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My Language Is Not English: A Deaf Educator Answers JB Mitchell

I have taught American Sign Language at New York University since 1991. My credentials and history sit on the public record: first Deaf graduate of CUNY Lehman College in 1992, Master’s in Deafness Rehabilitation from NYU in 1997, SCPI rating of Superior Plus, Iowa School for the Deaf from first grade through twelfth, twenty-three years as a Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor for Deaf services at the New York State Department of Education, and in Spring 2023 the first Deaf dual tutorial instructor at NYU Gallatin, where one of the two tutorials I taught was Black Sign Language. I write today because a man on TikTok who calls himself an ASL Communication Coach has been telling a generation of young people that my language is English. It is not. Marlee Matlin has said so publicly, clearly, and with the moral authority she has earned across forty years of Deaf advocacy. JB Mitchell has responded by calling Marlee an actor rather than an educator. That is the move of a man who has run out of argument.

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The Rental Life: What Happens When You Own Nothing and They Own You

In July 2009, Amazon reached into the Kindle devices of thousands of customers and deleted copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm. The company had discovered that the third-party publisher selling those editions lacked the rights to distribute them in the United States. Amazon issued refunds. Then it erased the books. A high school student in Michigan lost his annotated copy mid-assignment. A class-action lawsuit followed. Amazon’s CEO called the decision “stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles.” The company settled and promised not to do it again, unless a court ordered it, or unless the company determined it was necessary to protect consumers from malicious code, or unless the consumer failed to keep paying.

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The Zeroing of Knowledge: When Everything Is Known, What Remains Worth Learning?

Knowledge used to be expensive. It cost years of apprenticeship, tuition in the tens of thousands, decades of practice, and, more than anything, the brutal currency of time. A physician spent twelve years beyond high school before being trusted to cut into a human body. A lawyer spent seven years and a bar exam before being permitted to argue before a judge. A professor spent a decade accumulating the credentials required to stand before a lecture hall and declare, with institutional authority, that they knew something you did not. The entire architecture of Western professional life was built on a single economic premise: knowledge is scarce, therefore knowledge is valuable, therefore the people who possess knowledge deserve premium compensation for granting access to it. That premise is now dead. It did not die slowly. It was killed in roughly three years, and we are only beginning to understand the corpse.

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Arm Angles in American Sign Language: The Textbook That Teaches What Other Textbooks Ignore

Watch any native signer and then watch an intermediate student. The difference is not in the handshapes. It is not in the facial expressions, though those matter. The difference lives in the arms. The native signer’s shoulders engage when emphasis requires it. The elbows extend and contract with meaning. The signing space expands for formal address and contracts for intimacy. The student, trained to focus on hands and face, moves through space as if the arms were merely transportation for the fingers. This is the gap that Arm Angles in American Sign Language addresses. It is the textbook we wished existed twenty years ago.

Arm Angles in American Sign Language by David Boles and Janna Sweenie

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The Risk of Erasing History with Ignorance

In the annals of time, history stands tall as an undying repository of deeds, triumphs, failures, and fables that have defined humanity’s trajectory. It is with a tinge of dismay, and a hint of alarming concern, that we discuss the burgeoning contempt for history against the people who dare not to know. We’re not just combating ignorance; we’re fighting an unfortunate relegation of the past to the inconsequential.

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Scratch My Twitch on Boles.tv

The future now is here and you can watch it live, weekdays, on Boles.tv! Yes, Janna and I have taken the deep leap into the world of live streaming and we’re here to tell you all about it. The most interesting thing about going live each day is the idea that social media is really nothing compared to social broadcasting. You are your own station. You are your own dream stream.

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Columbia University in the City of New York 1931-1946

Columbia University in the City of New York was founded in 1754 as King’s College by royal charter of King George II of England. Columbia is the fifth oldest university in America and the oldest living school in the State of New York. As a graduate of Columbia, you never tire of reaching back into history to pull out instances of living and of educational memeing and of the loving of a life that remains to haunt you today — because way back when is always more perceptive and pleasing than the now and again.

I was delightfully fortunate to be able to purchase a large cache of genuine Columbia University photographs. Columbia has a certain reputation in the history of America as being a seat of unrest, and a center of the human protest against the status quo, while also trailblazing educational concepts for teaching and learning.

We begin our photographic tour in 1930 with this caption:

COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
New York — General view of the commencement excercises at Columbia University, showing the great assemblage of students listening to the address of president Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia.  There were 861 diplomas and 4,895 degrees awarded during the ceremony.  More than 20,000 spectators witnessed the exercise. 6-3-30.

In you look closely, you can see a naked 115th Street from the Columbia green!  There’s no Butler library yet — named for Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler mentioned in the caption — Butler Library would rise along the North side of 115th Street in 1931 and would be dedicated in 1934.

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Brander Matthews: Father of Dramatic Literature

Brander Matthews was one of the purist theatrical geniuses we’ve had in, and around, the intellectual American Stage.  Brander rightly believed a play only existed in performance and that the performance and the text must be evaluated separately. He was also one of the first professors at an American University — Columbia University in the City of New York starting in 1892 — to promote, and foster, the idea that Dramatic Literature was just as important a field of study as any historic cave wall painting or artistic sculpture or aesthetic structure. He believed in the power of the Playwright to form the world.

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How to Write a Boles Book: Call for Authors!

As the publisher of David Boles Blogs and David Boles Books Writing & Publishing since 1991, I am often asked by others to publish their works.  I’ve always been a little concerned doing that because the only way for me to effectively to publish someone else is exclusively and virtually and not under the complication of paper. Today, I introduce to you, Writing a Boles Book — a precis for learning!

BUY NOW!

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Raising Cynical Children in an Idealized World

Ideally, we want to raise caring and tender children who rightfully grow into wise and smart adults.  Unfortunately, the way into adulthood is, and always had been, fraught with predators and disappointment and liars.  We prefer to pretend these evil elements are not among us — and within us — and the ability for adults to repress inherent danger in the spinning world is what particularly places children in a purposeful peril.

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