Train Go Sorry : Inside a Deaf World

Rating:
Summary: Excellant! I'll read it again.
Review: I found this book taking me into a deaf culture and the trials that deaf people have. I am an ASL student and have read many books but found this to be more intimate. I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Effluent Crap
Review: The prose is dull dull dull. There are more cliches in here than a Harry Potter book. She'll set a scene by describing a nearby fish, and nothing else. The characters are even worse. Leah feels it's important to point out that they can't hear anything and therefore the world is difficult. Then the book randomly lapses into demagoguery every third chapter. Towards the end she takes special care to point out that anybody with functioning ears is oppressing the Deaf. Reading this book made me want to punch Leah Cohen in the the face.

Rating:
Summary: Issues in Deaf Education
Review: This book is a personal overview and interpretation of several issues of concern in deaf education. The author, Leah Cohen, was born into a hearing family who worked and resided at Lexington School for the Deaf in New York City. In this book, she explores her connection to the school through the stories of her father's parents, who were both deaf, and her father, who was superintendent of the school when this book was being written. Cohen also looks at the school from the point of view of two students, Sofia Normatov and James Taylor. She describes some of the accomplishments these students have achieved despite tremendous challenges. Sofia was a recent immigrant from the USSR, and must learn ASL and English if she wants to go on to university. James hails from the housing projects and receives very little support from friends and family for his academic endeavors. Nevertheless, he is determined to pass the Regents Exam and earn an academic diploma so that he will have the opportunity to continue his education. Cohen also describes her own experiences learning sign language and then developing her skills as a translator. The book includes some black-and-white photos of the main characters described in the text. There is no index or bibliography.

Worked into the chapters telling stories about Lexington School, its students, and staff are many issues that are central to the deaf community today. One of these issues is the question of mainstreaming deaf children into public education. Many administrators (and hearing parents) believe that deaf children should be treated like other handicapped children and enrolled in regular classes in hearing schools. These people cannot seem to comprehend how misguided this policy is. Deaf children, especially those born to hearing parents, need the company of other deaf children in order to learn the language that is best suited for them. Only in the company of other deaf children of varying ages and deaf adults is it possible for deaf children to pick up on Deaf culture, the culture that will understand them for who they are and not consider them handicapped. A deaf child who is mainstreamed is likely to spend most of his or her childhood isolated, unable to communicate effectively with peers or develop native fluency in sign language for effective communication with other deaf people. Schools for the deaf, on the other hand, provide rich opportunities for deaf children to develop socially as well as learn in classes that are thoroughly adapted for their skills and needs. In her chapters touching on the question of mainstreaming, Cohen reports the discussions at board meetings and the frustration on the part of educators for the deaf in getting education departments to listen to their arguments.

Cohen discusses at some length the topic of cochlear implants. Not only does she explain why those in the Deaf community see no use for them, but she also points out how they can harm the user by eliminating residual hearing they might have. In her material about the student James, she points out how little supposed hearing specialists know about the implants.

One of the largest and perhaps somewhat understated issues in the book is the question of the role of ASL in deaf education. I was shocked to read that some teachers at the Lexington School, at least in the early 1990s when this book was written, still had no fluency in ASL. How in heavens name could they communicate with their students? As Cohen explains, Lexington was founded as an oral school, and it has only been quite recently that students were finally allowed to communicate with each other in sign. Cohen was born into a family where her father and grandparents were fluent in sign and used it as their primary means of communication, and she spent the first 7 years of her life living in a residential school for the deaf, haunting the hallways and even attending preschool classes with deaf children. With such an upbringing, fluency in ASL should have almost been her birthright. Instead, with ASL banned on campus during the time she lived there, she did not start to learn sign language until her college years, by taking private lessons. (Perhaps this is why she was completely ignorant about deaf applause, and mistakenly attributes its invention to the Deaf President Now campaign at Gallaudet in 1988. While she claims that the shimmering hand applause of the deaf spontaneously appeared at Gallaudet in 1988 and from there spread rapidly around the world, I saw it in action in 1985-86 in deaf schools in Finland. I suspect it has been part of Deaf culture for quite a bit longer than Cohen was aware.) In her book, she notes that "train go sorry" is a deaf idiom equivalent for "missing the boat". The truly tragic "train go sorry" in this book is the fact that Cohen was denied learning sign language as a child, and that deaf students anywhere studying in deaf schools still find teachers in their classrooms who do not know and use ASL. While oral skills have their place and should be a part of the deaf curriculum, they should constitute a minor course of study, and not the medium of instruction.


Rating:
Summary: a whole new world
Review: This book made me realize more how hard it is on people who have certain disabilities. Not everyone has the opportunity to have what most of us have. The author throws out questions and ideas that made me see how the people who cant't hear have it hard to fit into this society. She want change because she sees how hars it is on the families and the kids, to communicate with each other because the kids are only learning sing languag and they need other sources of communicating. The kids want to change this because they could see how difficult it is for them to fit in with others.