This excerpt is from Dr. Tom Humphries via a listserv that I wanted to share with ya'll.
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Today, the Committee on Accreditation of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing voted to approve a bilingual authorization for ASL for our teacher preparation program there at the University of California, San Diego. You may have known that we have had an experimental program under Commission approval for several years that resulted in our graduates receiving the California Bilingual credential as well as the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Specialist credential. California recently moved from a bilingual credential to a bilingual authorization on the regular education credentials with new standards and requirements. We wrote to those standards and after a long process of review (and internal debate in the CCCTC, I'm sure!) our authorization for ASL was approved along with other languages that we include in our bilingual teacher preparation. So we are no longer "experimental" and other teacher preparation programs can, if desired, write to the new bilingual authorization in the same way they do for other languages. We're "regularized"! Our graduates now get the Multiple Subjects credential with bilingual authorization (ASL) and the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Specialist credentials. I'm sure the deaf students they work with will benefit greatly.
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This is great news. There are a few interesting concerns that other academics have raised notably Timothy Reagan as to ASL being classified as a foreign language. Some states forbid bilingual education including California (Prop 227) and Arizona (Prop 200 which Arizona was ironically the first to offer bilingualism in the 1960's). However, ASL and bilingualism for the deaf is allowed in the public curriculum (i.e. California's CSD-F and CSD-R as well as Arizonia's PDSD and ASDB). This is only because being deaf, is by statue, a disability. If we want to fight that deaf people are an ethnic group (a la Harlan Lane), then we risk being categorized as a linguistic minority (which is fine!) but then we become regulated on the margins along with Spanish-speaking folks whose native language continues to be suppressed in public schools.
Catch-22 for sure. The fact that ASL is recognized along with other languages is good, but we need to be careful. I do think there is a way that we can syngergize our being deaf via a disability model (because we are disabled in one level, not by choice, but rather the society disables us) which is why provisions of an interpreter would become a civil right (so that society can accommodate us), but at the same time, in another level, being deaf as a cultural model. We cannot 100% become classified in the cultural model (i.e. along with Hispanics) because then we lose our accessibility needs (i.e. interpreters and VRS). Until our larger system changes (which is not anytime soon), I am willing to compromise my being disabled in one level for accommodation needs, but in another level, be culturally deaf when it comes to language.
Whatever label the system gives me, for I shall not care. Just give me my god-given right to sign language...as the noblest language for the deaf. Let freedom roll for our future deaf generation for it is our duty to pave the road for them as those before us have fought for our right to be here and to be heard.
