Chapter 36: The Pressure to Speak

I wonder if it is universally accepted that too much time is spent on speech in Deaf curriculum and if anyone has not only suggested changing the curriculum  but actually drawn up new ideas.  The more I read, the more I wonder why it is a skill they insist on teaching instead of one they present the option of teaching since so few Deaf individuals choose to use it once they get out of school.   I don't understand why anyone would be rude to a Deaf individual who did choose to speak.  After the section about Marlee Matlin, I watched some video-clips of her on youtube.  

"Matlin has always used her voice, enjoys doing so, feels confident enough to take speaking roles, and stays in training...'If Marlee can talk so nicely, why can't you?'"--pg. 210-211, p. 4

What I found was not what I had expected to find after reading the quote.  I watched four video clips about Marlee Matlin; two were interviews, one was her Oscar acceptance speech, and one was a scene from Desperate House Wives.  In both of the interviews and in the Oscar speech, Matlin only signed (all three times with male interpreters, which was kind of confusing).  In the Desperate House Wives scene she spoke about half of the time and had her daughter on the show interpret for the the other half.  Her speech was still obviously that of a Deaf person.  The way they presented her in the book made me expect someone who would always use her voice and whose voice would sound like that of a hearing person.

I wonder if Bernard Bragg's mom got annoyed at him for drilling her until she could make the "k" sound.  That type of behavior (insisting on perfection) sounds an awful lot like how the authors described the speech pathologists of the old days.