Why did I write the “MindField” book?
By John Egbert
The basic reason why I wrote the MindField book was to relay my message to the parents who have Deaf children that is 95% of the Deaf children having hearing parents.
My parents were hearing too.
My parents were innocent as well as majority of the hearing parents being naïve about Deafness. Nearly all parents were told not to teach their deaf children Sign Language as well my parents too.
I finally enter the Deaf Culture at Gallaudet and immediately discovered my bond with sign language and communication with Deaf people was what was missing all those years.
That was my “Cancelled Culture”.
I married Shirley Frelich and raised two Deaf children. Thus four Deaf grandchildren.
When school came to having our kids to start their education, we could not sent our kids to Minnesota School for the Deaf. The reason was the school district needed our two Deaf children as pawns to collect tax revenues.
Shirley and I finally got our children to Minnesota School for the Deaf after long fight.
But we had problems with the Deaf school because of their system that was what the hearing parents wanted.
One day, we had a PTA meeting with parents and teachers. I asked all the people in the meeting,
“Why do we have 5 speech therapist classes and no sign language classes for those 70% of the students from ‘failed’ mainstreaming public schools? Do you realize that those 70% of the mainstreaming students learn sign language from their own peers, the deaf students!”? Most of the people in the PTA were not happy about what I said.
After the PTA meeting was over with, I walked to my car to drive 75 miles back home, the school Superintendent came up to me and told me that I needed to educate the parents about sign language. He said that the parents were the ones that can change how the Deaf school should be.
That hit me very hard!!!!
Driving back home, I decided to take a week off from work and went to my cabin on the island near Ely, MN.
The solution was how to have hearing people depend on the Deaf instead of the other way around. I needed to write something to make the society to realize their need to have Deaf people for survival.
So I wrote MindField, a thriller book and to see the turmoil possibility of chaos when 3 million hearing people got the terrorist’s contagious virus causing meningitis and became totally deaf within three months.
The story tells you how much naïve the US government is when the Deafness issue comes up. https://www.amazon.com/MindField-John-Egbert/dp/059542158X
Enjoy reading it…. You’ll feel good about yourself.