Letter to ACLU Delaware: LSL is not the gold standard in deaf education.

Context: In December of 2023 ACLU-Delaware filed a complaint with the U.S. department of education. In a nutshell, they claimed that the Delaware Dept of Education over-referred deaf children to the Delaware School for the Deaf while depriving them of LSL (oralism) as the gold standard in deaf education. The below is a letter I wrote to ACLU-Delaware.

Note 1: The National ACLU organization is separate from ACLU Delaware. They issued a statement on 10 January affirming linguistic rights for deaf children.

Note 2: ACLU Delaware claims in a 1/2/24 update after backlash that “we understand the importance of ASL to deaf and hard of hearing children and Deaf culture. We support sign language acquisition for deaf and hard of hearing children, and we would oppose any efforts to limit access to ASL in Delaware. We will be working closely with community members to make sure that our work does not in any way impede children’s ASL education.”

My response to this particular claim is that their action supporting oralism, including cloaking this methodology in sanitized language like “LSL- Listening and Speaking Language” (no such thing), does indeed circumvent ASL and sign language acquisition. Anyone with a passing familiarity with oralism (“LSL”) knows that sign language use is commonly discouraged and actively limited/withheld from deaf children in the pursuit of normativity.

Update: 1/11/24: I believe their 1/2/24 statement to be a sleight-of-hand trick, suggesting that advocating for LSL does not mean advocating against ASL. This shows a lack of historical understanding of the long running tension between LSL/Oral education advocates and bilingual education advocates. Advocacy for LSL is advocacy against signed languages. Full stop.

My work as a historian (2010, 2012, 2015) has revealed a long history of deaf people’s activism from 1880–1950s centered on securing full citizenship. Central to being full-fledged citizens was language and education: specifically education in sign language from as early an age as possible. What was the use of speech if you couldn’t really understand political discourse or the news?

Speaking =/= language and literacy.

The Letter

January 9, 2024

Dear ACLU Delaware,

On the subject of deaf education and your decision to sue on behalf of “LSL as the gold standard,” you are firmly in the wrong.

1. LSL is not the gold standard. There is a significant body of evidence from scholars across multiple disciplines that demonstrates LSL is an utter, abject failure. Beyond scholars, there is a long history of deaf people writing about the failures of the LSL (oral) approach in education dating back to the 18th century. Gallaudet University, the global leader in expertise regarding matters of deaf education, endorses ASL-English bilingual approaches as the best educational approach for deaf children. The best not only in terms of multilingual language acquisition but also in terms of holistic growth as members of society able to exercise their political rights and enjoy the freedoms of thought and speech. Update: 10 January. The National ACLU organization released a statement to this effect.
2. LSL is in direct violation of deaf people’s natural, human, civil, and linguistic rights. LSL places limitations on a deaf child’s access to language. Speech is not language in itself. Speech is a modality of language- one that is not fully accessible to deaf children regardless of technological intervention. A deaf child who can articulate spoken words does not necessarily have the language necessary to fully understand themselves and the world around them. Without full access to language and to language (as a verb) in expressing ourselves without limitation, there is little to no access elsewhere. Without language, we cannot fully participate in society as citizens. On this point, deaf people including those who were experts on deaf education, have historically posited that for deaf people to secure their rights as citizens, they must first have sign language, which then leads to mastery of English in the print modality (and contingent upon the deaf person’s remaining hearing status and abilities, the spoken modality as well).
3. LSL ignores deaf children as they naturally are: deaf/hard of hearing. Just as conversion therapies ignores LGBTQIA+ children as they naturally are. ACLU has argued that conversion therapy is a violation of a person’s natural, human, and civil rights. Conversion therapy has been discredited. LSL has also been discredited by the testimonies of deaf people dating back centuries as well as contemporary scholarship. It has been demonstrated that insufficient access to language at an early age leads to a host of physical, mental, relational, economic, and psychological challenges. This research dates back to the 1960s although deaf people have talked about this for centuries. The American Academy of Pediatrics said as much in their August 2023 statement. To quote, “Longstanding bias against ASL is well documented and has contributed to incomplete language acquisition and additional disabilities in some children who rely only on hearing aids or CIs for spoken language acquisition.45” ACLU and its state affiliates have disavowed conversion therapy. How can you disavow conversion therapy for LGBTQIA+ children yet support LSL for deaf/hearing children?
4. I understand the ACLU is not invested in ideology- be it conservative, liberal, progressive, racist, not racist, anti-black, and so on. However, as others have pointed out in their comments on social media and likely in their correspondence to you, LSL is grounded in racist anti-black, anti-immigrant logic rooted in 18th century colonialism, 19th century eugenics, 20th century nativism and racism, and 21st century valorization of technology (and capital) at the expense of our humanity.

I have curated a brief reference list for your people to understand that your actions are an attempt to infringe upon the civil liberties of deaf people. By circumventing deaf people’s access to language at an early age, you are positioning us to be second class citizens incapable of full participation in society and politics. This is not about whether or not deaf children should learn how to “listen” and “speak”- but about the fundamental human rights that languaging affords us. Your actions have the potential to set a dangerous precedent for the future of deaf children in the United States.

My bona-fides are that I am a historian of deaf rhetoric (PhD, history, Ohio State). Beyond that, I am a scholar of language attitudes and ideologies in the context of deafness and signed languages. I am a deaf person with direct experience with deaf education, intimately familiar with its failures and rare successes. I am also deeply in community with deaf people and hold many testimonies about these same failures and rare successes.

Why are you actively working to infringe upon our civil liberties?

This is a question I would like answered.

Best,

Octavian E. Robinson, PhD

Associate Professor, Deaf Studies

References:

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