1880: Silencing the Deaf

May 10, 2019

By AHNZ

State Programmes always achieve the very opposite of whatever they set out to do. March 10, 1880: The Sumner Deaf and Dumb Institution opened for business in Christchurch and it was bankrolled by the New Zealand Government. Still up and running today but called Van Asch Deaf Education Centre.

Brutal German Method Empowered by New Zealand Government

Founding Principal, Mr van Asch was recruited out of Europe. He propounded the ‘German’ or ‘Oral’ methodology and rejected pupils versed in any sign language. Indeed, students who signed were punished. In van Asch’s philosophy..

“The, deaf mute, in his natural state is virtually nothing more nor less than a human plant. The work of the Sumner Institute consists in “the development of these plants into human beings.””- Press, 1905

Christchurch really always has been fertile ground for cranks and zealots. That would be just fine in a free market where the useful ideas can be separated from the useless and dangerous. In this case, though, the Sumner Institute had the oxygen of state funding coupled with legislative force to abduct deaf children from their parents nationwide. The School Attendance Act (1901) made special provision that children 7-16yo be snatched bodily unless their parent could satisfy The State that “efficient and suitable” education was being provided. This was far more punitive a compulsory kidnapping than non-deaf children faced under the same law. A real stolen generation!

One Hundred Years, right up to 1979 this dinosaur school lurched on as powered by the artificial life support as a state programme. A stagnant century! Government money makes tragedy.

Genesis of New Zealand Sign Language

What was the result? In the ‘Silent System‘ era of New Zealand prisons men learned a sort of ventriloquism speech. Also special jargon and rhyming slang. Jews in ancient Babylonian captivity galvanised their faith and invented Boney M songs, being more resolutely unified than the cousins they returned to who had never been enslaved. So it was with the deaf child prisoners. They emerged with a powerful in-group identity and their own secret language: NZSL; New Zealand Sign Language.

NZSL was created as a slave language by prisoners of the New Zealand State during their enforced captivity in the course of 100 years.

To this day the ‘equal and opposite reaction’ social effect of Mr van Asch’s legacy has been a powerful in-group identity community. State Programmes always achieve the very opposite of whatever they set out to do. Well, van Asche’s State Programme set out to create conformist ‘students’ to integrate into society and read the lips of ‘normal’ people. What happened instead was an insulated in-group community with a secret forbidden finger language and a grudge against the mainstream society was produced. They call themselves ‘culturally deaf’ and are proud of it.

“For us, it’s the deaf culture. We have sign language and we’ve got the deaf way, which is different from other people’s way.”

“Amanda Everitt, who was head girl at Kelston Girls’ High School last year and is now a first-year student at the University of Auckland, is equally adamant that deafness is a part – if not most of – her identity.”- The deaf: disabled, or just different?; NZH 2002

And it doesn’t seem to have ended with Generation X at all, despite those 1979 reforms. The Culturally Deaf have been battle champions of a Victimhood Culture for decades, pressuring for recognition and social change of the same type we are familiar with in the mainstream of 2019 (SJWs.)

Crippled by Request

NZSL gained ‘official language status’ in 2006 just as Maori did in 1987ª. The English language itself knows no such status°. The purpose, of course, is to serve Victimhood Cultures who temporarily stop feeling unimportant when they get this external source of self-esteem. After a Victimhood Group gets what it thought it wanted it dies out for want of battles to fight (eg Labour 1.0 under Fraser). More often, the VC group pushes more increasingly absurd demands in the quest for self-esteem.¹

Heck, I even remember a group not long ago saying correcting deafness for babies was tantamount to abortion: Rather, let the child grow up and decide if they wanted to be able to hear! That’s some hard core commitment to group identity there going right off the deep end.²

“But there are many deaf couples, particularly when they have had other generations in the family who are deaf, who would see deaf as the normal and preferred way of being and having deaf kids as being much easier because you can communicate with them and know that they are going to stay connected to your world.”- ibid

So, in a very similar way to Truby King + The State warping generations of children and Clarence Beeby + The State warped generations of scholars, Mr van Asche warped generations of the deaf in New Zealand. The challenge ahead, in my opinion, is for the members of New Zealand’s deaf community to find an identity not based on victimhood; Not based on being oppositional; Not focused on the negative.

—

ª 1 August, 1987- Maori Language Act 1987 came into force. This was also a day of distraction, the first Lotto draw day on TV. And, it was an act that occurred just 2 weeks prior to the 1987  General Election

Note:  NZSL gained ‘official language status’ on 11 April, 2006

° Clayton Mitchell has a Member’s Bill, The English an Official Language of New Zealand Bill, waiting to be drawn to change this. (Waste of bloody time..probably a lame stunt to impress his extended family)

1 As Dorothy and her companions learned in The Wizard of Oz there is nobody to hand you virtue (courage, heart, home) from an external source if you will just obediently walk someone’s Yellow Brick Road. We are still deaf to this message.

2. This issue flared up in about 2016; Ref. “Should children be fitted for hearing aids and taught to speak, or should they use sign language? Or a combination of both?”; NYT

Image Ref. Mr van Asch in Stephens (1921)

Image ref. The Childcatcher; Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)

Image ref. van Asche sending a text; Te Ara

Ref. Contemporary logo for the Centre; Asch Deaf Education Centre

image ref. Sound and Fury (2000); wiki and Youtube [dead link. Trailer here now (2022)]

New Zealand Sign Language week first started on 10 May, 2009.  The United Nations International Day for Sign Languages, 23 September 2018

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