Freedom of Languages.

Three Stories that Susan Stocker wrote was about three different people from different experience base on their deafness or about their family member who's deaf. Pride, low self- esteem, and a father who loves his child but has no communication whatsoever with his son has effect the way they think of themselves and deafness. A girl who has not discovered the identity of herself from the article “Learning my Native Language”, A grown child who witness a lonely father who does not communicate with his child “The Hands of my Father” and a girl who has so much pride with her deafness in “Recollections”.

“Learning my Native Language” has taught me that not everyone are not comfortable with their beliefs, religions, appearance, race, background, deafness, blindness, you name it. From the class discussion, I learned that we cannot punish people who feels that way. First of all, they're not being expose to it. We have not educate those people. We, American focus so much about being perfect and expect everyone in every country on this planet to fit in our culture, learn to write and speak our language. Why can't we value every language that human can possibility have on this planet? This article has taught me that not everyone has identified themselves and we cannot say it's a bad thing. My opinion about this article is that I wish this character has a positive attitude and perhaps that will change how she perspective her identity. My question is that, if the ASL teacher at Gallaudet University has a better attitude dealing with Deaf and so-called-hearing/hard-of-hearing, would that change the character to enlighten her protective of “Deaf World? We cannot blame them for not fitting in our “world”, again, we have to educate people.

“The Hands of my Father”, The father seems to be lonely because I don’t think he know how to communicate with his son, he wants to tell his son so many things but since he couldn’t, his son seems to believe he know what he was saying by using nature. I honestly think this is a beautiful article. This article makes me realized that we do not need to say the things we need to say. Like for example, the grown child and a father does not communicate but they both knew that they share love for one another. People out there thinks that sign language is a beautiful language and I agree. However, I think silences is beautiful as well.

“Recollections”, this article kind of remind about me. My mama didn't like the idea of sending me to school far away from home so she put me in mainstream, it didn't go well. I used to come home and beg my mama to send me to different school. She later realized that I was being picked on by student who didn't understand my language and I could not understand anyone all day, I felt isolated. She noticed I wasn't happy so she wanted me to be around kids like me who could understand me and speaks my language. She later decided to put me to Kentucky School for the Deaf, she noticed I would come home on Friday with a smile on my face. She knew she was doing something right, however, she felt bad that I still feel isolated when we get together with family so she start teaching me how to speak and practice to may it right (it was never right, we had a country accent with a little bit of slang). I struggle for so long, I told my mama I don't see why I should speak all the time for them, if they wanted to communicate with me. They need to access my language as well, she knew I was right. I started to speak, some of my family started to sign a little bit and I started to write if they could not understand me. I understand where this girl was coming from where she has so much pride in her deafness because she was exposed to that from her family.

People are so different everywhere on this planet, their experience create their identity, becomes who they are in the future. No such a thing being exact the same with another human being. those three stories has taught me that, it taught me that people has their own language and they may be okay with it or not. But it's NOT okay for us to tell them what is right or wrong. It's a perfect world with various of language. Every language should be valuable.