We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I was naturally excited about my new position at Fresno State and pleased to have staunch support from the other two faculty members in the deaf education program. I discovered, however, that their opinion was not universal. I soon found myself in conflict with a few of the other faculty in my department. My first year as a university teacher turned out to be a rocky one.
The problem had little to do with me personally and everything to do with differing philosophies toward deaf education. Although American Sign Language was gradually gaining acceptance as an alternative or even preferred method of communication in deaf education programs at colleges across the country, the rate of progress was slow. For many educators who had favored and taught the oral method for years or even decades, change was difficult. That was certainly true at Fresno State. Even the title of our department—made up of the deaf education, speech language pathology, and audiology programs—reflected old-school terminology: the Department of Communicative Disorders.
I openly shared with my students that the deaf community has a distinct culture and language and that ASL had been shown to be a language by William C. Stokoe in 1960. I realized from my experience at Illinois that ASL was slowly on its way to widespread approval. Not everyone agreed with me, however. One department faculty member often complained about what I said or did. Another, in discussions with students, told them that I was wrong, that “ASL is not a language at all. It’s just a gesture system.” He was outspoken in his opposition to my views. It was confusing for the students; they weren’t sure who to believe. It also was difficult for me. I felt ineffective as a teacher. My supporters among the faculty told me to ignore the naysayers, but I didn’t find that so easy.
I was a bit naive in my attempts at resolving the problem. I sent my outspoken colleague books, papers, and other publications that made a convincing case for ASL as a language. I believed that he would sit down with an open mind, read the materials, and realize the error of his philosophy. But he never responded, and I doubt that he read any of the publications.
In my second year at the university, I faced another trying experience. I represented the communicative disorders department on a college committee that approved or rejected funding requests and made recommendations for changes to faculty proposals for research projects. I got along well with most of the members of the committee. They seemed to appreciate my feedback and efforts, for example, to encourage the library to stock more books in our respective fields. There was an exception, however. One committee member from the Department of Social Work Education never spoke to me and seemed irritated every time I said anything. I did not understand his attitude, but I didn’t react to his negativity.
At least that situation had a happy ending. Near the close of the academic year, this committee member began showing me more respect. He even started talking with me during coffee breaks. Finally, at one of our final meetings that year, he approached me and said, “I want to apologize.” He explained that he’d had a bad experience with a student who was deaf and was sorry he’d taken it out on me. I was surprised but pleased to accept his apology.
In those first years at Fresno State, the majority of faculty and staff were nice to me, and several were extremely supportive. Only a few showed their ignorance and rejected me, but dealing with those few left me feeling deeply frustrated. What kept me going were the students. The classroom was my place to escape, and when I walked in the door, the stress melted away. I loved teaching, and I developed a strong rapport with my students. They appreciated having a deaf professor who taught classes other than sign language, which was rare. When I began my career at Fresno State, I was the only deaf faculty member, although we did have a part-time lecturer who was deaf and taught sign language. Except for the faculty at Gallaudet College, I was one of perhaps only ten deaf people in the country who was a full-time faculty member at an accredited university.
As I had at College of the Sequoias, I tried to be as available as possible to my students, which allowed me to develop relationships with them and help them. I explained my willingness to see benefits in multiple education methods. A few urged me to publish a book to increase exposure of my views. They weren’t alone. Since I had participated in a number of newspaper and television interviews as part of a deaf awareness campaign, many parents of deaf children also came to me, asking for more information and wanting to know the best education approach for their kids. I’d already had the idea of writing a book that would be a guide for parents of deaf children and would cover the benefits and drawbacks of both the oral and manual methods of communication and education. No one had yet published a book that was comprehensive and evenhanded. The demand for useful information from parents and students, along with the resistance and ignorance I detected among some of the faculty, pushed the idea from the back of my mind to the forefront. Following the end of my first year at Fresno State, in the summer of 1980, I began researching and writing.
The project took many months and carried into my second year at the university, but I finally finished a draft. I called it The Silent Garden: Raising Your Deaf Child. I wanted the best possible product, so I mailed copies of the manuscript to a handful of well-known educators of deaf people and leaders in the deaf community. I’d met each of these people, and I asked them for honest feedback.
One of the first responses I received was from a hearing educator and high-ranking administrator at a college program for deaf students. I eagerly began turning pages. I saw that he had used a red pen to make comments. To my dismay, he’d crossed out entire sections of the manuscript and written long notes expressing his disapproval, using phrases such as “No such thing as deaf culture” and “ASL not a language.” The pages virtually dripped with red ink until they suddenly stopped—he didn’t even finish reading the manuscript. I was devastated. I hadn’t expected this response at all. I felt as if someone had stabbed me in the back.
Feedback from other reviewers began coming in. The members of the deaf community didn’t like it either. One wrote, “We are not vegetables—why use ‘garden’?” But most of the comments centered on my inclusive philosophy. Unlike the hearing educator, they didn’t like my favorable comments about the oral method. They wanted me to support sign language only. In fact, none of my reviewers said I had produced a good book.
I was discouraged and explained the situation to Karen Jensen, the head of Fresno State’s deaf education program. “Obviously, Paul,” she said, “you’ve written the perfect book.”
“Huh?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“Those people will never agree with each other, but you can educate everyone about the benefits of other approaches.” Other friends and colleagues gave me similar encouragement, saying that I couldn’t please everyone. I decided to push on. Despite the criticism from the “experts,” St. Martin’s Press published The Silent Garden in 1982.
To promote the book, I handed out copies at a conference that year. At one point during the gathering, I saw the “red pen” reviewer coming my way, clutching a copy of the book. “Paul, I loved your book,” the man said. “I want to help promote this wonderful volume.” I was surprised, but then I realized his apparent change of heart was really about politics. My former critic must have believed he would look bad if he denigrated my work. He had decided to get on the bandwagon. I politely accepted his praise.
More gratifying to me was the response from parents. Many moms and dads told me then and over the years that I had given them an invaluable resource, providing them with detailed information, different perspectives, encouragement, and viable options to consider for raising and educating their deaf children. This was exactly what I had hoped to accomplish. I am grateful that today The Silent Garden (the 2016 third edition is available from Gallaudet University Press) is considered a classic in the field of deaf education.
When the book was published, though, I did not know it would be so well received. I was troubled by the resistance I continued to encounter from a handful of faculty members. I also had begun thinking about how nice it might be to join my brother Dunbar on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a professor of dramatic art. I was seriously considering leaving Fresno when I had an unexpected and life-altering conversation.
It was graduation day in 1982, always a joyous time of celebrating an important milestone with students and their parents, other family, and friends. It was also an opportunity to visit with Fresno faculty members I rarely saw. On this day, I sat under a bright sun with the rest of the faculty on folding chairs arranged on Jim Sweeney Field, inside the football stadium. Next to me was a woman named Glen Doyle, a member of the university’s nursing department. As we talked, I told her about my dream to move to the San Francisco Bay area and join my brother Dunbar at Berkeley. She responded by arching her eyebrows and asking, “Do you really want to lock yourself in the ivory tower? It’s true, you could do all the writing and publishing you want. But you’d have limited contact with students. You’d be focusing on yourself—that doesn’t seem like you.
“I’ve known you just a short period of time,” she continued, “but you seem to belong in this area. You can share so much more of yourself here. People love you. People need more role models like yourself. You seem to be the kind of person who thrives on being with people. Why would you want to take yourself away from here?”
I sat back, stunned. I sensed that God was talking to me. I knew that my life had again taken a dramatic and permanent turn. Later, when I explained Glen’s comments to Anne, she was quick to embrace the idea as well. It confirmed what my heart had already told me. Everything Glen said made sense.
I decided I would stay on at Fresno State and devote myself to teaching and to my students. This was where I could have the greatest impact. I have never regretted that decision. I was also about to discover that a shift in my communication strategy would smooth the road in other relationships as well.