Jane Fernandes: Teaching Herself to Write 
[Articulating Betweenity]
Educated: Being, Self, Other
Jane Fernandes: Teaching Herself to Write
Some of this intra-community Deaf experience—being between both deaf and hearing worlds—comes forward in the next three video clips when the interviewees set out to explain some of the more memorable aspects of “education” and “being educated”—as well as the important role of “self-education” and “educating others about deafness.” What also comes forward in these three clips are the sad—and also sometimes savvy and sophisticated—ways deaf people have learned to educate themselves and to achieve literacy in the dominant oral-aural-print language (such as English) despite the crushing deficit model typically placed on their literate lives. This deficit model seems, at times, to be the only way “deaf literacy” or “deaf people’s literacy” can be characterized—a point I take as one of departure and differentiation in putting together a non-deficit oriented collection for Gallaudet University Press in 2004, Literacy and Deaf People: Cultural and Contextual Perspectives.
