Dr. J. Freeman King

Dr. J. Freeman King is presently the director of Deaf Education at Utah State University .  
 
He has directed teacher training programs in Deaf Education at the University of Southern Mississippi and at Lamar University.  Dr. King has worked as a classroom teacher, coach, Dean of Students, and supervising teacher at the New Mexico School for the Deaf and the Louisiana School for the Deaf.
Dr. King has published numerous articles for professional journals and is the author of two books related to Deaf Education, Basic American Sign Language Principles for Hearing Parents of Deaf Children and Introduction to Deaf Education: A Deaf Perspective.   He is also the author of Underwater Communication:  A Guide for Scuba and Commercial Divers. He has co-developed two poster series for classroom teachers of deaf children, Signs with Multiple English Meanings, and Signonyms.
He has been involved with teaching and research on the international scene, having prepared teachers of the deaf and researched sign languages in the People's Republic of China, Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras.

Mainstreaming Revisited: Is It Working? Has it Ever Worked?

The initial red flags raised regarding mainstreaming the deaf child were either ignored or minimally addressed, and are still prevalent today.  The tragic result is that more than more than two generations of deaf children have been lost because of mainstreaming due to the misinterpretation of “appropriate” and “least restrictive environment” as expressed in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Since the mid-1970s, American education for the child who is deaf has stood at a quagmire in the crossroads regarding what is appropriate  and least restrictive.  As a result, what has transpired, and continues to transpire, has left many deaf children educationally, socially, linguistically, and emotionally impoverished.
Far too often deaf children are given the worst of both worlds, instead of the best.  They are given a limited, partially accessible language, a limited social environment, and resultantly, a limited education. Accepting the premise that many mainstream programs for deaf children are inappropriate, ineffective, and most restrictive, how might these programs be structured so as to be appropriate, effective, and least restrictive?
The education that the deaf child receives should enable him/her to believe that being deaf is not a pathological condition fostering the attitude of incompleteness.  Rather, in a quality educational program, the student most respected by his/her peers should not be the one who is most like the hearing, but the one who is well-educated, successful, and Deaf.