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Wed, 12 Jan 2000
SignWriting List <SW-L@ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA>
From: INGRID FOGGITT <ingiboob@MWEB.CO.ZA>
Subject: New Member
Hi Everybody!
My name is Ingrid Foggitt and I am writing this from South Africa.
I was introduced to Sign Writing a few months ago through the
Internet.
Sign Writing has a special interest for me because I teach Deaf
children at Fulton School for the Deaf in Kwazulu-Natal. We are
about 15 miles (25 km) from Durban. Not meaning to boast, but
I am one of the two qualified Deaf teachers in South Africa which
does say a lot about where we are at! I obtained by Bachelor
of Arts in Education (4 yrs) degree at the University of the
Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (one of the capital cities of South
Africa). Of course, I had a full-time interpreter throughout
my studies. I have been teaching at Fulton for the last three
years, 2000 being my fourth. I have taught many subjects in such
a short time! Geography, General Science, Environmental Studies,
Business Skills, HOme Economics, Humanities, English, Sign Language
and Deaf Studies. One would most definitely think that I had
been at it for 10 years or more, but thats not so :)
In 1999, my focus narrowed down to two subjects: English and
Sign Language. I suppose that the problems one faces when teaching
Deaf kids is universal? I say this because I have met many Deaf
teachers from overseas who are more or less in the same situation
as I am. Strangely enough, it almost always seems to turn out
that you have the deaf teacher and deaf kids on the one side
and the hearing teachers on the other side and in-between are
the usual misunderstandings, frustrations, those miracle penny-dropping
moments of understanding, the arguments, the tensions, the walking-on-eggshell
attitudes, etc, etc -- know what I mean? However, I sometimes
think that this is all part of the experience of being involved
in this particilar field. It has to be because why do some of
us seem to experience exacly the same thing -- continents apart?
To avoid this becoming a thesis :), the reason I decided to get
involved in Sign Writing and experiment in it is rather simple:
I am an educationalist and anything that furthers the education
of ANY group of people deserves looking into. I do not know enough
about SW to be able to go deep into this but I think that the
reason above is enough? Well, well, if you are NOT convinced
:) then I have another reason that no-one can argue: I showed
some samples of SW (gained from the Internet) to the kids. The
response was overwhelming -- I cannot say NO to a response like
that. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "The secret of education
is respecting the pupil" -- Something I like to aspire to.
I hope this is a good introduction? And I hope that it will be
the start of a challenging and rewarding relationship between
myself and all of you on the SW List as well as all of you involved
in SW.
Best
Ingrid Foggitt
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21 February 2000
Dear Valerie & SignWriting List Members:
I thought to post this onto the SignWriting List in order
for others to be able to read this as well but I don't know how
to post onto the SWL so thought I'd do it the easy way and send
it to you.
Well, today was the first day of SignWriting at Fulton School,
Durban, South Africa.
I showed the introductory videos to Grade 9 and 10. The whole
group makes up about 30 learners who are between the ages of
14 and 18. The vast age differences in the same classes is a
reality in South Africa due to the educational imbalances of
the past. Some classes in the primary school have kids who are
6 sitting alongside teenagers of 14, etc. However, each school
does its best to solve such problems.
An appreciation of where the learners are coming from in order
to understand their INITIAL reaction to the video is needed.
This group of 30 learners basically represent South Africa's
diverse population in terms of race, culture, religion, language,
upbringing, etc -- the unifying factor being that they are all
Deaf (an human of course!).
In the class, there are kids who come from squatter camps, wealthy
suburbs, rural areas, urban areas, townships, etc. There are
also kids who practise different religions: Christianity, Roman
Catholicism, Jehovah's Witness, African Religions, etc. Furthermore,
the language differences are also vast (Sign Language NOT being
their `mother tongue' due to the repression of SL in the past):
Zulu, English, Xhosa, Pedi and so forth. Now, if a class of 30
kids can contain such an array of populations groups, you may
now understand why they call us the `Rainbow Nation'? My point
here is that this also shows that it is to be expected that degrees
of awareness / exposure to anything `Deaf' is also varied. And,
lastly, but not least, there is our apartheid past.
Upon starting the video, the kids reacted first, not to the
SignWriting, but to the `human interest factor'. E.g. where do
the presenters come from? Where are their clothes from? (and
a discussion between their clothes and ours in SA), Are the presenters
Deaf? (and a discussion on the fact that the kids think that
Cindy doesn't look `Deaf' but Kevin does -- which ensued in a
fascinating discussion on my trying to find out what `looks Deaf'
and what doesn't!!! -- a mind boggling topic in its own right!
Nothing concrete could be found but just that there was a 'look'
-- does anyone want to pick up on this?) How the white presenters
look different from the white people in SA (which inevitably
led to a discussion on how the black people in USA look VS the
black people in SA) Is Cindy married? How many children does
she have? Where does
she live? (same goes for Kevin -- I, of course, couldn't answer
these but told the learners that I would forward the questions
-- who can answer these?) How old are the presenters? Where did
they go to school -- oral or sign? Have they been to SA, etc
etc. So there you have it and you can guess the gruelling questions
session that we went through. However, these are the things that
I find typical with the learners here at Fulton (I can't say
about the rest of SA) -- they are more interested in the people
in the video or movie (initially) than what the video or movie
is actually trying to say / or storyline. I do find this very
touching and it is a way of looking at film that I have never
done before. Anyway, once their curiosity was satisfied, I had
to rewind the tape and start at the beginning, this time looking
at the SW factor!
Of course, they took to it like ducks to water! And here,
they were differentiating between SASL and ASL. Pauses in the
video allowed us to change the signs portrayed on the video into
SASL on the chalkboard. This was fairly easy to grasp. By the
end of this, the kids were all following the handshapes shown
on the video in unison. I had to rewind it back again (on demand).
The learners all reacted very positively to this, showing concern
about the complexity of being able to actually `write' the symbols
and then arguing about who is a good artist and who is not!!!
Just before the end of the third run of the video, the TV was
abandoned and all the kids rushed to the
chalkboard, writing signs to each other -- of their own making
but incorporating the basics that they had got from the video.
And let me say this: a lot of the signs that they wrote included
lots of symbols that are part of SW but that they have never
seen before (or been taught yet). The learners found it strange
that SW was read from top to bottom and not from left to right.
They want to know: did Cindy make a mistake in the SW of `Deaf'?
That is because `Deaf' has two contact points and not one as
shown on the video. I would also like to know this. During the
last few minutes of the lesson, I asked the kids how they think
they can use SW from what they have learnt. They expressed as
follows:
1. Translation of subject notes to SW (e.g. Biology, Geography,
Maths) which would make revision, studying easier
2. Writing private letters to each other that teachers wouldn't
understand (except Ingrid!)
3. Writing stories
4. Poetry
5. Songs (from Puff Daddy, church, Michael Jackson, etc, etc.
My next step is to show them the SW video 2. From what has
happened so far, the road ahead looks very exciting and challenging!
I personally feel that this has initiated a whole new field of
learning and experiencing the world.
Watch this space!
INGRID FOGGITT
Deaf teacher of Deaf students
mailto:ingiboob@mweb.co.za
Fulton School for the Deaf
South Africa
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Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 20:27:00 +0200
Sender: SignWriting List <SW-L@ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA>
From: INGRID FOGGITT <ingiboob@MWEB.CO.ZA>
Subject: Further News from South Africa
Dear Valerie and friends,
Apologies for taking so long to give some further feedback. Things
have become very involved with the SignWriting. As you know,
I am teaching secondary school kids SignWriting and we are in
the process of `translating' basic signs to South African Sign
Language (SASL). Many ASL signs are similar to SASL which does
make the process easier. The kids are not yet able to write `comfortably'
in the sense that they can write a letter with ease and with
speed.
Of course, they have almost taken over the process themselves
and I am like a `mediator' because they argue for HOURS over
the right way to SignWrite an SASL sign, trying to change it
from ASL to SASL. Amazingly, do you know that there are up to
11 different Sign Languages in South Africa??? The regional,
racial variations in Sign Language are enormous so, we can have
up to 6 or 7 signs written in SignWriting for one word!!! The
process is going slowly with what materials we have but it is
also going very positively because some kids are using SW in
English, to remember vocabulary. What I am going to do is a small
experiment: I am going to do a list of vocabulary words (taken
out of context of a story, of course) and we will do the meanings
in English, without the SW additions as well. We will do a test
on this. And then, we will do another list of vocabulary but
with the English meanings AND the SW depiction as well. And then
do a test. It will be interesting to compare the results?
In addition, the principal at the school has asked me to do a
demonstration of SW to other teachers. Their reactions will be
interesting and I am rather nervous about this!!! But after the
demonstration, I will share with everyone what happened.
Yours in SignWriting
INGRID FOGGITT
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Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 09:40:13 +0200
Sender: SignWriting List <SW-L@ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA>
From: INGRID FOGGITT <ingiboob@MWEB.CO.ZA>
Subject: SignWriting as a gateway?
Hi everybody....
I hit upon an interesting revelation yesterday at school. However,
I would like to share some background first. At a recent lecture
on Deaf Education and Wits University in Johannesburg, the following
statistics were revealed: In South Africa, the average Deaf school
leaver has the general knowledge of what is thought to be 'normal'
at 8 years old and writing skills of what is thought to be `normal'
at 10 years old. This is a very sad fact of Deaf Education in
South Africa (if there is any true form of that!) and it shows
what a disservice education has done to Deaf people in this country.
Much of this results from past historical realities of education
in South Africa: separate learning, the Bantu Education Act,
oralism, etc. It is also widespread that many Deaf people in
South Africa are functionally illiterate: they can read words,
word for word, but are unable to group the words together to
understand what the words as a group are saying (i.e. comprehension
skills). This does not mean, however, that they do not have anything
between their ears! The main means of expression is Sign Language
which often reveals the person to be having a deep sense of understanding
about the world and very knowledgeable. However, present assessment
methods to not allow for these Deaf kids to be fairly assessed:
assessment methods are done through written English. We are trying
to make it recognised that a precentage of exam marks be allocated
to an `oral' (i.e. Sign Language) component to allow the children
to express themselves and what they know through a mode with
which they are comfortable and which more adequately reveals
what they know than written English.
The point is: some of those kids at school who are desperately
weak in written English skills and who find this means of expression
virtually impossible have taken to Sign Writing much more enthusiastically
than those kids who do have the writing skills to express themselves
(not to say that these kids are not enthusiastic!).
I realised that there must be something very important in this!
Those kids who find writing English virtually impossible might
be able to rather write in SignWriting??? Exams, tests, worksheets,
etc in SignWriting as a percentage of the whole exam? This is
a very interesting insight. One boy, Glen, who is functionally
illiterate (he missed YEARS of schooling) has already taken to
jotting down SignWriting in his other subjects: maths, biology,
english, etc. The present lack of having a book that serves as
a `dictionary' to what ALL the symbols in SW mean (e.g. the big
black dot, the 'number' symbol #, etc) has not deterred Glen
at all -- he has independently worked his way around this by
attaching his OWN meanings to symbols. I have not encouraged
this otherwise he might end up with his own SW system that no
one else understands. HOwever, for now it is working for him
and I told him that when we receive more SW materials, we will
work on substituting his own SW symbols with the more `universal'
ones. Hope that this is the right thing to do?
Anyway, watch this space -- more to come.
Yours in SignWriting
Ingrid Foggitt
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Sat Mar 4 05:12:53 2000
Sender: SignWriting List <SW-L@ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA>
From: INGRID FOGGITT <ingiboob@MWEB.CO.ZA>
Subject: Deaf Education in South Africa
Dear Trevor and other SignWriting members
Trevor, this is in response to your queries re ages and ethnic
origins amongst Deaf school leavers in South Africa.
As we know in the history of South AFrica, white people had more
benefits than black people. The result of this is that white
Deaf school leavers have had better general knowledge and writing
skills than black school leavers (or those still in schoo, for
that matter). The Bantu Education Act was a separate schooling
policy for black schools, much inferior than policies at white
schools. White schools had better qualified teachers than black
schools. At white Deaf schools, oralism was the basis for education
while at black Deaf schools, the children were left to their
own devices in many cases or they simply sat at home without
any education for many years. This has largely resulted in a
highly illiterate Deaf community in South Africa - at least 70
% functionally illiterate. However, the Sign Language of the
black Deaf is much, much richer and developed than that of the
white Deaf because the black Deaf were allowed to sign much more
than the white Deaf (where Sign Language was strictly forbidden
for many years). Nevertheless, the average black Deaf school
leaver is 22 years old and with the white Deaf, it is a few years
younger (18). However, since the abolishment of separate schooling
in 1994, schools are now multiracial and this is where the inequalities
in education in the past become very evident. It is going to
take a number of years to bridge the gap. However, just because
of the poor literacy levels amongst the Deaf community, there
is a very rich Sign Language culture (esp in the black Deaf communities).
However, Sign Language and Deaf Culture in South Africa is a
largely unexplored and unchartered territory which leaves much
space for research and documentation -- which has started in
the last five years. So, we have a long way to go!
I hope this answers your questions?
Best
Ingrid
Sat Mar 4 06:58:52 2000
Sender: SignWriting List <SW-L@ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA>
From: INGRID FOGGITT <ingiboob@MWEB.CO.ZA>
Subject: Re: Sign Language in South Africa
Dear Trevor and SW members
I will ask the person who gave the lecture what her sources were
and then I will email you the details. Sign Language is not an
official language here in SA but it is part of our constitution
and also the South AFrican Schools Act where it is recognised
as a medium of instruction for the Deaf. We also have a National
Deaf MP (first in SA) and I would be happy to put you in touch
with her as she is very knowledgeable on statistics about the
Deaf in SA so would be able to give you more concrete information
and would be a more quotable resource.
I will let you know.
Good Luck
Ingrid
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