into a set of abstractions, unrelated to the needs and experiences of the children we sought to help. (7)

Because so many deaf children have problems with basic language skills, they get a disproportionate number of exercises related to these "abstract little pieces." And unfortunately, that's exactly what most educational games offer--more of the same thing that's been shown not to work for these people.

So what do I propose? For one thing, I think deaf students, like everyone else, need to write and get responses to work that's relevant to them. That's where blogs come in. Blogs for the deaf aren't unheard of--you can see a few of them here--but they aren't yet sufficiently encouraged in deaf education.

Why not? Because the students "aren't ready" for that sort of thing. "They need to learn to write better before they can write things other people will see." Well, sheesh. Why would they want to learn to write better if they're not writing things other people will see?