WGBH Journal; Education For The Deaf

A report on the education of the deaf. A look at the prison arts project in Massachusetts state prisons and interview with the author of every woman and commentary on the news from the airlines. Good afternoon and welcome. I don't have my Sundays of the four features on today's edition of BBH Journal. To be physically disabled in our society can prove to be an isolating experience. Society does little to cater to the needs of the handicapped. The education of handicapped people is a means of alleviating this source of isolation. By acquiring the knowledge and the skills needed to function in society physically disabled people become equipped to assimilate into society's mainstream. The

question of how these skills are best learned has been an issue for those who teach and those who are themselves disabled. Does the segregation of special needs people or the integration with others work better towards their assimilation into society. Reporter Karen cast member 6 the question of education as it relates to the deaf. She has more in this report. Special needs children are being integrated more and more into regular classroom learning environments. The term used to describe this kind of integration is mainstreaming and it is now a vital part of every educators vocabulary. Part of the mainstreaming concept involves providing children with support services where needed. In the case of learning disabled children it is easy to provide the necessary support. There is at least one learning disability teacher in every public school. But what of deaf children. Teachers trained in deaf education are rarely found in public schools. Questions arise as to whether a completely integrated program is the best means of educating deaf individuals does complete integration with

hearing students place unnecessary burdens on the deaf students and make learning more difficult than it has to be. Cathy COLGAN The director of support services for the new open doors for the deaf program at Northeastern University discusses some concerns about mainstreaming. I don't think you can say that all deaf children or all handicapped children can be placed in public school classrooms successfully. It's very much individual. You might find there a deaf child place you know in a public school classroom would be a marvelous success. On the other hand you might find that that child would be very isolated unable to communicate. You might find that the teachers in the classroom are not trained. I think the idea of mainstreaming. Is a nice one. I don't know how realistic it is for the majority of deaf kids in terms of their being in a segregated segregated selling. There are a lot of advantages to that.

This is a situation in which deaf children can identify amongst themselves they can compete equally with children who are in the same boat so to speak. The facilities are appropriate the teachers are trained and the there is really no problem with communication. Jacques Levesque a representative of the Massachusetts Association of the deaf is himself deaf. He has experienced both segregated and integrated educational systems in first grade he was placed in a regular classroom and fell behind considerably. He was then sent to a residential school for the deaf where he spent nine years after which he was again mainstreamed into a regular high school with no support services. He attended Gallaudet college for the deaf. MR The back is somewhat ambivalent about mainstreaming though he too feels that the concept is a good one. He also feels that his experiences in the segregated environment at Gallaudet were invaluable in teaching him basic human interaction skills.

I am heartened if agreement will be not to be a mainstream good idea but like most ideas I don't think it's what made me but two or three different reasons. I long to be behind it and the people here will be a lot surveyed by me. We're going to be necessary to make it work. You know as well as I do on written curriculum you bring the people there by you know what they have learned in school. School is a place where they reinforce everything you've learned outside so if you have no communication outside you're getting only seven hundred sixty hours of communication during the school year. I think more time should be spent in developing and interaction with people they're learning how to communicate with people not training. Hi how I go but to really get down into what we need to grow any communication with people going to go to the college. We're going experience in the south. It's a college where they use

simultaneous communication. It was a revelation for me because I follow many deaf people who use science. They were very very intelligent because I have received training where I was comfortable I was able to develop competence and go out and meet better interact with people and not use my handicap to open doors. I would go to a party before I went to college. Michel here's the DEP guy OK I will go my brother told by the whole he was just a brother. Now when I go to a party it's different. I'm Jack who happens to have a hearing loss but the implication it differently recognition is different. You're going to buy the bag any time you were going to one I would not remember my background growing up. Northeastern University is opening its doors to the deaf beginning next fall deaf

individuals who wish to attend classes at Northeastern and who can meet the standard admissions requirements can be enrolled in the regular four year degree program. Kathy Coggan director of support services explained how the open doors for the deaf program will work. Open doors for the deaf is intended both to interest deaf students come to Northeastern and also to provide whatever support of services are necessary appropriate for the students to have access to the programs at Northeastern. What kinds of support services will be made available to the deaf student interpreting through through his note taking in the classroom tutorial services if this is necessary counseling and hopefully eventually remedial English classes if this is also necessary. Even when integration is made possible a communication problem may exist between the deaf students themselves due to the different kinds of education they may have received prior to

college. Some schools for the deaf conduct classes using American Sign Language while other schools prefer to train students to communicate orally. This Cogan explains American Sign Language. American Sign Language is a language very much different from English very unrelated to English. It's not based on English not derived from English in any way. It's it can be considered a foreign language it is a language in and of itself the only real basic difference between American Sign Language and spoken languages is in the mood ality it is conveyed in manual visual mood modality rather than in vocal auditory modality. But B it does have its own grammar syntax morphology in its own sign creating mechanisms were creating mechanisms one would tend to think that a good many communication problems could be solved if there was but one

uniform method of education utilized throughout the country. Yet Miss Cogan and Mr The VEC agree that what deaf and vigils need are more educational alternatives. Growing up in New York or protrude I call what is a good point and this very point I bring in makes more sense to include primary or the same time and cooperate with now color coded communication I bring with me or option or pro-immigrant if ironic that might reduce. The country has more options for many many but no great school for GBH journo. This is Karen Kasten.

In the confined crowded and monotonous world of Prisons creative art is one of the few and perhaps the most expansive for an inmate self-expression and can contribute significantly to the mental clarity and balance of men and women who are incarcerated. These are the words the Massachusetts prison art projects uses to describe itself. The project offers painting silkscreening photography poetry and printing classes at all five state prison. The project has been enormously successful in its effect on many of the 2000 inmates who have been involved in it over the past nine years. Amy sands spent last Thursday with some of the teachers and students in the project at its home base at Framingham State Prison.

The prison art project finds its home base in a remarkably airy light filled wing of a new section of Framingham prison. Old cell walls have been knocked out creating a large room filled with work tables printing and silk screening equipment. The motors and hurried conversations are quiet. The contrast between this and the watchful tension filled in the rest of the prison is what brings inmates like Karen Goodwin and Judy Carnegie to the prison or project. Right now I mean I'm just into photography. Why you went to. Because I can see what I do you know and slot it you know it's not just like snapping a camera you know endless focus a speed of light you distance you know these pictures come out good quite sharp and just by my mistakes by the pictures I can tell you know and I just like it I can snap you know memories whatever. We just got in there. Being here in framing him and then being able to do photography. What is it laid out for you. My pride my.

My outlook on myself I can do something and do it. Not on a comp on you gotta put on a big front the big act. OK you know here people just take you as yourself if you come up here you know down you you if if they tell you to do something and you don't do it to repercussion behind. If I came appearing and I started a pitcher and she said I want to finish that picture first if I said I want to fish when I got another idea was that this one. Everything's cool. You know when I have to worry about it you know because if I if I'm really if something's really bother me when it because you know if I come up you know going to bad me from down the I end up picking it out and angry. But did the place. It's crazy. They join crazy if you're crazy when you come in you know you're crazy ready to go out. It's like Alice in Wonderland you're going to scare and frame him something crazy.

Unlike the work I do I like it very much. Graphics coordinator Ingrid Cooper I think that I don't come in with any very extreme ideals about crusades or changing society or turning around a whole prison populations lifestyle. I think I come in with a sense of how art has affected me personally in my life and with some hope that I can at least make that opportunity possible for some people. They can take it and they can fly with it or they can take it and make a more peaceful space for themselves in a place that doesn't always House peaceful feelings. We as a nonprofit organization prisoner project director Sarah Sanders correction coming into correctional facilities with the good will and in fact support and encouragement of

administrations in all five institutions and with the support and encouragement of downtown central office staff. We tread kind of fine line if you will between keepers and kept. We work closely even with with both groups who often see themselves in adversary positions to one another. And I think to a large extent and especially here at MCI Framingham where you see that we have. Very large and lovely studio space an adequate office and storage space that in many ways the project would have a much more difficult time existing in the world and doing what we do without him. Framingham inmate Bilodeau love joined in praising the prison or project but went on to criticize prison officials for not providing inmates with more training and marketable job skills. For her the existence of the art program represents not so much officials

concern for inmates as officials concerned for their public image. This year looks very positive. You know and this is another piece of the positiveness that covers up the fact that what's really behind this jail. You know like if you're familiar with the types of control behavior modification program right before behavior modification we store you in a cell lock the door you know beat you up again this year we have what is called progressive behavior modification. We do it in very subtle ways we do not forcefully do anything to you. We do it mentally. We don't do it with the physical anymore. OK. Then having this person are proud to go it has people say oh I want to play. This is when you can chant the sacred to go to art classes. They get to play they get a swimming pool they get a big yard they get everything you know. So they're saying to the people on the outside look what we're doing with these inmates. So isn't it true that it's good here though. I mean the House or the swimming pool because of the prison or project is good here on the onset.

But in the main things that you need in society they are like eat. And for someone who is being locked up because the society sees them as not responsible enough to be in their communities then I think that if they have to take every art program out of here and institute work programs it's going to help people get jobs when they get out here. Teach them how to manage their money in teach them how to manage themselves. Then I would rather see that in any art program or anything else not knocking the rotten. The art programs are very good and everything else but how many people are going to graduate from you be artists. We are the only people who are who look good in the department and the only thing looks good buy are coming in here. Ingrid Cooper people get an opportunity to do things they've never done before and they get an opportunity to try things and make statements and achieve things that wouldn't happen. Perhaps you know their way. For example we were good when we have a show downtown if we just did and the department looked good when we have a show downtown

showing the good things that are happening in FIDE. But so to be artists and the difficulty Do we aren't. They get to show their own creativity and their own statements and people really respond to that. The prison art project has just taken down a moving and successful downtown Boston exhibit of works by artists from Framingham Walpole Concord Norfolk and Bridgewater prisons with a $10000 grant from the Massachusetts Council on arts and humanities. They are now gearing up for summer time programs in theater music dance and poetry for GBH journal I mean the sands. Recent years have seen a growing consciousness among women about the working of their bodies a factor which can probably be traced to this generation's increased awareness of self as well as to basic

philosophies of the women's movement. Information in the informative books on the topic have been written such as the well-known Our Bodies Ourselves put together by a group of Boston women several years ago a new book called Every woman was recently published. Its author Dr. Derek new Helen Jones spoke with reporter Maggie roar. What were your goals in writing a gynecological guide. One day I felt that doctors really needed a little bit of pushing. They were not communicating with people particularly not with women and because they were not communicating with women they talked at women they said yes everything is alright to Dia or yes you do need a hysterectomy. I didn't explain why. And this is a failure of our teaching I think in most of our medical schools. So I wrote the book partly to give women the opportunity to learn about themselves and to have the questions answers with the answers which the doctors didn't seem able to answer.

Why do you think this lack of communication extended or affected mostly especially women as you say. I think it probably is a type of society where the male has been so dominant in the past and has perceived himself as a patriarch. Whether it's in professional or domestic situation he was the person who gave the information. And when you give information you don't communicate you tell you don't talk. And I think particularly it seems to me in my country and I think too in yours in the universities I've gone to that medical students who by and large are from a fairly affluent group in the society do role model themselves on the successful. So I think there is a double effect first of all the doctors status and secondly the tendency of forming a role model from someone who doesn't himself find it easy to communicate. What would you say to the point that you are yourself. Of course a

man and yet you have written this book. I have no defense for that I am biologically a man. All I can say in re writing this book I took a great deal of information and help from women's groups women's cooperative health groups other women's groups who read draft chapters and were highly critical or sometimes complementary but mostly critical so I had to revise my ideas. Have you seen a copy or read copy of the book that was originally published in Boston. Our Bodies Ourselves. I have. I think it's excellent and I use it in a few notes in the back in the bibliography I refer to this. I don't think the two books mine everywoman and our bodies ourselves are in competition. I think we've taken the same theme from a slightly different view. The women's community groups who took and wrote the book were looking at this from women who were largely lay women with professional help and were making a case in a very good case that women must know more about their bodies. I was making a

slightly different emphasis I was taking it from my training as a gynecologist who also believe that women would probably like to know more about their bodies. But I have possibly put more into certain areas like the air and human sexuality like the area around choices in labor. Then some of the women who were covering a much wider field I mean they were covering more than just gynecology and obstetrics they were covering the whole field and they were also putting in those enormously important things such as how to detect a good doctor. Does your doctor communicate the very thing I'm talking about but they haven't spelled it out in greater detail population growth. It's also a subject you have studied and written about. What did Francis have made in achieving zero population growth. Tremendous in the developed nations pretty well every one of the developed nations has now reached as virtually the two child family which I preferred as a term to zero population growth

that I've used the term zero population growth but it terrifies some people because they think it means you know population growth. You know you don't have any children anymore whereas when you say the two child family which in the next 50 years will give us a stable population which is zero population growth. The most important thing I think is that in the developing nations the birth rate is dropping. And I have a feeling it will be slow but I think the message is getting through that if you put population problems in a family welfare we're going to get a long way if you space your children you have a greater chance of having a healthy child if you link family spacing with mother's health. There is a greater improvement in the health of the mother. And people are now beginning to accept this. With a look at the new.

Springtime surge of growth in the American economy is described in government statistics industrial production was up 1 in a tenth percent in April. Housing starts were up 6 percent. Higher sales for the first 10 days of May were up nine and six tenths percent. The dollar was up sharply against competing currencies. The faster pace of manufacturing wholesale and retail business had added foreign a third billions to the national inventory. The biggest one month edition in three years. The rising stock market reached the highest point in seven months yesterday. Fifty four and a half on the Dow Jones. This marked recovery opens more summer jobs for students than had been expected. Commencement and school closings will add some 4000000 temporarily to the labor force. Seven hundred fifty thousand more students than last year but demand is reported up 20 percent. The National Alliance of business men increased its estimate of available summer jobs from its 200000 figure of

last fall to 250000 and a spokesman says the rise in the minimum wage to $2 and 65 cents an hour is no problem. The government has allotted 730 millions in summer programs to provide more than a million jobs. It's this recovery climate that led President Carter to shave his proposed 25 billion tax rebate to 19 billion. Four hundred million. The largest stimulus is no longer needed he says. Economists have feared it would add to inflation. The new Federal Reserve Board Chairman William Miller is of that view. The Fed has raised its interest rate to banks to put a brake on the flow of money pushing up their interest rates. With unemployment reduced more than 500000 new jobs last month inflation remains the greatest threat to the economy and the greatest challenge to the government. Today the House Ways and Means

Committee in Washington reversed its vote for a rollback of the Social Security increase. The president had threatened to veto the Social Security Trust Board reported yesterday that their study finds that the increase applied in January will keep the system solvent for the next 50 years both in Israel and in Saudi Arabia as well as in Washington. The Senate support of President Carter's plane package is taken as marking a shift in American Middle East policy which just may have started back in the days of Kissinger's reappraisal. But the 54 to 44 Senate vote affirmed the president's insistence that America must deal even handedly with the moderate Arabs and Israel. Since the vote the administration has been pains to reassure Israel of America's continuing commitment to her security. But Israeli Prime Minister Begin takes it grievously hard. He must see a degree of backlash to his

aggressive campaign in this country against the president. But the way the issue divided senators who usually agree shows it was not a matter of individual judgement which way would give America the most leverage for promoting peace Senator Javits voted against the package but Senate a Republican voted for it. That extremely conservative Peo Allen of Alabama and Byrd have been Jenea almost always Again everything divided Al and against Byrd for the two Massachusetts senators Kennedy democratic and broke Republican both voted against including Saudi Arabia and Israel in the same thing package. A small item in yesterday's paper suggests the impact of the no fault auto insurance law in this state the state Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of 43 employees of the fraudulent claims board of the state Division of insurance as no longer needed because of any kind of claims under the no fault

law. The annual cost of the 43 employees drop for $750000. The state Supreme Court has turned down the 26 towns and cities that joined in asking delay in 100 percent assessment law to lack for a constitutional amendment voted on it in November. Their amendment would have established four classes of property for assessing in place of the flat overall hundred percent the state tax department told the court that about two hundred fifty minutes a polities of our three hundred fifty one have complied in reassessing at 100 percent or are in process of compliance. Town Meetings that used to be over in March are still being reported daily. Many towns have held repeated meetings warrants are being scrutinized every new item debated with questions as to how it affects the tax rate. Even small appropriations a question Burlington voters Monday night achieved an economy by voting down a proposed

appropriation of two hundred dollars for coffee and donuts and sandwiches for poll watchers. Zoning has become an issue in many towns as a means of regulating usually restricting growth. Voters of Dover which the Boston Globe described last month as the most exclusive town in the state raised the salary of its building inspector from thirty one hundred dollars to 50 400. This in anticipation of more work under their revised zoning laws. The warrant Committee estimated the double tax rate rise in dollar and cents to twenty six dollars. That's KBH journal for Wednesday the 17th of May 1978. The journal is a regional news magazine heard Monday through Friday at 4:30. Its producer editors Marcia Hertz today's engineer Steve Colby. I'm Bill cavernous. And the Wednesday of your wishes.