"othered" outside

transition

College, too, is a potentially life altering site for both deaf and hearing members of our society and three of my collaborator/informants have been in this crucial stage of development. My project orbits this transitional time, a time which might be our last great transition ritual aside from marriage and death. A freshman enters an institution of higher learning as a thirteenth grader and is expected to leave ready to go onto a professional career or further specialized education, prepared to accept responsibility and to act as an adult, and prepared to engage the ongoing discourse of American democracy as a full-fledged citizen. But the barriers to deaf citizens, unless they attend a college like Gallaudet or Rochester Institute of Technology which specifically cater to the needs of deaf students, are huge when confronting this rite of passage. In effect, hearing culture denies full citizenship to large numbers of the deaf and hearing impaired because it does not (yet?) provide the support and services needed for deaf citizens to become full participants in college.

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john in context | jenny & sue
deaf:audist | hearing pedagogy | enfi | techno-teaching
city on the hill | "othered" outside
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