incremental progress

I was reading today...

and it was Accordian Crimes. In it, an accordian player is described as having music playing in his head all day as if it was something unusual - do any of my readers have a Ctinuous background music playing in their head? Full instrumentation and all?
Four point counterpoint?
I do, and I was always under impression it was normal.

Speech vs Communication

There was an article today in one of the papers we get at work about the use of sign language with infants. Apparently, some people are using it to try and hot house their babies, as babies can use sign language long before they have much speech. Other 'experts' think this is a bad thing, and that learning sign language will stunt the development of speech. Seems to ignorant little me that the point of both systems, speech and sign, is to communicate. The thing babies are learning with both systems is communication. (And two languages are better than one for brain development according to a majority of experts.) So why would learning sign be a bad thing? The baby is learning language, and the Cnection between a communication system and the world around it. No-one seems to be suggesting that speech is prevented by signing. Many say that baby/toddler frustration is reduced through signing as they can tell their parents what the problem is without all that frustrating guessing by the parental ones. It almost seems to be like there is a hierarchy (sp?) of communication systems going on here, and sign is not winning.

You know, I never thought about that, a hierarchy of language, with the language of the differently abled being Csidered less valuable. I might be spending too much time with the blind! I see 'em on the train, I see 'em in the weekend. Sure makes me think about different things... and think differently

Posted by Toni at July 21, 2003 08:01 PM