Debian kernel confusion

[Zachary Kline]

Hiya,
    I have gone to people.debian.org/~shane, and looked through the kernel directory there.  I'm honestly not sure which of the large number of files I need to download, if any.  I find myself wishing that Debian would just include Speakup in the kernel by default--but you can't have everything, I suppose.  I have Etch at the moment with 2.6.18.
    Does anybody have any advice on how to proceed from here?
Thanks,
Zack.