Transgressing the Object: The Laboratory

[Speaker rubs hands]

America's education system is broken

Do you all agree?

[Expression indicates that most do]

Education in America looks like
'Banking Education'.

Banking? You're probably envisioning a
building you enter and deposit money.

Depositing [Banking] is akin to opening
the brain and depositing information in it.

Does it mean we think, review, analyze,
discuss, challenge, and question information?

Nope.

We passively accept the information as it
is spoon-fed to us.

[chewing]

That's the analogy. Does it mean that we
eagerly and excitedly question, think,

and be excited to go to school?

Many have dropped out and have
gone astray.

America's education does not work.

The Banking system is run and supported by
white hearing men in positions of power

and money desiring control and profits.

Now moving onto deaf education. I need to
hold onto that concept and

give you all a history lesson before explaining
the current situation

Now, starting with public education,
which had three goals.

First goal encourages acceptance and
practicing the policies set forth by the

people in power.

Second goal is to worship. Not
challenging the policies set forth.

The third goal is to encourage shopping
and swallowing information.

That's all the three goals.
How are those three goals accomplished?

Back in 1800's &1900's during the
Industrial Revolution, the economy changed

cultures changed. The era promoted growth
and came up with mass production methods.

For mass production to work, you must have
mass consumption to exhaust the supply.

If you have all the supply and nobody
buys it? Overstock!

The demand needs to be generated, with
the ultimate goal of profit by those in control.

The ultimate goal is to generate
as much profit as possible.

In the 1800's and 1900's lives were simple.
People were farmers, growers, tailors

and were self-sustaining. Not by any means
wealthy.

Mass production brought in the concept of
buying things that people did not need.

In order to convince people to buy mass
produced goods, they turned to the school

systems. To manipulate it and to set the
goal of encouraging students to buy

the mass produced goods. With this, the
system has turned to an environment for

students to not to think. Do you remember
as a kid you had questions? Were you ever

told that you asked too many questions?
Those who asked too many questions were

considered troublemakers. This fosters an
environment to not to think.

This in turn, makes students passive and
gullible. With this in place, the concept

of marketing emerged. Targeting those to
buy items that they did not need.

People are led to believe the items are cool
and must-haves. But really, don't need.

NOW, with policies and systems established
by who? Not the government, not the people,

but the small elite rich community. One is
the Rockefeller Foundation and the other

the Carnegie Institute.

For public education, in the past, students
were not required to go to school.

Policies were established to force every
student to go to school.

This was to ensure that the system would
work as designed.

This would squelch students of their
enthusiasm for learning.

Making them meek, timid, and passive.
Thus, easier to control.

A person named Inglis analyzed and
identified six major functions of public

education. Three of the six functions
matched deaf education.

The first, differentiating function, secondly,
selective function. The third, propaedeutic

function. For the differentiating function,
labels were generated to divide based on

social economic status, disability, and so
on. Each person has a label.

The selective function, with all labeling
done, made sure there were no overlaps of

similar labels. To further separate the
labeled groups and isolate them.

For propaedeutic, to have the labeled
elite, rich, selective people to be given

education to how to control the other
groups. The goal is to keep the power and

wealth within that elite group. To give
them the tools to control and manipulate

other groups not within their group.

This leads to a large workforce of
passive laborers from other groups to

be controlled by the elites.

With time, schools have become
a chemical experiment.

For those who were
troublemakers, along came Ritalin.

[mimics a docile student]

Other prescription experiments were done.
All under the purpose of control.

We have standardized testing for the
purposes of fixing policies as needed.

Studying behavior and other experiments,
schools have become labs.

Eugenics, a man named Francis Galton in
England was fascinated and studied

the passing down of successful and bright
academics, physically fit soldiers who've

become leaders, poets, all passed down
from their family bloodline.

He also studied the impoverished, the
ne'er do wells, troublemakers,

and criminals. He studied both lineages,
and came to the conclusion that it was

pre-determined by genetics. This applied to
both successful and unsuccessful groups

With this, he dis-encouraged the
inter-mingling of both groups.

America prospered with this concept, only
accepting the best of the best to grow.

on track to successful growth.

Alexander Graham Bell embraced this
concept. In 1929, A.G. Bell moved up the

ranks and became a leader of Eugenic
Record. In 1884, A.G. Bell published

an article, singling out deaf people who
married deaf people as deplorable.

Married deaf couples would have deaf
babies, throwing the order of the world

into chaos. He wanted to prevent those acts
and find a cure. A.G. Bell was funded by

people, two of them being
Rockefeller and Carnegie.

With that, money were invested in both
public education and deaf education from

the same people.

The 1% percent of our society, the rich
and elite.

Controlling 99% percent of the general
population

We've been discussing public education,
the history, the Industrial Revolution,

Now to discuss deaf education among
those topics. How does it fit in?

In 1790, with the French
Revolution underway,

a battle of the people against
the monarchy and churches

who were part of the elite, and
controlling information.

The common people would go to those
sources for their information.

Knowing that information was controlled,
the people revolted. Be-headings

were done to Kings, Queens, and
Church leaders. The battle was bloody.

With the systematic institutions of the
elite overthrown and their sources of

information and knowledge gone, slowly
began emerging schools, trainings,

and colleges. Where students became the
teachers, teaching their peers.

At the same time, in Paris, France, St.
Jacques Institution, the first public deaf

institution in the world was established.
Jean Massieu, Charles-Michel de l'Épée,

Laurent Clerc all attended.

A man, Jean Marc Gaspard Itard,
considered as the father of

audiology, worked at the institute as
a physician. He experimented on deaf

students including Clerc. He performed
experiments quite gruesome.

Including nailing through the
nose and cheek,

some students died as result of his
experiments.

He took notes of his experiments
following Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, a

French philosopher's analytic methods and
approaches. Condillac's approach was

a disassociated, neutral person focusing
solely on the objectives

Feelings and emotions of the subjects of
the experiments were not noted or cared for.

Jean Marc Gaspard Itard also toured the
newly founded schools, universities, and

training programs to teach how deaf-mutes
could talk, how deaf-mutes could hear.

Those attending Itard's programs later
became doctors, joining their elite group,

where in their communities, doctors were
viewed in esteem, with their wealth of

knowledge. Remember kings, queens, and
church leaders are already gone at this time.

Doctors were now viewed as the top of the
knowledge foundation, and even considered

as a god. Nobody dared to question or
challenge them. With this, the blending of

the medical community and the education
community started to happen.

This overlap of two communities generated
a new category: special education.

One of the many categories under special
education is deaf education

Now I want to ask you, what's the real
goal of deaf education?

Public schools? Charter schools?
Institutions?

All of them share the same thing, to
control the minds, esteem, self-worth of

deaf students. To make them question their
contribution to the world as a whole.

The world is looking down on them, with
the purpose of elimination.

Pedagogy, the philosophy of education, aims
to have deaf students to view hearing people

as their superior. You have hearing teachers
for the deaf, teaching them to adapt to

the hearing world. The real world. All of
this leads to the deaf student's goals

and aspirations to become
a hearing person.

Our goals, self assessments, identity,
aspirations, negotiations,

power literacy(?) are eliminated and ignored.
We are instead told

to be hearing.

[Speaker recites a quote by Paulo Freiere
which isn't clear]

(?) "Those in power tends to make the people want to be like them" (?)

For deaf people, this is interpreted as,
"In order for deaf people to have power,

we must be hearing."

So, deaf education, summed up is your soul
and your mind under control.