Do we really have a choice over what’s best education for ALL of the students?

After reading the assigned readings, a question popped up in my mind. Do we have a choice over what’s the best education for the students in all races and with or without disabilities? Except for “The Racial Justice” article, the other two articles I read outlined how white supremacy theory had and continued to design the public education and standardized tests for only the “white students.” I hope that NCTE has recognized the minority (rather than just the race) equality of high-stakes standardized tests. When reading CCSS standards, I can see that they are generally for white, Ivy-league type of educated students. However, because of my high expectation and strong belief, I do believe that anyone can pass the high-stakes standardized tests only if these tests are not directly biased for white, rich, educated parents with children. The public educators need to revisit and re-design the “bias” standardized tests to “unbiased” standardized tests for ALL students.

For example, when doing the norm-referenced testing, the test takers should be specifically selected from all areas such as all races, family income, neighborhood, educational levels of parents, type of disability, and access to resources. Not only this but also, the importance of the schools and the teachers’ positive attitudes toward believing in all students’ abilities to “master abstractions’, regardless what Stanford Professor Lewis Terman said. Linda Christensen believes in her students, so do I. All it takes is all kind of communities to work together to make this happen. While I respect Au’s idea of restorative assessment and transformative assessment and that the teachers need to have a restorative understanding along with transformative strategies and skills to help students to manage to pass the standardized tests. I do not think this is the answer to the real problem. An answer to the real problem with the biased high-stakes standardized tests is that they did not have proper norm-referenced test takers I mentioned above, this needs to be changed for once and all. Sound so simple, Correct? No, there will always be more complicated issues arise related to change the high-stakes standardized tests. Only if there are people who like to solve the problem in a simple conception, the real problem will finally be solved. Do we have a choice in this matter? Heck, no.

In all those years as a student learning and currently as a Teacher teaching, the subconscious effect of white supremacy in the school textbooks and the high-standardized tests never occurred in my mind. After I read the word, white supremacy, an image related to the KKK came across in my mind. I have heard, read, and watched a lot about the KKK when growing up. I believed KKK is all about racial hates among the Confederate States in the South during the Civil War. What I didn’t realize is it still is very much alive, even the whole educational system still is being controlled by the white supremacy just like how President Trump runs the Congress and possibly how the newly elected Justice Brett Kavanaugh will factor his final decisions in the Supreme Court. In Au’s article, Mr. Au discussed how the high-stakes standardized tests were developed intentionally as the weapons towards the students (communities) of color, immigrants, and poor to conclude how superior the white race has been and is. To see the whole picture as truth is a rude awakening to me and my teeth are clenched with a disgusted feeling.

I was taken aback by Stanford Professor Lewis Terman’s analyses on the “feeble-minded” and “mastering abstractions” among the ethnic groups such as African-Americans, Spanish-Indians, and Mexicans. I see the very same for the Deaf that occurred after the 1880 Milan conference. It was the Second International Congress on the Education of the Deaf conference (1) where and when the conference delegates voted for the oral-only method, as opposed to the sign language method, as the primary method of instruction of the Deaf. The vote has a profound impact and destroyed the Deaf education. By banning sign languages, the deaf children were denied and fully deprived of early language acquisition and development through sign language. By language deprivation, many deaf lost educational privileges so badly that they were labeled feeble-minded after years of lack of access to first language use, lack of proper Deaf Education, and lack of trained teachers of the deaf among other untrained support professionals. It makes my blood boil when the professionals diagnosed the Deaf children's learning process as a defection by the deafness itself. Being Deaf is and will never be a problem, to begin with, if a Deaf baby has full access to his or her first language to express and acquire the learning environment any child does at home and the school.

Speaking of "feeble-minded," the name has been linked to the Deaf Education for a very long time since the 1800's. Let me share with you a few of many examples of state school titles to help you to catch on what I meant by this.

American Asylum for the Education of Deaf and Dumb Persons 

Currently is called American School for the Deaf

Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind

Currently is called Gallaudet University

Minnesota Institute for Defective (Deaf, Blind, and Feeble-minded)

Currently is called Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf

Washington School for Defective Youth 

Currently is called Washington School for the Deaf 

If you wouldn’t mind, fill in my shoes and see from my perspective, read this article to see how the prominent doctors were thinking, intellectually when discussing what’s the most appropriate word to rename the Minnesota State School. When reading, my stomach churned and clenched my teeth in anger. For your information, the dialogues among the doctors are not a new “news” for us, the Deaf community Even still in 2018, a large majority of Medical Professionals still think that way when it comes to Deaf Education. President’s Address, Frankfort meeting,1891
https://mn.gov/mnddc/past/pdf/90s/91/91-CCN-ACR.pdf

This article is about a pleading from Clarke School for the Deaf Principal for better instruction and after-school care for feeble-minded deaf students. Reading the word feeble-minded repeatedly in this article is a stomach-churning, and I don’t want to think about what the Deaf people had to endure during that time.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM191710041771406

Here’s another article (another example) where the words, “feeble-minded” and ‘backward”, are used to identify the deaf students in Montana. Ugh.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44464705?seq=5#metadata_info_tab_contents

When Francis Galton invented eugenics, it has hurt the Deaf community greatly because Alexander Graham Bell adopted the eugenics in his oral-only method theory of Deaf Education. Back to Alexander Graham Bell’s (AGB) destructive oral-only method theory of Deaf Education related to the eugenics link below and my previous blogs. It’s relevant to me that it all happened due to the underlying actions and decisions coming from the white, male supremacy. Let me share the excerpt of an article on AGB. (http://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/tree/535eee797095aa000000025f)

“Graham Bell’s support of oralism was tied to his belief in eugenics. In 1883, Alexander Graham Bell delivered an address to the National Academy of Sciences entitled Memoir upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race. In this presentation and publication, he discusses the high rates of Deaf-Deaf marriages, and how it increases the number of Deaf children through the passing on of generational Deafness. Alexander Graham Bell argues that this “phenomenon” was creating a Deaf race that shares a language and culture. He says: “Those who believe as I do, that the production of a defective race of human beings would be a great calamity to the world, will examine carefully the causes that lead to the intermarriages of the deaf with the object of applying a remedy.

He goes on to argue that the use of American Sign Language in regional residential schools, the development of Deaf social clubs and programs, and the exposure of young Deaf children to Deaf adults and administrators were encouraging the pattern of Deaf-Deaf marriages. Bell believed that by eliminating these factors, and instead using local oral education schools, Deaf individuals would assimilate into mainstream hearing society, and have more Deaf-hearing marriages, which would decrease the number of Deaf children born. He also argued that oral education would give Deaf individuals greater access to more opportunities in education and employment.”

For more reading, here is the link: https://www.rootedinrights.org/alexander-graham-bell-and-the-deaf-community-a-troubled-history/

Let me redirect my thoughts back to the Racial Justice Is Not A Choice article, Deaf people are in a very same boat as the Black in the field of education. Many deaf students did not pass the standardized tests due to several factors such as 1. the prolonged years of language deprivation; 2. Untrained teachers of the Deaf, and the support services professionals, Audiologists, Early Intervention Specialists, and the health care physicians who were taught and told Alexander Graham Bell’s oral-only method theory in the field of Deaf Education. Graham Bell’s theory was that all Deaf should learn to speak and go to oral school and stay away from the Deaf schools, American Sign Language, and the Deaf Community.), and lack of proper Deaf Education. Many Deaf students still are not able to meet the standard level of education. The Deaf Education has a long way to go, and I am determined, more than ever, to change the Deaf Education from a monolingual, white race (the white supremacy) to a multilingual, multiracial theory and practices to educate Deaf children. What choices do we have? I say we continue to educate and push for a bilingual and multiracial Deaf education for our visual learners (Deaf children).

References
(1) Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_International_Congress_on_Education_of_the_Deaf