I am the only deaf professor at Hofstra, a university having 500 full-time professors and another 600 adjunct (part-time) instructors. Unlike most of my colleagues on campus, I learn best by reading, alone. They tend to learn best by listening and by interacting with other people. They enjoy going to conferences and conventions. I don't; I attend such gatherings only if I am a scheduled speaker. This is a learning-style difference, despite the fact that in this case it is traceable to the facts that I can't hear and that I grew up learning this way, because there were no interpreters in my elementary, secondary, or college classes. There are, nonetheless, people whose hearing is not impaired who learn well with this same learning style. Traditional education, featuring as it does a teacher lecturing aurally to a room filled with listeners, is not readily amenable to that kind of learning.

There are, of course, people who learn very differently from the way I do. For them, the traditional textbook, supplemented by instructor hand-outs in class, assigned journal articles, et cetera, features too much reading. Some would rather participate in experiences, learning by doing. Some would enjoy listening to texts, articles, and other information sources. In fact, I have friends who are blind who tell me that their ideal learning mode is to play back an audio tape at twice to three times normal conversational speed. They use tape recorders having very rapid playback speeds (350 words per minute to 500 or even more words per minute). By listening to information at those speeds, these blind students force themselves to really concentrate. They report to me that their memories are far sharper, simply because of that intense concentration.