I've worked with two Deaf professors and spent a little time with Deaf people (totally hearing myself). ASL isn't seen as a 'real' language and that everyone wants their kid to be 'normal'. So they get implants or hearing aids and never teach the kid ASL, so the kid has no formal language experience or knowledge, which slows learning. And implants don't always restore hearing, or even work at all. 88% of parents of Deaf kids don't learn ASL. More stigmas about 'stupid' Deaf people than blind.
Ah, yes! That has a lot to do with Bellās influence (I did say I see him as a bogeyman, right?) and oralism and audism. EspeciallyĀ oralism, since people insist on teaching those are who deaf or profoundly deaf to verbally speak at the expense of their education. :/
Honestly, there was a lot more I could have said on that in my post on sign language, but Iām not a history teacher and wasnāt going to be one either. My goal was to raise some awareness for what happens regarding sign language and to Deaf people. That awareness having been raised, it makes it easier for people to go looking for that information themselves. Or at least now they know something of what happens.
But since youāve brought it up, I can say a little more on what it means for the deaf. Especially for those children who are born to hearing parents and are deaf. I mentioned it briefly in my cochlear implant post yesterday, but there is an incredible lack of understanding for what it means to be deaf. Itās viewed like a death sentence, and doctors donāt help with the fear mongering when they tell parents that their children will never live a normal life like hearing people.
And parents may not want to learn sign language, so the onus is on the deaf child to learn how to speakĀ āproperly.ā Or for the implants/hearing aids to work, and theyāre notĀ a fix. Sometimes they can make things worse. The implants are surgical in nature, and thereās always a risk with that. Hearing aids can also only do so much. At one point, I was given a hearing aid for my left ear, which is deaf. Didnāt do a thing so that idea was abandoned pretty quickly.
The main thing to take away from this is that education suffers terriblyĀ if all the focus is on giving the child speech therapy and teaching them how to vocalize and form words and talk like a hearing person would. Of course they wonāt have aĀ ānormalā life if all the focus is on teaching them how to be a hearing person when thatās not something thatās entirely feasible. Sure, sometimes it works out, but thatās not every person.
But thatās why educating people is important. Raising awareness about this and showing that āno, itās okay, your child will be fineā is important. Maybe they canāt hear like a hearing person, but that doesnāt indicate the end of the world. It just means something needs to shift, and thatās not so terrible, is it?
And if these posts I make help change at least one personās life in small way for the better because Iāve helped raise awareness, then Iāll have achieved something.
