I think there’s a point at which language and language choices need to lose the political aspect they currently get tagged with in the Deaf community. It belongs in a wider category: our holistic health as individuals and as a community. I think that when both Deaf and hearing communities move away from the view of deaf people as a disabled group, a child’s language development will become more of a cultural interest point than point of shame and control. I am a deaf man born to hearing parents who uses both ASL and English and in addition knows a couple other spoken and signed languages. I consider myself a multicultural, multilingual individual, and consider this normal. Both my parents come from various cultures and use various languages, all of which I’ve been exposed to and which I use bits of, on occasion. I know that there were many years of oppression of Deaf people which led to the development and tone of the current discourse about the education of Deaf kids in America. It is my hope that we can move away from current two-sided, binary, politicized discourse and move towards the goal of giving kids a complete set of tools for survival, and not fool ourselves into presenting artificial choices to parents and children.
I’ve been reading interesting blogs by hearing parents of Deaf children. It strikes me that Miss Kat’s perspective, which guides the choices she makes for her child, is much closer to the concept of Deafhood than many American interpretations I’ve seen so far. This is a mom who’s allowing her clearly intelligent child to explore all the options she wants to, when and as she wants to, much as enlightened, liberal parents from multicultural and multilingual families teach their children, and apparently with the same excellent results. Her daughter can use ASL and English with what seem like age-appropriate fluency. She’s making choices the way kids do, trying out identity after identity. This is a human quality both Deaf and hearing children have, and a sign of health and developing intelligence. Self-exploration and self-understanding, in addition to learning to analyze what kinds of pressures are coming from the outside world (like pressure to conform to one language or group) and what pressures come from within (like the needs Deaf people do have, and the needs Deaf people from hearing families do have) are, for me, at the very core of Deafhood.
In America, I feel our community’s discourse has devolved into a binary world which doesn’t really exist, and American Deaf discourse revolves around this imaginary binary world. Our discourse seems to indicate one thing or the other, and that people actually choose and use one thing or the other. The actuality is that Deaf people in America are multilingual and multicultural, the way any Deaf person from any country is, and that we can best serve ourselves by fully exploring our unique qualities. Once you understand that, the solution to certain education problems become evident. Why aren’t all Deaf schools teaching the grammar and structure of both ASL and English? Why is it considered “okay” for Deaf kids to just “pick up ASL” from each other? Why is it considered OK for Deaf kids to be mainstreamed in places where there are no Deaf adults? Viewed from a binary model, these questions are attacks; viewed from a more modern and multicultural model, the questions cast a different shadow. How about the expression “turnabout is fair play?” Would we put hearing children in such a program, expecting them to just “pick up ASL” from each other? What would that say about our respect for ASL, Deaf people, their culture, or even English? I think these questions are often avoided on both sides of the great argument.
The blogger Miss Kat’s Mom is often vilified by the Deaf community for getting her daughter a cochlear implant, and equally vilified by the oral community for allowing her daughter to explore signed language. I once had mixed feelings about cochlear implants, largely influenced by some early inconsistencies from companies and dangers of the surgery, but to be honest their proliferation has led to a more moderate opinion on my part. People get ‘em, try ‘em, and get rid of ‘em, and some of them keep them, just the way people did with hearing aids. Yeah, the surgery sounds gross, but some people think ear molds are gross, or breast implants, or abdominal muscle implants. Yeah, the companies make tons of moolah, but so do most medical and medical equipment companies. At some point, you need to step back and start thinking in terms of what is best for the kid, and look about for evidence, not simply accept what options you are told to choose from. (There was even a blog, recently, which encouraged people not to fight discrimination by teaching Deaf Awareness. It reminded me of articles in the ’70s which encouraged women to stop writing about sexual harassment and equality.) I felt the same during the AB 2072 controversy earlier this year. We’re giving parents brochures now? But what information is really in the brochure, and who are they getting the information from? I tried to imagine what such a brochure would look like. Simultaneously, I imagined my ideal, empowered, Deaf individual. It came to me that too often the choices presented to hearing parents of Deaf children are artificial and in many ways very binary, very either/or. Why should our community repeat the mistakes of those we’re supposed to have outgrown? Unfortunately, rather than coming together on the issue and presenting a united front that parents need to hear first-hand feedback from consumers of such devices and languages, our community decided to play Celebrity Deathmatch online, and so divided I think we fell, whether AB 2072 was to pass or not (it didn’t.) But the discussion didn’t, and doesn’t, have to end there.
As a Deaf adult I am concerned, personally, that there’s no clear, unbiased research on college entrance and graduation rates in high school for children who use one or the other “method” growing up-something unlikely to be considered by a brochure, but something which you can tell is on the mind of Miss Kat’s Mom, who is totally focused on her child’s education. From my own personal observations, by the age of 18, most Deaf kids who go to college use or learn both ASL (or signs thereof, if not the grammar) and English, just like kids who come from, say, Spanish families in America often are multilingual. I have met very few Deaf college students, no matter how much hearing they have, who do not use at least some of both languages, and sometimes several more. They use implants, hearing aids, and pretty much everything to communicate. There’s no picking and choosing for political reasons, and maybe that’s because most of us don’t live in pure, binary worlds. We live and move through multiple worlds, and learn skills appropriate for each, just like hearing people do, an astonishing truth which should validate us instead of frighten us. It doesn’t make us less Deaf, and I believe that a true understanding of this concept should widen the meaning of the word Deaf, not narrow it. (Of course, this kind of statement assumes that going to college is a major life goal that people think is worthy of achievement. I do think that there are some people whose lives go other ways, and maybe we should focus on high school graduation rates instead of college entrance rates. But frankly, there’s still discrimination against any kind of Deaf person in America, implant or hearing aid or sign language, and higher education is another weapon in our survival and success arsenal.)
In academic circles, the perception of the Deaf person as a multicultural/multilingual individual isn’t too unusual a statement. Look at the works of Mark Marsharck*, for example, who points out that a child’s ethnic, racial, cultural, and family ethnic background has as much if not more of an effect on their development than a hearing aid or implant; Dr. Paddy Ladd in his book introducing Deafhood tried to give readers a Freire-like perspective, looking at Deafhood as a way of seeing the individual as a multifaceted being. I once attended a graduate lecture which focused on a group that existed within the deaf community in the UK prior to hearing aids and the invention of the term “hard of hearing;” the term was “deaf can speak.” This group was a valued part of the community and often acted as a near-side gatekeeper, aiding in terms of communication. Deafness seems, in some ways, to have been less binary, even though there was, in some very practical ways such as getting an education, more discrimination and more of a barrier between deaf and hearing. So why are we persisting in this either/or discourse? Does it benefit us? I believe in our binary world we are shrinking and dividing the Deaf community far more than necessary. We all have much in common than we have dividing us – access, certain provisions in health and insurance, desire for rights and equality on both legal and social levels, to name a few things, and I believe there are more… Sure, there’s bloggers who take advantage of this kind of divide for numbers-hits. It’s exciting to vilify The Other Side. But one thing we should learn from the 2010 election season is that people don’t really enjoy vilification. In times of stress, we want to have real, honest discussions about concerns and, together, find the best way through.
Are politicians asking these questions of Deaf people yet? There’s an argument in the community that Deaf adults don’t have the right to make decisions for Deaf kids. Their parents have that right, and this is nothing but the pure, honest truth. What this straw man argument ignores is twofold: first, that there are no voices in the community actually clamoring or campaigning to take those rights away from parents (the very idea is ridiculous) – the campaign is for the right to advise them, as adult consumers of those very devices, on the techniques and languages under discussion – and secondly, that parents have the right to observe raw data (and it does no service to parents to silence consumer feedback from Deaf people and their families on either side). One goes to Consumer Reports for information, and does not necessarily trust the advertisement, no matter how shiny it is.
To tackle the first point: what most Deaf people seem to be saying, from conservative Deaf to liberal Deaf, is that every Deaf child needs the right to pursue the options they’re comfortable with, and not be imprisoned in a false ideology. The reasons for that are many, and the reasons against it are few, and badly researched, and seem to imitate many of the arguments hearing people make against bilingual hearing schools (the child gets confused, learning two languages decreases literacy, it’s not American to learn languages other than English, etc. etc.) These arguments mean less and less every year; it’s hard to ignore how many people are fluently bi- or multi-lingual and clearly not damaged in anyway. Speaking the national spoken language is essential for anyone, deaf or hearing. And of course a signed language is a fully accessible language, accessible at all times, and full communication is necessary for every child, and possibly necessary for their sense of empowerment. There’s a big part of the community concerned that we’re taking options away from children who must endure surgery. But in this day and age, when tattoos and implants can be removed nearly mechanically, that becomes less and less of a concern. We’re a designer civilization, after all, and the operation is becoming as common as tonsil removal.
To tackle the second point: Parents don’t need advertisements from different companies and ideologues. The advertisements already exist. They need life experiences from Deaf people of all kinds so they can truly understand what happens in the real world and get an idea of how best to prepare and advise their child. (See point above about how many whatever-users graduate from college, for example.)
As a Deaf person, an academic, and an educator, I have watched children grow up with implants who develop minimal language skills, and children who grow up with implants who speak and write English flawlessly. I have seen ASL-using children follow the same pattern. Nearly always, children who become successful demonstrate functional fluency in both languages, as do bilingual/multilingual people from every culture and minority. My conclusion as an educator has been this: that the device or language chosen matters much less than having a wise parent who pays attention to their child’s needs and development. And yes, parents, this might mean learning ASL, just as it means learning to change diapers, or hearing aid batteries, or give injections of insulin, to deal with someone’s homosexuality or choice of religion… being a parent involves these kinds of changes and choices. But you should make that decision after looking at the data, and you can only get the data by going to the source – parents of Deaf children and Deaf adults who, once, were such children.
Whether or not you believe being Deaf is a culture, it’s clear that understanding the cultural model helps one understand how Deaf people function in the world more than either the medical or access models. The proof is in the pudding: people of all kinds engage in discussions like those inspired by Miss Kat’s Mom and AB 2072. Clearly, no matter whether people use a hearing aid, implant, or ASL, there is something tying us together. Something drives both sides of our binary little community to engage in this discussion, and for all the vaunting statements about How Different We Are there’s a thousand similarities. Is this thing culture? Or Deafhood? Let’s call it that, in any case; let’s widen the meaning of the word Deaf; let’s abandon false binary images and other false idols and embrace the Deaf community and Deaf children for what they really are: vital, growing, changing, adapting: multicultural and multilingual.
And let’s face the implications together.
[*Marsharck's work was can be found in the Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies, Language, and Education (Psychology) 2003]
