| |  Medical and cultural views on being Deaf
These two viewpoints on being d/Deaf couldn't be more opposite. In the medical view, one focuses on the deficit (loss of hearing) and curing it. In the cultural view, the person is accepted as a Deaf person and the most sensible language is used. Sign. In the medical view the person is brought to a standard or as close as possible. In the cultural view the person is appreciated for who he is.
Actually, the medical view is a demeaning one. It defines the person by his nonfunctioning ears. The ASL sign "box-mouth-box ears" is apropos because it means focusing only on the ears and the speech. Nothing else is considered.
Not considered is the person who may be intelligent, creative, skilled, experienced and productive. All that matters is the aforementioned two parts of his anatomy and their function.
Oh dear, Aunt Matilda is talking about her operation again!
Too many bloggers talk about their surgical experiences and go into detail what they go through in recovery, mapping, travel to appointments, in handling complications and breakdowns, and even in hearing birds or insects. That may be interesting to them and to others having similar experiences, but does not explain who they are.
 An example of a medical focus is Lyndon B. Johnson, here showing off his gallbladder surgery scar. This man may be President of the United States, but here he is a patient obsessing over his midsection, showing it off as if battle scarred. In this instant the world recoiled: is this the leader of the free world so undignified as to pull up his shirt and demonstrate the gory details of what was done to his body? I imagine that cochlear implant patients feel a similar need to show off their experiences and scars, but, please, life and the Presidency are far more than such physical details. Long after we are dust, the world will remember our accomplishments longer than surgical experiences.
Far more interesting is if they revealed who they are, what they are doing, their opinions, and their life-fulfilling experiences apart from their surgeries. In the case of parents writing about children, there is an emotional aspect that makes one uncomfortable to read about...because of the expense, time, emotional investment and parental uncertainity in them and leaves one wondering if they are missing something. Even at two or three years old, children are individual personalities with varied characteristics.
People, not scars!
I'd rather hear about Beethoven and how he worked by imagination. I'd rather hear how he managed his professional life, his creativity, earned his living, and related to other people. I'd rather hear about the kind of person he was and where his creativity came from. That he held a stick in his teeth touching the piano as he played is relatively unimportant compared to the accomplishments he made. Could you credit his symphonies to that stick? Would the same stick enable another person to compose equivalent works?
Similarly, I want to hear how little Adam took apart a toy and manipulated its parts to see how they work, or how Kathy observed a street artist and did her own interpretative work, and to see the work itself. I want to read the first scribblings of young Mark. And tell me that the baby figured out how to reach the doggie by rolling all the way across the room. And I'll tell you how my deaf baby would scoot under furniture on his back to examine the underside and that he now is considering automotive mechanics at age 21. And all of these would happen anyway whether or not the child had been implanted.
I want to hear how a teen or adult CI implantee is sorting out his hearing and deaf experiences and coming up with a new perspective. I want to hear how he is resolving conflicting perceptions and community expectations. I want to hear about new ideas for future generations to work upon.
Are the "bad old days" truly in the past?
Back in the hearing aid and oralism days, deaf children were constantly evaluated in their hearing, use of aids, their speech progress, were scrutinized, corrected and pushed and pulled, and grouped not by intelligence but by their facility of speech and residual hearing. I am told this does not happen with cochlear-implanted kids, and that today's enlightened teachers are focusing on the natural environment with CI-aided hearing. Well and good, but the "box-ears-box-mouth" focus is still there. Anxious parents and pressured teachers are aware that what comes out of the mouth and what information goes in the ears are paramount, and the child as a person is secondary for the first few AVT-dominated years. That has to leave an indelible stamp on the child's personality. Add to that the prohibition against ASL during AVT therapy and one can see the effect of a restricted environment during a critical period of development.
There is also the possibility that the CI ultimately gives a semblance of hearing akin to being hard-of-hearing, and we are all aware of the marginal existence of today's HOH people. Are the CI kids being prepared for a life that is neither here nor fully there? Is supplementing with ASL enough insurance to avoid this marginal feeling? Are the CI kids being psychologically prepared to handle the challenge of expert guessing and incomplete hearing? Are they being taught that they are still whole and capable people, regardless of the level of hearing and speech they may attain?
The guy is deaf, get over it.
The cultural model teaches that being Deaf is okay, that to have less than normal hearing or different speech is also acceptable, and that it does not reflect on oneself in any way. The box-ears-box-mouth concept is irrelevant as a measure of one's worth. The cultural model teaches self-respect; that there are Deaf people who are excellent models of adaptability and accomplishment and that oneself can become a worthy model for others, too. Tools such as hearing aids and CI's are only a small part; treated as minor assets or necessary annoyances or even optional devices. No emotional aspect is attached to them; no more so than for glasses or shoe inserts.
My wish for the upcoming CI generation is to know that although they may have more options than the generations before them, they are still welcomed along with their families to the Deaf Community to make their own unique contributions, and that ASL is the way to ensure this resource is available to them. I hope they are not being fed incorrect information such as that Deaf people are limited, or living in a lonely world, or are deprived of opportunities. Nor that they are successful because of the CI. Nor that they have to meet the expectations of the Hearing community even if it does not mesh with their own capabilities. And my wish is for all d/Deaf people to unite in telling the hearing community to see us as capable individuals unrelated to and regardless of our hearing ability.
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| | Posted 6/14/2009 3:04 PM - 824 Views - 10 eProps - 25 comments
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