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Comments
Wierd. It'd be like saying Diabetes is a "culture" of it's own. I know several people who live with it, and if science offers any chance of helping them, they jump for it. I saw that documentary a long time ago, and was shocked, and disgusted by most of it. The implant is just like giving a kid glasses or a hearing aid, a bit more invasive,but something that could open up the world to them. The selfishness of some parents is often a sad thing.
Posted by Andre at November 4, 2004 09:29 AM
142.166.231.144
I actually already saw this movie on PBS some months ago. It is quite as infuriating to watch the deaf father's idiocy as you said. The thing that pissed me off the most is that if we ever did meet deaf people who think like that, we'd never be able to reason with them about anything because we're not deaf. Ugh.
Posted by Mikhail Lvovsky at November 4, 2004 01:41 PM
68.239.145.143
I feel like I've gotta jump on this one. The big difference here is that blindness or a gimp leg doesn't entail an entirely different language.
To a pretty fantastic extent, language IS culture, and ASL is 100% Not English. (It's based on French, in fact, but it's not the same thing.) And languages carry all kinds of things along with them that aren't strictly linguistic -- gestures, whole ways of relating to other people, modes of conversation. As a quick example a friend of mine gave me, native ASL speakers tend to like their stories and anecdotes with a lot more detail than English speakers like. And next time you're around a few deaf people, watch their body language, the way they use eye contact, and just the general way they relate to each other. Chances are, it ain't the way you and yours do it. Deaf culture is real.
It sounds like the people in the movie were flawed and selfish, but that doesn't mean there aren't serious arguments against taking steps that will wipe out native-speaker ASL culture. It may seem like "helping," but keep in mind, that was one of the big rationalizations behind the eradication of Native American languages in the last two centuries.
No, it's not the exact same thing, and yes, there are quality-of-life issues to take into account. (I'm a music major; one guess what decision I'd make for MY kid.) But if cochlear implants become the default, ASL culture is fucking toast, and like when this happens to any other culture, it's going to be an irreplacable loss. It's not something to undertake lightly.
These parents must feel like the last generation of Yiddish speakers. Maybe universal cochlear implants ARE the right thing to do, but I still have to sympathize with that.
Posted by Nick Fagerlund at November 4, 2004 07:04 PM
66.41.74.111
But see, the difference is that this culture was created in order to deal with a disability. I agree, rich culture, sad it's going, but the cochlear implant would just create a new culture. It's like saying it's sad the letter culture is gone. Yeah it sucks, but now we don't have to wait 2 weeks to tell someone across the world about something that's happened. Sometimes change can be a good thing. And it's a choice that people should be able to make or not make, but they shouldn't inflict that choice on their child.
Posted by Amy at November 4, 2004 07:50 PM
142.173.23.168
Would you telll your kid he couldn't have a mechanical leg, and that he would have to live his life in a wheelchair even if there was an alternative. If a kid wants the chance to be more like the majority of people, and listen to music, watch movies without subtitles whats the problem. It bothers me that a child will have to go through life because thier parents have a emotional attachment to the paticular disabillity, it's understandable this happens. Growing up is hard and all thses parents are doing is making it harder.
Posted by Jeff at November 5, 2004 04:21 PM
68.150.234.206
The FDA can classify impairments as diseases.
Then no one will ever receive a cure.
Posted by Mr. Yuy at November 5, 2004 04:55 PM
69.244.64.66
"It's like saying it's sad the letter culture is gone."
No. Not at all. Letter writing is something you learn to do after you learn to write, which you learn do _within_ a language that you have already learned to speak. It's a much more rarefied and much less integral social whatchamacallit. What I'm talking about here is one's birth language, which one's entire concious brain is built around. If you want to compare it to something, the only appropriate thing to compare it to is the disappearance of another entire language.
Also, I should point out that deafness' status as a "disability" is kind of hotly contested, and you've got a decent chance of a cold stare if you say something of the sort around deaf people. But now I'm kind of reaching the limits of my knowledge of the culture; you'd do better to talk to someone who actually works a lot with deaf people.
Anyway.
Jeff: Not sure if you read what I wrote. I'D GET MY KID THE DAMN IMPLANT. But then again, for ME, doing so wouldn't result in the kid growing up speaking a different language than the one I have been think/dream/speaking in since soon after my birth. Should their entire connection to their offspring be weakened for the kid's "own good?" Man, I don't fucking know. But you HAVE to take into account the question of language and culture before you spout off with some thing about wheelchairs. Deafness ain't like having a missing leg. It's not even like blindness. It's something entirely different.
Mr. Yuy: ...I can't parse that.
Posted by Nick Fagerlund at November 8, 2004 01:26 AM
66.41.74.111
I just wanted to point out some of the fallacies in the line of thinking that getting your child a cochlear implant is like getting any other assistive device such as a mechanical leg or glasses.
First off, mechanical legs allow people to walk, glasses allow people to see, but cochlear implants do not necessarily allow people to hear. The acutal surgical process is often done at such an early age to the child that any mistake can remove any residual hearing the child has. Furthermore, if you've watched Sound and Fury, you'll remember the part where they showed you what it would actually sound like to hear with a cochlear implant. Not such great sound quality. The quality of sound is usually much worse than what they had you hear - that's only in the best of cases. So even in the best of cases, what a child can hear and comprehend does not even resemble the quality of sound that most of you and I enjoy on a daily basis. Hence, even with a cochlear implant, the child is still technically disabled.
Furthermore, it's not an issue of whether the child can hear, but a matter of cultural identity. Cochlear implants are permanant, they cannot be removed like glasses can be removed. Experts on deaf children agree that the most important part of growing up D/deaf is not whether you speak ASL or English, it's that you have early language acquisition. Cochlear implants do not always allow children to gain access (to speak or understnad) proper, spoken English. Parents who get their children cochlear implants are highly unlikely to teach their children ASL (because most of them are hearing themselves) and therefore, should said implant not work as well as expected, the child is left with no language acquisition until entering shcool, which is a huge developmental deficit.
Deaf culture is a vibrant and beatuiful culture that many Deaf adults choose to participate in. Yes, it was formed around a disability, in the 200+ (yes, that's more than two centuries) years that American Deaf culture has been developing, it has morphed into far more than a shared language based off of disability status. It is beautiful, dynamic, and complex. Furthermore, most Deaf adults would not consider themselves to be disabled. The simple fact of being deaf does not need to seriously affect anyone's life. You can still drive, have a job, have a partner, communicate. There is nothing that a deaf person cannot do that a hearing person can except for hear.
As a hearing signer, I feel honored to have been able to spend any time at all interacting with Deaf culture and learning from the insights into hearing American culture that they have gained as a marginalized people in the United States.
Thank you Nick.
Posted by Krystel Viehmann at November 9, 2004 01:17 PM
138.110.214.62
I realize that it's been almost 2 years since the last post has been written. I would like to throw in my two cents in this post from perspective of a deaf person, not to sound like a hump back whale burping a song called “Battah Lattah than Navah!" *grins*
I don’t speak; I use sign language as my main form of communication.
First of all, your experience with D/deaf folks seems to sort of painting a swath of generalized picture of how the D/deaf folks are. I could make the same argument about certain racial group that I meet. Everybody meets certain people in a classified group in varying degrees. They then make assumptions of the group as a whole without realizing that it’s just it’s simply a generalization coupled with irresponsible thinking.
For your information, by your writing alone, I could've deduced that you're a small, angry, and despotic person who tends to jump to hasty conclusion coupled with knee-jerk reactions. However, I won't since that serves no purpose in this lively discussion other than to showcase how easily a stereotype can be used to distort the image of a said individual.
Now exactly what is a mutant-calculator phone? Are you referring to a QWERTY based telephone using the relay service? A relay service is a very simple and straightforward system where a person is assisted by a relay operator in conveying certain information, whether it is via text or by voice. A monkey could use it, so to speak. It requires a lot of patience to use the relay service though.
What does “speaking a different language” have to do with the mutant-calculator phone? You do speak English after all? That’s what I would presume since obviously you wrote the entire blog in English so it’s only logic to assume that you actually can speak the language as well? The relay operator speaks in English? Right? So what’s the hard part here? I’m trying to see it from your viewpoint. I’m guessing that some of the clients that you received spoke to you in what would be classified as text-based ASL. That, I can understand, can be really convoluted to just even to listen to. However, you do have a brain? Correct? Well, I hope so; otherwise this post would be an exercise in futility.
Adapt. That’s my advice to you. Adapt by learning how to speak down to their level of English comprehensibility. The normal ASL user tends to read and write around in the 4th grade level. Sad to say this . . . you gotta dumb down your language. Now, don’t give me that self-righteous statement where you’ll say ‘I’ll never dumb down for others’. Puh-leeze. It’s your job to adapt to others, not the other way around in that particular position.
Now, before you make another hasty judgement about the education level of the ASL users. They can be just as well educated as you are or even more. In fact, they’re extremely fluent in ASL, whereas I suppose that you can’t even sign a single word besides the word that rhymes with duck. So from both sides of the fence, you guys are just as dumb/smart as the other side is.
Now, I must admit that I only saw Sound and Fury for the first time about a month ago. It was an amazing documentary that painted two extremely polarized side of the story. It’s almost as if the director was only interested in the extremists’ point of view in regards of this whole ball of wax.
I happened to agree with both sides of the story. The Hearing family was correct on choosing CI for their kids. Obviously they felt strongly about having CI, for they’re all hearing in that portion of the family, so it’s only natural that they would want their child to have the hearing “feature” as part of their child. It must be pointed out that CI is heard in digital not analog, as one of the post mentioned earlier. So basically you’re hearing 0101010101010 turned on and off constantly. It attempts to mimic analog sound to the best of its ability. It’s not a 100% hearing ability being miraculously blessed upon the individual the minute they get implanted. It’s what engineers like me would say “good enough”. *grins*
Not to mention the low blows that the Grandmother kept on delivering. I’m sure she’s a really nice person in real life, but the documentary made her out to be a vilified witch who would grab any opportunity to demean the deaf family by bullying them into submission.
Now, for the deaf side of the family, I do agree with them because they believe that CI isn’t absolutely necessary as long as they have the proper environment and family support to nurture the child’s education.
In regards of comments citing “failed opportunities” and “abuse” that the hearing family kept repeating as one of the atrocities committed. I know a lot of hearing people who have failed, abused as well as squandered many opportunities and chances they’ve had at a normal life. It’s not uniquely an issue identified with being deaf. *wink*
It’s more of an non-sequitur argument. Being deaf does not mean that you’re going to miss any opportunities or you’ve failed to maintain the notion of a normal human being. Sure, life can be hard, but who exactly has had an easy life? Nobody I know.
Personally, as a deaf person, I think that ASL should be junked and replaced with PSE or SEE as the primary language of the deaf folks. There’s simply no excuse in teaching the deaf kids ASL these days. Of course, that’s just simply sidetracking this subject.
The responsibility also lies within the parents, for nearly 95% of the deaf children come from hearing parents. What do the majority of the hearing parents do after finding out their kids are deaf? They refuse to learn how to sign to their own child, interact with them, and preferring to send them off to a deaf institution. Remember the deaf guy’s father? He couldn’t even sign worth a damn.
That’s the biggest crime that was committed in this documentary, the neglecting of a child by refusing to learn a language that the child and the parent can communicate with each other in. Odd nobody pointed that one out. If I had a child, I would move heaven and earth just to be able to communicate with him/her by making it my responsibility to do so, rather than forcing the child to learn in a way that is just simply not optimized for his/her enviroment.
(You were the guy who called me at the AARP, weren't you? GRRR GRRR GRRR HEARING WORLD GRRR..-- spike.)
Posted by William Harkness at August 10, 2005 10:17 AM
130.76.32.16
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