Why was Alexander Graham Bell so opposed to deaf people learning sign language?
I think it was because he saw sign language as restrictive ie the deaf would not be able to communicate with hearing people if they only knew sign language. His preference was to teach them to speak, and this is why he began working with electronics in the first place. I think I understand him. I taught a deaf child for a while. My job was to teach her ENglish (she was Indonesian). However, it became difficult to continue when she refused to wear her hearing aids and wanted to communicate only in signs. I was concerned over this for a number of reasons: 1) she could speak but was forgetting how to 2)the sign language she was learning was Auslan, and would be different from that used in Indonesia when she returned. So, while I think signing is important, so is speaking, because the world is geared up that way.
