Running Head: COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM

Colonized by the Mainstream: Analyzing Mainstream Experiences and their Effects through Personal Narrative S. Jordan Wright Qualifying Examination May 24, 2013 Gallaudet University

COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM Introduction Deaf people dont go to college my high school guidance counselor declared, wiping her mouth with a napkin between bites of blueberry muffin, making it doubly hard for me to lipread. I was sixteen years old and about to begin my junior year in high school. I sat across from her in resigned silence, the maelstrom of my internal anger threatening to breach the precipice of articulation. Now, there is a bicycle factory nearby that just opened perhaps you could apply I dont remember what she said after that. I am not typically a crier, but that day I drove home and unleashed twelve years of fury among tears, sobs, and muffled expletives into my mothers lap. I was tired of fighting. I lost my hearing at the age of four and was reborn as a deaf person. Ever since then, I was thrust into an oral mainstreamed program in a world made for hearing people, and my life was never the same. Inspired by personal narratives and self-analysis successfully demonstrated by Joseph Valentes autoethnography d/Deaf and d/Dumb (2011), I offer my own personal narrative through a critical theory lens to demonstrate how mainstreaming has had an impact upon my language and literacy development. Autoethnography seeks to interweave personal experiences with an ethnographic approach in which the writer attempts to help cultural members and cultural strangers better understand certain phenomena (Ellis, Adams , & Bochner , 2011). Gloria Ladson-Billings (2010) asserts that stories provide a background for infusing the life and experiences of marginalized people by naming ones own reality and focusing on the role of voice which can have an effect upon the oppressor (p.14). The use of narratives, giving voice, especially to topics of stigmatization attempts to provide a platform in which scholars can work together across different and often conflicting viewpoints (Squire, 2012 p.65). For the purposes of this paper, I have elected to use personal narratives as a medium in which I analyze

COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM my experiences as a Deaf, oral, mainstreamed student in the context of oppression. In doing so, I borrow from Critical Race Theory in naming my own reality as a method of demonstrating the effects of mainstreaming as a manner of speaking to the oppressor. Through this discussion, I will analyze these experiences so that cultural members and cultural strangers, through the use of voice can come to understand how mainstreaming has an effect upon deaf students. Simply put, mainstreaming was not an easy or positive experience for me. Yet, the irony lies in the fact that I do possess bilingual language skills and I am a literate adult despite being a product of a mainstreamed environment. Mainstreaming did not give me the language and literacy skills afforded to my hearing peers. Yet, I have been successful in terms of academia and work experience. In using the term successful I mean it to convey that I have met and superseded all the requisite institutional requirements of schooling and have gone on to achieve various ranks of employment in my chosen field. This measure of success as a product of mainstreaming comes at significant cost to me: delayed language development, autonomous approaches to literacy, and a detriment to my self-esteem (Kluwin, 1993) Marschark, Lang, & Albertini, 2002; Ramsey, 1997; (Yetman, 2000). In this paper I argue that the institution of mainstreaming provides deaf students like myself with an educational experience that is different and reduced. Mainstreaming has promulgated effects upon language and literacy development that are not on par with the experiences of hearing peers. I will explore within a Deaf Critical Theory (DeafCrit) lens how the institutions of education and medicine are pillars of the phonocentric colonialism of young deaf bodies. I will also examine how this colonialism, or perceived threat of colonialism places parents of deaf children at a crossroads in which they must decide the linguistic fate of their deaf child. Building upon this choice, I will also consider how necrophilia, specialized services,

COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM and a continuous covert form of warfare upon my deaf body has segregated me from important language opportunities. I will then conclude with a personal account and revelation between my mother and I that addresses proponents of mainstreaming. Ultimately, I will conclude with the assertion of my argument: the institution of mainstreaming provides deaf students like myself with an educational experience that is different and reduced, promulgating effects upon language and literacy development that are not on par with the experiences of hearing peers. Through the use of voice and aesthetic that is evocative with thick descriptions, I use my personal narratives to show, rather than to tell (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011). This is my catharsis, and a journey I wish to share. Eighteen years after that fateful day sitting across from my counselor, I am a Ph.D. student at Gallaudet University in the Critical Studies for the Education of Deaf Learners Program. For the first time in my life, I have been given the tools of critical theory to reflect upon the mainstream experience at a magnitude never before experienced. Becoming Colonized Society has a need for, and a strongly manifested desire to normalize deaf bodies (Valente, 2011). For my family, the elaborate ritual that would eventually diagnose me as deaf begun with my Grandfather noticing something was amiss. During a routine morning of watching game shows on the television, I incorrectly concluded that the television set must be broken because the sound was not working. I turned the volume up higher, heard nothing, continued to crank it even higher and still heard nothing. Convinced in my deduction that the television was broken, my Grandfather tried to reason with me. After he determined that I clearly could not hear the television, he called my parents and I was immediately rushed to the hospital. I was diagnosed as deaf with an unknown etiology. In short, this means that not even the medical staff could identify just how this happened in such a short window of time. I was

COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM hysterical, realizing that I could no longer hear my parents voices. My parents were grieving for the loss of my hearing, my likeness to them. The doctors then sent a near-hysterical child home with two grieving parents carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders, an armful of pamphlets and some very difficult decisions to make. However, they strongly warned my parents Sign Language will retard your sons linguistic development. We strongly encourage you to put him in an oral program. The medical institution to which they entrusted my care hijacked my parents. The institution of medicine and those that practice within medicine purport to be knowledge-holders, enjoying a near deity-like status when it came to guiding my parents in deciding my linguistic fate. This power leads to the colonization of deaf bodies by the hearing majority from a medical and clinical perspective. Joseph Valente (2011) argues that this very process of finding something wrong, going from doctor to doctor, and eventually to diagnosis and referrals and speech/hearing specialists is the initiation into phonocentric colonialism. Valente defines phonocentric colonialism as: A form of colonialism that exploits young deaf children through hypercapitalist and neoliberal structures. These structures (e.g., medical, rehabilitative, educational, business, etc.) work to normalize deaf bodies and further selfsufficiency discourses that only perpetuate the cycle of dependence on audist colonists (Valente, 2011 p. 643). It is this process of rectifying and rehabilitating my deafness as a means of assimilating my deaf body into an acceptable condition in an attempt to eliminate the effect and get rid of the disability (Devlin & Pothier, 2006 p.10). Suggestions from neoliberal structures hold significant clout when parents are confronted with making avenues of language development decisions for their deaf child. This persuasion towards phonocentric normalcy caused my parents

COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM to make decisions that had a profound effect upon my language and literacy development. At this point post-diagnosis, my parents were at a veritable fork in the road as presented with two choices by my doctors: One road lead towards American Sign Language (ASL) as becoming an L1 option for language development. This may have meant attending a school for the deaf, learning ASL as a family unit in order to accommodate a deaf child, and involve a bilingualbicultural (BiBi) approach to education in which English and ASL are taught as two distinct languages (Marschark, Lang & Albertini, 2002 pp.144-45). Due to the fact that this was an avenue alien to my parents, it was almost inevitable that the second option would be much more attractive in their likeness as hearing and speaking people. The other road lead towards an oralism approach in which the deaf child is taught to speak, listen, read lips, and is done via mainstreaming with an array of specialists and the assistance of technology. (Marschark, Lang & Albertini, 2002 pp. 104-108) It was precisely this dichotomy between two approaches to language and literacy that lead to a fervent discussion between my parents. Nine out of ten deaf children are born to hearing parents (Mitchell & Karchmer, 2004). While I was not born deaf, I still am a deaf child owned by hearing parents (Humphries & Humphries, 2010 p.53). As such, the first question addressed by my parents was that of communication. Haunted by the doctors warnings that ASL would retard my linguistic development, I am reminded of a scene in the film Mr. Hollands Opus in which a well-known high school music teacher and his wife discover their son Cole is deaf. While discussing his linguistic fate in the kitchen, Cole is visibly upset and trying to communicate something to his mother:

Glenn Holland: The doctor said that gestures meant... Iris Holland: It's way more than gestures. Glenn Holland: That gestures meant that Cole would never learn how to lip read or to

COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM talk! Iris Holland: He can barely talk now, he can't say two or three words! Glenn Holland: The guy is a specialist, Iris! Iris Holland: Ohhh, he's a specialist who thinks that deaf people are retarded and he is not retarded, he is... [Cole is screaming, asking for something and Iris doesn't know what it is] Iris Holland: Cole! Glenn Holland: What does he...? Give him what he wants! Iris Holland: I don't know what he wants, I don't understand what he's trying to say. Don't you get it? You walk to school every day with all these children who are normal. I can't talk to my son! I don't know what he wants or what he thinks or what he feels. I can't tell him that I love him, I can't tell him who I am. I want to talk to my son! I don't care what it costs, I don't care what the stupid doctor says it's right or wrong. I want to talk to my son! (IMDB.com). This conversation could reasonably be assumed as common among parents immediately after a child is diagnosed as being deaf. As life sometimes imitates art, this impassioned plea by Iris Holland is the same argument that occurred between my mother and father. Eventually, based upon pressure from doctors, my parents enrolled me in an oral, mainstreamed program. I was immediately placed into a Language Development Program born of the oral tradition where it was decided I would speak and read lips. Since then, my life would never be the same. The Blitzkrieg of Rehabilitation Perhaps the most profound impact upon my language development stems from the use of a vast army of technophiles purported to foster language development. Here, I argue that the methods fetishization (Bartolom, 2009 p.338) of technology masquerading as assistive devices and service specialists comes at an emotional and psychological cost to the deaf student. This army of specialists to my parents seemed, at face value to be benign, even impassioned by their love for working in the field of deafness. To me, this was a sadistic love a necrophilic love that oppresses by the use of science and technology as a means to maintain control over my deaf body (Friere, 2000 pp.59-60) These services purport to help foster and develop language

COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM and literacy in the student, yet the stigmatization of doing so to a deaf child like me comes at the cost of reduced self-esteem (Devlin, 2006 p.7; Yetman, 2000, p.78). I use the term blitzkrieg as a means of naming my unconsented experiences with rehab technology and a constant stream of unfamiliar service specialists. Blitzkrieg blends together two German terms blitz meaning lightning and Krieg meaning war. The term represents a technique in which a massive and tightly coordinated attack is launched by air, sea, and sky (Merriam-Webster). As a newly colonized member of hearingstream America which has claimed ownership of my deaf body in order to rehabilitate and rectify it in accordance with their ideals, it became necessary to do so on all fronts: hearing, speech, and behavior. I use the term hearingstream to give voice to my own perceptions of hearing culture in mainstreamed settings. Mainstreamed implies to me, normalcy while not necessarily designating hearing as the norm in my mind. By combining the terms hearing and mainstream, I come to find that it focuses upon hearing people regardless of race, class, or additional disabilities. This blitzkrieg came in the from of hearing aids, FM systems, speech therapy, oral tools for speech therapy, Teacher of the Deaf (TOD), and a special classroom referred to as the Resource Room. Receiving my first FM system is among my earliest memories but is also one of my most painful. Dr. Vechhio was not a gentle audiologist. As she stuffed the garish pink ear molds in my ears, they felt two sizes too large causing my eyes to water. The cords snaking out of the ear molds reminded me of braids in my older sisters hair, as I begin to play with them out of curiosity. Dont. Touch. Dr. Vechhio enunciated as she smacked my hands out of the way and proceeded to talk down to me: Very. Expensive. With that, she turned me around by my shoulders and strapped an ivory piece of plastic the size of a paperback novel to my chest. As she

COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM fiddled with the straps and snaps in the back, I began to feel the FM system pressing into my chest and began to wonder if she was trying to tie it into me. Turning me back towards her, she smiled wide with her hands on her hips as she looked down at me to admire her handiwork. Dr. Vechhio reached down quickly to turn my FM system ON. I have never known a louder world. So glaringly loud was the world around me, I could feel my brain rattling like the clapper of a bell. From that moment forward, the hefty weight of my FM system would be my Scarlett Letter, my albatross. The illusion of invisibility by means of inclusion in a mainstream setting manifested itself as a visible fallacy with the onset of wearing an FM system. I immediately knew I was different, and became a living, breathing, tangible binary other (Devlin, 2006 p.5). This tangible and very visible part of the blitzkrieg against me concretely manifests the fact that disability is a socially constructed reality that is based on deviancies from able-bodies (Devlin, 2006 p.4). As Devlin and Valente argue similar parallels regarding disabilities, there is a seeming obsession among hypercapitalists to fix or cure the defect immediately. Valente (2011) goes further to argue how technology via a hypercapitalist society is used in the cyborgization of deaf bodies (pp. 644-645). Even though Valente focuses mainly on cochlear implants, the concept of using technology as a means of altering deaf bodies for conformity as inductees to a phonocentric colony has long been in existence. This cyborgization of my deaf body was part of a well-concerted necrophilic attack in the reissuing of a deaf Jordan into a hearing-like Jordan by the use of technologies that stigmatize. It is because of this stigmatization by way of cyborgization that the blitzkrieg caused me, as a deaf person to be segregated as a deaf learner while under the guise of inclusion.

COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM The overarching purpose of my education was rooted in phonocentrism, which led to the segregation of activities. Bauman (2004) points out the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1974) in examining the notion that phonocentrism is the assumption that spoken language is the only acceptable reality of true human language (p.243). It is this notion that spoken language, one that is performed through auditory and aural abilities creates a deficit, binary view (Dickinson & Tabors, 2001) of language where institutions (education, medicine, specialists, etc.) are concerned (Bauman, 2004; Valente, 2011). Phonocentrism has parallels to audism, which together guides the institutional notion that to be deaf and non-speaking is an inferior form of being. Audism is the belief that to see and hear is best and therefore, a more superior existence (Lane, 1992). In essence, audism is a manner of oppressing deaf people. From this deeply ingrained audistic notion of the ability to hear and speak as being superior, the focus of my education became not that on developing I/Myself/Me -- the deaf individual as a whole, but advanced a focus on developing It/Fixed/Product that bore some resemblance to Me. This focus on education rewards hearing-like behavior and punishes deaf-like behavior (Ramsey, 2000 p.45). In order to rectify my deafness throughout the school day, it became necessary to segregate deaf children from hearing children in order to maintain a blitzkrieg of services that consistently worked on all three fronts of hearing, speech, and behavior. As a result, the daily academic schedule for a deaf mainstreamed student like me, and a hearing peer in the same grade were markedly different. When children went outside to play for recess, I was sent straight to the resource room for rote drills in word recognition through listening and parroting the same responses. This banking method of learning and repeating information segregated me from the language opportunities that were afforded to my hearing peers: the opportunity to socialize with other

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COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM children and adults. As a small child with a proclivity for running and physical activity, I deeply resented my peers. Yet somehow, I did not blame them. My animosity was reserved staunchly for the blitzkrieg army; professionals inside the resource room who would swarm over me prodding and poking at my FM system, moderating my hearing aids, asking me different questions at the same time, and engaging me in different drills for different purposes. Outside the resource rooms second floor window, I could see my classmates on the playground. I felt like an object ordered in for a pit-stop to satisfy the necrophilic pleasures of the blitzkrieg. I lost out on the rich dialogue that could have occurred among my kindergarten peers during playtime and lunch recess. Dickinson & Tabors (2001) in studying language and literacy development in young children specifically analyzed the contexts of free-play and large group contexts within kindergarten classes. They conclude that free time contributes to linguistic and conceptual development by allowing those muscles to be flexed (p.253). Equally important, they recommend to educators that children be allowed to talk to other children during this type of play The authors also found that those children who did engage in dialogue with other children instead of being silent, were more likely to do well on literacy and language assessments In the same vein, they note that children who engaged in pretend talk were also more likely to perform well on assessments (p.254). There, a pattern emerges in which rich language through decontextualized talk and pretend talk among peers as a complementary component to teacherchild talk that is interwoven together to provide a solid foundation for language and literacy development. The implication of these ideal conditions for a deaf child in a mainstream setting is different, and reduced in my situation (Marschark, Lang, & Albertini, 2002, p. 143). On those occasions where I was present in the mainstreamed classroom during playtime (or free play), I usually would find a place to sit quietly and draw in coloring books or play with the

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COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM various paints and clay available. Although I wanted to join certain other boys and girls who tended to dress up and act, I could only imagine what they were saying and seeing. Due to the blitzkrieg of constant removals and readmissions into class and free play times, I became something of a stranger to my peers (Yetman, 2000) I wish I could have joined the imaginary world in which they were transported to. Being that lip-reading was my only means of understanding language, it was difficult for me to comprehend language from other children whereas I was used to the slow, controlled, and heavily enunciated speech of adults. Where I was used to rote drills in vocabulary, listening, and parroting back the same sentences, the beauty in the uncertainty of pretend talk was terrifying for me. The more time I spent with hearing peers, the more they became my reference point in comparison with myself. This constant comparison of can and cant began to take a toll upon my self-esteem and self-image as a distorted person who never would be able to be like the others (Yetman, 2000). While my peers were developing language and literacy skills through the elements of play, pretend, and experimentation nothing about a mainstream program for deaf children allows for a trial and error approach. Everything I was taught was black and white, either right or wrong. Mispronunciations of words which were my most common errorwere immediately corrected and dealt with, often unpleasantly. Making up words or accidentally using the wrong word were also met with the same swift consequences in essence, being punished for being deaf-like (Ramsey, 1997 p.73). These exercises in speech and hearing while in theory are designed and rooted in phonocentrism work in opposition to the sociolinguistic experiences I was segregated from with my peers. From kindergarten to 7th grade, I severely lagged behind in literacy and language assessments. I personally believe I was allowed to slip through the cracks in grade advancement because I did well compared to other deaf children. Segregation for deaf

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COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM children creates a distorted sense of reality in that they become aliens in a sense, visiting the classroom instead of truly owning a sense of camaraderie (Yetman, 2000). Dickinson & Tabors (2001) have demonstrated that opportunities for dialogue among children, allowing opportunities for pretend play and in an environment where children share the same language are important. The importance of this finding provides students with opportunities for rich literacy and language developments. Despite the fact that my peers and I shared the same language, it was not always mutually intelligible. By removing deaf children like myself from recess and free-play, the opportunity to have any literacy and language development from dialogue among peers was revoked. Despite limitations in forming meaningful interactions among peers, I did manage to have one-on-one relationships with a select few people throughout my years, Cathy being one of my closest friends. I have a friend, Cathy who has been with me for most of my mainstreamed schooling before we parted ways in high school. We met in the same kindergarten class and shared a love for the color red. Bonding over a common favorite color, we learned to communicate and became close friends and confidantes for several years. One day, Cathy mentioned her little sister experiencing some taunting and teasing among peers in her classroom and was unsure of how to advise her. As she finished her thoughts, she added: Ill never forget what they did to you in Ms. Meinkes classroom. I think about that, and if only I knew then what I know now... What do you mean? I interrupted immediately, confused. To my knowledge Kindergarten wasnt all that bad. To me, Kindergarten was mostly like trying to have conversations underwater. It turns out the one time I mustered up the courage to join the group of kids who tended to dress up and play with capes and swordfights and lofty, mighty body language, I wasnt the character I thought I was. Pulling the details from Cathy slowly, like broken glass from a wound I learned

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COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM that it wasnt the swordfight I thought it was. It was because of the ugliness of my FM system, I was the beast that was to be slayed. What I had thought was the joining of the majority in an activity (pretend swordfight); I was in fact the sacrificial lamb, the beast to be slayed. A beast because I was not like the majority, I was a cyborgized lesser. Banking Methods: The Red Herring An everyday working definition of literacy is defined as: the quality or state of being literate while the term literate is defined as: able to read and write (Merriam-Webster, 2013) Here, I go further to define literacy as critical literacy based upon Ira Shors (2009) exploration of critical literacy as a process in which the world shapes who we are and what we do. Language development does not occur in a vacuum how we are spoken to, how often we are spoken to, how we communicate with others, how we act to and unto others are all ingredients in a recipe that create a set of skills that allow us to think critically and become cognizant of our own consciousness and place in the world (p.282). In order to demonstrate how deaf students are doubly oppressed by education through dominance, it is necessary to acknowledge a distancing gap between deaf and hearing learners (Marschark, Lang, & Albertini, 2002; Traxler, 2000) To frame the distancing gap between literacy development as a deaf individual compared to that of my hearing classmates, I draw upon Paulo Friere's work from Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2009) in which he argues against the utilization of the banking concept in education as a means of preventing student conscientizaao or critical consciousness. Freire suggests that two kinds of education are dialectically in opposition with each other: education as a means of freedom and education as a means of exercising domination over others (Friere, p.57) On the one hand education as a means of cognizant liberation - conscientizaao purports that the consciousness of man hinges on the enlightened understanding that

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COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM consciousness is not autonomous of humanity or the world, but rather, intertwined. On the other hand, domination through education attempts to anesthetize the potential for creative development, thereby stunting the ability to reach an understanding of mans relation to the world (p.57). Critical consciousness in education is prevented from occurring by the means of banking methods. The anesthetic effect serves to keep the necrophilic goal of creating mindless automatons out of students by controlling and regulating the way the world enters into students (pp.54-55). The blitzkrieg onslaught needed to have been constantly fueled by the crushing of my deaf body and deaf spirit. The more I became the hearing Jordan they desired to have, the deaf Jordan slowly died upon the altar of sadistic, necrophilic rehabilitation. Banking methods make use of verbalized lessons, reading requirements, the ability to read aloud, and the ability to numerate (p. 55). It is through such rote processes that student achievement is determined. Despite Friere's argument that the banking method works to the detriment of developing student conscientizaao, it was precisely how teachers operated while I was in school. In this manner the oppression of the educational and mainstreaming institutions multiply for a deaf student. Next, I will demonstrate the relationship between how much time a deaf student spends mainstreaming and the ability to handle conflict and unsuccessful communication situations (Yetman, 2000). By the time I arrived to Mr. Carters social studies classroom, I had already been mainstreamed full time for seven years. The constant exposure to read-alouds and verbalized reading lessons prepared me for many communication frustrations, but nothing quite like Mr. Carters class. It is because of banking methods such as verbalized reading lessons that I will always remember the words Shenandoah Valley, and still am able to pronounce them correctly today. In the end, could I tell you why we were learning about Shenandoah Valley and its role in the context of our nations History? No.

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COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM In Mr. Carters 6th grade social studies class one such read-aloud exercise had begun. Each student was to begin reading a paragraph aloud, transitioning to the next paragraph by the student sitting behind him or her, and so forth. By the time I was in 6th grade, I became relatively good at this exercise. With an FM system, I could understand spoken English if I had a verbatim text in front of me. I had an easier time following the high, clear voices of my female classmates and much more difficulty following the garbled and often fumbled speech of my male classmates. In essence, listening to male voices was akin to listening to a newscast on a radio with poor reception, causing the newscasters voice to cut out for extended periods of time. In case I missed a paragraph, I would skip to the next paragraph and focus intently upon the first word, waiting to hear it clearly and follow along again. Sometimes I missed whole pages of information. While it is true my hearing peers were participating in the banking method of learning, the double oppression of being deaf in trying to participate in this activity caused me to miss out on more than my peers. In this particular instance, I caught my transition to the correct paragraph from the girl sitting in front of me without missing a beat. Proud of myself, I began to read and came upon the name of a place I never read before: Shenandoah Valley. Shen-and-uh Valley, I said meekly, hurrying through the rest of the sentence, hoping nobody would notice. SHEN-AN-DOUGHAUGH VALLEEY! Mr. Carter boomed from the front of the classroom, jarring the entire class out of rote boredom and all eyes were on me. Mr. Carter walked over to my seat with his textbook propped open on one hand, peering down at me from his bifocals and repeated in the same condescending-booming voice SHEN-AN-DOUGH-AUGH VALLEEY! SHEN-ANDOUGH-AUGH VALLEEY! Suffice it to say, I was mortified. There are not words enough in this world to describe the humility I felt in this moment. I do not recall how many recitations it

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COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM took to satisfy Mr. Carters demand for rectification of a phrase my deaf tongue couldnt pronounce. All I remember is Mr. Carter phoning my speech therapist as I filed quickly out of class with my face on fire. The experience in Mr. Carters classroom is only one example of how literacy is deeply affected by such banking methods that adopt a one size fits all approach. Not only was the attitude of Mr. Carter towards me as a deaf person audistic, one grounded in dominating his superiority over me as a hearing person, (Lane, 1992) but it was also doubly-oppressive by preventing me from learning from even basic banking methods. While working so hard to become like the hearing automatons in read-aloud lessons, I never synthesized or truly read the text. The information merely existed as a script for me to play in order to pass the test of hearingness in order to be regarded as a high-achieving student. In essence, the system encouraged me to mimic the actions and reactions of becoming hearing-like. The reasons for this are twofold: on the one hand, the more like them I behaved, the more positive praise I received. On the other hand, the more I stood out as a binary other, the fear and humiliation of doing so was a profound price to pay. The price to pay for conforming to a system that rewards diminishing signs of otherness is steep, and often comes in the concession of school performance that was no fault of my own. I clearly remember struggling with Mrs. Taylor, my language arts teacher. Mrs. Taylor was of German descent and spoke with a very thick accent, making it difficult for me to lip-read her. As such, weekly spelling tests were a nightmare. Historically, I received high marks for spelling on average. The variations within this average largely depended on who the teacher was. If the teacher was easy to lip-read, my marks were high. Conversely, if the teacher was difficult to lipread, my marks were low. After one particularly difficult test, Mrs. Taylor graded papers

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COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM immediately and handed them back to the class. You are the only person in this class who got an F she said, standing over me with her hands on her hips matter-of-factly. Humiliated, my face bloomed red with embarrassment and I could not muster the words for a simple response. She clucked her tongue at me, shaking her finger in admonishment and spun on her foot, her heels click-clacking into my FM system as she walked back to her desk while the bell rang for recess. Even today in my adult year, I can still feel the heat and almost taste the color of embarrassment on my face. The oppression in an environment like Mrs. Taylors class is compounded for deaf students. The banking concept of spelling drills is rote busy-work. The actual definition, usage, modalities, semantics, and vast permutations in which lesson words can be used were simply not a priority. The focus is purely upon developing the ability to hear a word and correctly interpret or infer the spelling of said word. In my case, I could compete among my peers in spelling as I had historically. The motivation of my success in school was not only positive praise and rewards, it was the fear of humiliation as witnessed by Mrs. Taylor blatant humiliation of my purported failing of the spelling test. At the same time, the banking method of rote drills stigmatizes and makes obvious my disability as a deaf student which works at odds with the ultimate goal of mainstreaming schools operating under phonocentric notions that to educate seems to mean: to create hearing-like automatons out of automatons out of a blitzkrieg using fear as yet another tool of rehabilitation. Read-alouds and spelling drills as we have seen here are products of the banking method that doubly oppress deaf students like me in mainstream settings. Literacy development is supposed to espouse from the rigorous use of such activities. For me, the thrust of my work focused on simple survival in a system that is designed for everything that I was not as a deaf

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COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM student. Survival for me meant succumbing to hearingstream society by allowing phonocentric domination over my deaf body through a blitzkrieg of technologies, services, and a learned selfloathing that promulgated a healthy feeling of fear. It is through this fear that the focus for education is not on language and literacy, but rather on performing correctly and accurately, the prescriptions of Phonocentrism that offer seeming salvation in hearing acceptably and speaking well. At this juncture, I feel it necessary to address proponents of mainstreaming. As previously mentioned, the irony in this analysis is that I am a product of mainstreaming. In the face of the belief of many that mainstreaming is the right way to go (Eriks-Brophy, DurieuxSmith, Olds, Fitzpatrick, Duquette, & Whittingham, 2012) I assert that the cost to a deaf child of mainstreaming, in my case is high. I was successful, however, this measure of success comes at a significant cost to me: delayed language development, self-esteem issues, and autonomous approaches to literacy. Ramseys (1997) description of the mainstream experience by her observations hauntingly echoes my own where she writes: Rather than learning language as they grow into competent membership in a social group, they are expected to develop language virtually alone, via direct instruction (p.7). Some may consider the trials and tribulations of a difficult journey through such schooling alone something of a small price to pay. The price to me however is significant and has been at the cost of discovering the missing pieces of my very identity in my adult years. Although I came out as a gay man when I was 16 years old, I had a second coming-out as a d/Deaf man at the age of 19. I accepted matriculation at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) much to the surprise of my blueberry muffin eating guidance counselor. I applied to various colleges without assistance from her, much like my very language development-- I did it alone. It was at CSUN

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COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM that I was exposed to and formally instructed in ASL. Not only that, CSUN had a population of about 500 deaf students from all over the globe integrated with a student body of 35,000 students. It was 1999 when I started and by the time I was a sophomore, I had fully immersed myself in a language and community that was kept hidden from me for fifteen years. I had lived in a dormitory that was designated as ASL-only where deaf and hearing people alike lived together communicating solely in ASL. Fall gave way to spring, and spring to summer and when I arrived home for summer break, I was determined to use ASL only. My parents, having spent so many years at the mercy of IEPs, a phonocentric mainstreaming model, and the blitzkrieg of hearingstream America that had taken a hold of my deaf body were vehemently opposed to my new identity. The second irony in this analysis is that it was more difficult for my parents to accept me as being Deaf, than it was to accept me as being gay. I have very few regrets in life. Chiefly among those regrets is when I blamed my mother for my deafness during that summer. In the heat of culture and identity conflicts, it was that moment of desperation that I placed the blame of frustration and anger on my mother. My mothers face went from one of anger to one of sudden complacency and fear. I could have very well slapped her in the face. Youre right, it is my fault... she whispered as she slunk down to the floor, mascara tears forming around her eyes. I always wondered what I did what I ate. what I said... Twisted with guilt, I watched her lips in horror as she said, The priests always said it was something I did wrong. Growing up Irish Roman Catholic, this revelation, kept quiet from me for sixteen years, both horrified and did not surprise me in the least bit. The institutions of medicine, religion, and education have held us captive by colonizing not only myself, but my family. In a clinical perspective, my mother was made to feel shame (even though I was not born deaf) for producing a defective body (me). Even outside of the womb four years later, my mother

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COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM was made to feel somehow responsible. In an educational perspective, my lack of success in language and literacy for the early years was aimed squarely at my parents. And finally, in a religious perspective it was believed that somehow the actions of my mother and father (and ancestors) were punished by the production of a defective, disabled body born to the family. In essence, phonocentric colonialism has strong, socially constructed realities that hijack the ability of parents to embrace the range of human bodies born to this world instead of shunning them as an aberration, as a disability. To proponents of mainstreaming, I make public this deeply private regret in my life. In my adult year, my mother seems to forever be apologizing for my parents choice at the fork in the road. Every now and then, I give her the same answer I will give to proponents: I cannot go back in time and say, What if we did it this way? or What if I went to a school for the deaf? or What If we all learned ASL? I cant go back in time. Nobody can turn back the clock and undo what has already been done. For that matter, I cant say I would have become a better or worse person than I am today. Was it a great experience? No. Do I wish it happened to me? No. I still remember the horrible things that were said and done to me, and I still, as an adult, am working on letting go of some fears that were instilled in me. The point is, I found who I am, I love who I am, and where we are now as a family. Its been a long journey and sometimes we made bad decisions but the important thing is how we dealt with those decisions. Conclusion In this personal narrative analysis, I have examined how phonocentric colonialism is a phenomenon that takes ownership of young deaf bodies and plucks them into the folds of hearing society. We have seen how this is done by the cyborgization of deafness as it is viewed by a phonocentric society to be a defect that must be fixed. This institutionalized view is powerful

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COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM because it exerts considerable sway and influence in attractive ways that direct hearing parents confounded at this fork in the road. It is this very fork in the road as we have seen in my case how early and suddenly the path to language and literacy is a fate decided for deaf people. The conversation between The Hollands mentioned above is reasonably common among hearing parents who give birth to a deaf child. Yet, phonocentric colonialism is a powerful, swift force that convinced my parents to allow our family to become hijacked and colonized by the seeming benevolence of the medical institution. In terms of mainstreaming I have demonstrated in my own experiences, how technology and a fetishization of services are the equivalent to a blitzkrieg attack upon my body, mind, and self-esteem as a deaf person. Such actions segregate deaf children like me from certain enriching language development activities as we have seen in free-play and recess. Further, I have shown how banking methods doubly oppress deaf students by instilling a healthy fear of conflicting with the norms and demands of a phonocentric banking system. I conclude with the summation of my personal experiences through conversations with my mother, which further demonstrates my claim: mainstreamed oral programs have had a significant impact upon the language and literacy development myself as a deaf child and untold numbers of deaf children.

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COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM References Bartolome, L. I. (2009). Beyond the Methods Fetish: Toward a Humanizing Pedagogy. In A. Darder, M. P. Baltodano, & R. D. Torres (Eds.), The Critical Pedagogy Reader (2nd Edition ed., pp. 338-355). New York, NY: Routledge. Bauman, H. D. (2004). Audism: Exploring the metaphysics of oppression. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 9 (2), 239-246. Devlin, R., & Pothier, D. (2006). Introduction: Toward a critical theory of dis-citizenship. In R. Devlin , & D. Pothier (Eds.), Critical Disability Theory: Essays in Philosophy, Policy, Politics, and Law (pp. 1-22). British Columbia, CAN: University of British Columbia Press. Dickinson, D. K., & Tabors, P. O. (2001). Beginning Literacy with Language. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes. Ellis, C., Adams , T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An Overview. Forum: Qualitative Social Research Sozialforschung, 12 (1). Eriks-Brophy, A., Durieux-Smith, A., Olds,, J., Fitzpatrick, E. M., Duquette, C., & Whittingham, J. (2012). Communication, academic, and social skills of young adults with hearing loss. The Volta Review, 5-35. Friere, P. (2009). From Pedagogy of the Oppresses. In A. Darder , M. P. Baltodano, & R. D. Torres (Eds.), The Critical Pedagogy Reader (2nd Edition ed., pp. 52-60). New York, NY: Routledge. Humphries, T., & Humphries , J. (2011). Deaf in the time of the cochlea . Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 16 (2), 153-163. IMDB.com, I. (n.d.). IMDB. Retrieved May 22, 2013, from IMDB.com: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113862/quotes Kluwin, T. N. (1993). Cumulative effects of mainstreaming on the eachievement of deaf adolescents. Exceptional Children, 73-81. Ladson-Billings, G. (1998). Just what is critical race theory and what's it doing in a nice field like education? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11 (1), 7-24. Lane, H. (1992). Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the deaf community. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Mark Marschark, Lang, H. G., & Albertini, J. A. (2002). Educating Deaf Students: From Research to practice. New York, NY: Oxford University Press .

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COLONIZED BY THE MAINSTREAM Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Retrieved May 29, 2013, from Merriam-Webster.com: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blitzkrieg Merriam-Webster. (2013, May 27). Merriam-Webster. Retrieved May 27, 2013, from www.merriam-webster.com: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literacy Mitchell, R. E., & Karchmer, M. A. (2004). Chasing the Mythical Ten Percent: Parental Hearing Statuses of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in the United States. Sign Language Studies, 4 (2), 138-163. Ramsey, C. (1997). Deaf Children in Public Schools: Placement, Context, and Consequences. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press . Shor, I. (2009). What is Critical Literacy? In A. Darder, M. P. Baltodano, & R. D. Torres, The Critical Pedagogy Reader, 2nd Edition (pp. 282-304). New York, NY: Routledge Squire, C. (2012). Narratives, connections and social change. Narrative Inquiry, 22 (1), 50-68. Traxler, C. (2000). The stanford achievement test, ninth edition: National norming and performance standards for deaf and hard of hearing students. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 5, 337-348. Valente, J. M. (2011). d/Deaf and d/Dumb. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.

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