Ch 33

      This is by far my favorite chapter in the book. I am wanting to pursue a career in speech-language pathology. This chapter opened my eyes a little more to the deaf community. Doctors who tell the parent that their child is deaf, audiologist who tell the parents what they need to do but have no sympathy, and speech pathologist who believe the deaf are just defective, all of these things I can see why the Deaf community would have a negative attitude toward these professions.
     Speech pathologist back in the day did use physical punishment to teach deaf children how to speak or pronounce words and sounds. That theory of teaching is awful, cruel, and I am happy that they passed a law against it. I will admit that one reason why I took AS; was because of the profession I am going into.  honestly had good intentions and I wanted to be able to communicate with my clients, but I think I had the wrong mindset about it all along until now. I did want to learn ASL, so that I could help communicate and correct deaf children and their speech. I wanted to help them learn English. I have a totally new mindset. Yes, I still want to help them pronounce sounds and give them a shot at learning speech, but that is no longer my primary goal. Deaf children are not defective, or broken, they are who they are and that is that. My vision impairment is uncorrectable. The way I see it forcing a deaf person to learn speech is like forcing me to read something out of my vision zone. It is ridiculous. Instead or trying to force or "correct" somebody, I would rather teach them how to compensate or deal with it so they can benefit. I like the quote below and I want to help fulfill it. "We're all for a better relationship between speech pathologist and their deaf clients. We would like the therapist/client relationship to be one of mutual respect and honesty. Not one of antagonism or deception" (199). 

Works Cited

Morre, S. Matthew, and Linda Levitan. For Hearing People Only. 3rd Ed. Rochester, New York: MSM Productions, Ltd.,2003.Print.