Welcome...and initial guidelines...

This blog will be used in the spring of 2008 by 80+ students at Drexel University to investigate the effects of Iraq on culture and the reverse. Our goal will be to better understand why the US is in Iraq, and to question whether literature can help us on this journey.

Weekly plans and other materials will always be posted in Vista, not this blog. So go to Bb Vista to get the discussion prompts and other instructions.

I intend this blog to manage our discussions and track our collective investigation.

You should have received an email from me inviting you to become a contributor to this blog. The email was sent Monday afternoon to your official Drexel email address.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

The Deaf Culture

Since I have been apart of the Deaf culture my whole entire life, there are many myths I have heard of. One of the most common ones I hear of are "deaf people are mute" i just remember one day i was telling a person that my parents were deaf and they replied "oh so thats a shame, they cant talk or anything" first of they can talk and read lips very well. their speech isn't perfect but you can make out what they are saying, since i have been around it my whole life i know everything they are saying, but i just dont like how people automatically assume that deaf people are mute.  I even had a person ask me, "so how do your parents drive?" i thought that was funny, because my parents aren't blind, they just cant hear. One time a person at a cashier asked my dad a question and he didnt know what she said so he pointed to his ears signing that he couldn't hear, she turns me and says, "what? is he from mars or something?" 
A few other myths are that deaf people are less educated/intelligent since they do not speak proper english which isn't true at all because there are many deaf people that attend gallaudet university, which is the harvard of deaf schools and many deaf people attend that school and come out successful. Second of all their primary language is sign language therefore of course they are fluent in their first language and since english is their 2nd language they feel more comfortable using their first language where that would be the case for most people. Deaf people are just like us, they are still able to function in this world, they just cant hear. 

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