dianrez's Xanga

What is wrong in Indiana: start with the OMB report

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:24:11 GMT

Patti Durr mentioned the December 2011 OMB report that led to Bill HB 1367 being drafted. I decided to have a look for myself and here it is:

Indiana OMB Report

After reading it, several items stick out:

1. The point is hammered that each ISD child costs $45-47,000 per year to educate while a mainstreamed child costs $1,000 beyond the normal cost of public education. (Really??? Only $1,000 to cover the cost of interpreter, counseling, and tutoring support services, plus various speech and hearing services?? And how many services are paid for by outside agencies, such as speech and educational services, psychiatric or counseling help, social work and extracurricular expenses?)

--This is attractive to anyone in the business of saving money who ignore deaf issues (i.e., communication and socialization, multiple disabilities and family need of support). A politician that wants to force budget cuts is going to be popular among voters that have no understanding what is involved.

2. The stakeholders that were consulted in this report did NOT effectively include any Deaf adults nor graduates of ISD. They are missing from the list of stakeholders mentioned. It is all from input by HEARING people, as if equivalent Deaf professionals are considered inconsequential.

3. It acknowledges there is an oral-ASL divide then ducks it. Rather than discuss its points and weaknesses, the OMB report simply "blames the system", i.e. implies an incompetent ISD management.

4."The system" supposedly involves a lack of a central place that gives "unbiased" information about education of deaf children and says that the ISD early parent program is biased toward the ASL side. Again, the people who have no understanding of deaf issues are going to be attracted by the idea of removing it from ISD, without realizing that ISD is bilingually supportive of both ASL and English and includes oral training in all its school programs.

5. Parents who wanted their kids to attend ISD earlier than approved by local school boards are acknowledged and mention is made of "streamlining" their wishes. That's good. However, the "system" that put roadblocks here are decentralized...which this report apparently wants to increase, not decrease. Parental involvement is promoted both ways: if the parent wants mainstreaming or ISD, the parent is supported either way.

6. Overall, the OMB report says ISD "mismanages" its funds and needs to cut back on its operating costs, and additionally needs training to meet state educational guidelines. The separation of the outreach program looks like a slip-in, hidden in a push to cut budget, but it actually will increase costs at the state level. The OMB report also makes the school look incompetent and implies the parent outreach program would be run better once taken out.

Wrong in many respects.

While it is good to explore ways to improve any institutional system, this report is wrong in many respects. It is an engineered paper intended to serve specific agendas, to cause changes that do not involve Deaf adult input, to weaken ISD by reducing Deaf board involvement, to arrange systems so that in the future Deaf enrollment can be reduced by people NOT involved in Deaf education disciplines, and cause eventual closure of the school through attrition of its students.

Fight fire with fire

The way to fight this "second wave of oralism" is on the same financial grounds that their proponents are using. We need accountants to set up sample what-if scenarios: what is the impact on the taxpayer if various scenarios were to happen? What is the impact on the local economy? What is the impact on the Deaf child that grows up and enters society? What is the eventual impact on society? We need sociologists to illustrate the socioeconomic successes that we have right now and their backgrounds. We need Deaf parents to come forward and say "I will send my child to ....school because....." and make a case for their credibility.

Patti Durr is correct in saying that the OMB report uses language she has never seen in other government documents. Frankly, it is unusual to criticize a government-supported program in a government paper to the point of saying it suffers from "a lack of management and budgetary expertise" and that "some ISD employees do not understand the state’s processes in areas such as budgeting, accounting, human resources, and procurement." Fixing the parent outreach program is described as "Early intervention begins with the accurate identification of hearing problems followed by the unbiased provision of resources and options to parents." which hints that improving education starts with improving the hearing problem!

Yes, I am deliberately omitting portions of this last quotation, but with a devious purpose. Those who immediately recognize the ironic overstatement are those who work with Deaf people; those who wonder "Huh? Isn't that an obvious solution?" are either totally clueless and/or have only heard about the few who succeeded despite having partial hearing.

Utilize those who intimately know the problem from the inside out

Indiana needs to recognize that its Deaf professionals know what they are talking about and that it is a gross miscalculation to leave them out at all levels--government, the school board, legislation, and administration. One token person isn't going to do it. As in the hearing community, we need a broad range of input from an increasingly rich variety of Deaf professionals, now more numerous than ever before in history. The OMB report and IND H1367 deserve to be trashed as flawed and agenda-ridden efforts.

Are we talking about the same people?

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 22:00:06 GMT

The Media

News media and reporters are not the most brilliantly perceptive people in the world. Any person with a hearing issue is likely to be called "deaf" and their accomplishments are likely to be said "in spite of..." or "due to the miracle of..." Stories about the newest hearing devices are usually accompanied by "cure" or words alluding to it. There has been one spectacular example in the past week: the video of Sarah Churman that went viral.

Why it went viral: people love these kind of sob stories. The reader is a sucker for stories of miracles thanks to modern technology and his need to DENY that there is such a thing as absence of hearing is assuaged abundantly. Firemen-saving-kittens-stuck-in-a-tree stories appeal to this crowd.

Denial and Cures

What is it that makes people hurry to "fix" us? The word was used deliberately. Ohh, the kid's deaf! Ohh, he doesn't hear consonants! Hang a hearing aid on him! Better yet, hang two hearing aids on him! Doctor, where do we get cochlear implants?! Reading the comments below Sarah's YouTube video shows a few examples of parents picking up hope from the video and asking their audiologists if they "missed something" and could their child have a similar middle-ear implant?
Chris Heuer nailed it when he said: "My teacher wanted me to have that hearing aid on, because that’s what other people wanted… from the audiologist to my mother to the principal. Something was supposed to be done about the problem of my deafness, you see, and if I had that hearing aid on, regardless of whether it worked or not, something was being done. That’s what mattered."

People don't like insoluble problems. Sick? Take a pill. Car break down? Replace the alternator. Bad neighbor? Sue him. Want a new carpet to replace the old? Get a loan. Everything is fixable, and our definition of what a problem is and how to fix it is frequently narrow and lacks alternative solutions. Deaf? Now THAT is a problem. Only one way to fix it: get the hearing back at all costs.

Then we have people who defend the people who are involved in the quest to hear again. Mike McConnell is one. Immediately he jumps on people who point out the flaws in such cures by way of electronic and mechanical devices: "Why is it so hard to congratulate a grown deaf adult seeing the immediate (and emotional) success from her implantable hearing aid in a video?" He has written several consecutive blogs, each insisting that Sarah is deaf four different ways and is still deaf when she turns off the implant. He adds, "Those people need to take their brains out of the gutter and stop with the stereotyping of what deaf people can or cannot do, especially on the ability to speak well. This is especially true coming from deaf people themselves which serves only an ironic and hypocritical reminder. Yet people continue with this conspiracy theory thinking something's afoot. Practically insinuating that she is not deaf because there is no way she can speak that well. No way!! Well, get over it folks, she is deaf."

We are NOT talking about the same people.

People who have even a slight amount of hearing at some point, or who were born with hearing, are able to make the most of it in many cases and these are the ones most helped by hearing aids or later cochlear implants or the new implantable middle-ear device. Those with excellent auditory memory do the best of all. That the media and some bloggers continue to categorize them as "deaf" is misleading: these people are not, NOT deaf.

There are so many different types of hearing LOSS. I used this word deliberately. They are people with auditory memory going way back, even unconsciously; they have brain pathways in the speech range that worked at one time, and may still work. Then they "suffered" a LOSS. The memory traces are still there, however.

Hard of hearing people have this, too. McConnell, himself hard-of-hearing, acknowledges that there are different types of hearing LOSS, but he makes the mistake of lumping profoundly deaf people into this group. These are people without any auditory memory from birth, and even with early cochlear implants, may not always develop useful hearing as Heuer points out in his article.

A few profoundly deaf people have cochlear implants and are said to be living as hearing people, such as the Chaikof sisters of Cochlearimplantonline.com. Many, as all of us personally know, do not hear as well and as many stash them in drawers as those that use them. (Heuer)

Truth for Readers

So, for the sake of truth in blogging and truth in reporting, let us carefully use the word "deaf" to mean exactly that. Deaf: having little usable hearing for speech. Having little usable hearing for environmental sounds. Having little usable hearing even with devices. Additionally: having been deaf from early on, they are well adapted and comfortable in life as deaf people. They are often also culturally Deaf, which means they have the comfort and support of an entire community united by a common language. Their lifestyle is built around everything except hearing.

When talking about the other kind, such as Sarah Churman's example, let us use the expressions "hearing impaired" or "hard of hearing" even if there are times when they are functionally deaf. These are the people who frequently use the word "disability" and seek medical or audiological help. A lifestyle, therefore, built around the quest to hear a large part of the time.

Police Training and Deaf People

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 15:16:28 GMT

We're good citizens

Normally most Deaf people don't fear the police, despite the unhappy encounters that have been reported in the media of Deaf people being mistreated or killed by zealous police officers. Most of us believe that if we continue to behave as reasonable people, we will be treated reasonably by conscientious officers who recognize that good-citizen quality in us. And it is true most of the time. However, one must ask questions when one hears about exceptions to this. How safe are we, really? Are we more safe from criminals than from police?

Police are trained to defend themselves first before any other person. This is because they would be ineffective protecting citizens if they were themselves harmed. In defense training, they are taught to kill, not disable, in a weapons confrontation. They must gain control of the situation first and ask questions later. As citizens, we are taught by our parents to always respect authority, especially armed police. Usually things work out well as long as there is a minimal level of communication. Rogue cops that use their positions to express their own aggressiveness or corruptness are another matter, equally of concern to Deaf people who may not understand the extra danger they represent.

Second thoughts

Recently, my college-age Deaf son substituted for two newspaper carriers on vacation. I volunteered to drive for him as his own car was not up to the task. In the darkness of the suburbs at 3 a.m. we began the routes, taking papers from the warehouse to cruise up and down unlighted streets, searching for houses or mailboxes with numbers, and failing that, searching neighboring houses for clues to figure out the correct door to drop a paper. Son carried a powerful rechargeable flashlight from his tool kit: it could look like an assault weapon from a distance. We also tried regular flashlights, but they did not work as well.

He walked across lawns in total darkness, first approaching one house then another, his flashlight sweeping across fronts for numbers that might be above the garage, beside the door, inside the screen, or on a little sign on the lawn. The beam danced here and there, settling on a place and he would walk up, toss a paper or tuck it inside the screen door. The delivery list had specific instructions: on the porch, in the mailbox, beside a milkbox, back door, side door, etc.

This went on without incident until the second dark morning when we stopped at a closed business. Immediately we were blocked by two police cruisers. I held up a paper and smiled, Son did the same. Minimal communication. The first officer came to the driver's side window, at first hand on gun, then taking it away when I motioned "write" and reached for a pen.

"Were you delivering papers up the street earlier today?" We nodded.

"Ok. There have been reports of burglaries on this street, so be careful." We agreed. They let us go.

As we continued on, I thought of scenarios, as only a mom would:

Son going into a back yard to insert a paper at a building with two living units. He finds and fumbles with the latch of a gate.
A neighbor calls 911, expecting the worst. The words are emotional and scary. It's not the regular paper deliverer--who can it be?
Police arrive silently, hoping to catch a burglar in the act. They see Son emerging from the darkness beside a house.
They yell at him, but he unexpectedly turns away and goes into the darkness of another side yard, carrying something in his hand that looks fearsome.
Out comes the guns. More commands.

I don't have the heart to continue this what-if scenario any further, but you get the idea.

It's not so rare

There are other common scenarios: a Deaf person is standing in a convenience store unaware that a robbery is in progress. The perps are gone before the police arrive, but they see the Deaf person and immediately take action to "neutralize" him. Or a hearing person suspects a Deaf person of molesting a family member when he's unaware that he is blocking her way. Or the Deaf person is not obeying commands in an emergency situation and gets roughed up along with miscreants.

The actual news stories are not too far off from these imaginary scenarios. Deaf man walking in public with his whittling board and a small penknife. He is shot in the back and dies. Deaf man with slow bathroom habits is attacked with tasers and tear gas and taken down. Deaf man walking ahead of his mother on a public street is unexpectedly assaulted and wrestled into a fatal heart attack. These alarming situations seem so farfetched one can discount them and say "won't happen to me", but the fact that these situations are so normal is itself alarming. If a nervous cop can kill someone out of a blue sky because of failure to communicate, it can happen to any of us.

Hopeful plans to have "liaison police officers" and Deaf citizenry working within police departments are good as they can sensitize police to deaf people among the public, which can be as much as ten percent of the population. However, this is a big difference from emergency situations where people who don't fit expectations are considered at best, disposable. We need to establish guidelines for this--how to detect people who may not be hearing or understanding orders to obey, how to establish expectations, and how to extricate them from the situation.

We've all experienced misunderstanding and erroneous assumptions from other people. The gamut runs from the harmless and inconsequential all the way to extremely dangerous. In these times, it pays to be proactive.

Contemplating Our Extinction, part 3

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 23:27:41 GMT

The Naysayers: Defenders of the Status Quo

This blog will address some negative opinions about Deaf by deaf people. We call them the "naysayers"-- people who reject the concept that we have a culture and a language that are recognized as equal to other cultures and languages. (Disclaimer: we still must remember that in a free world, their opinions are also as valid and have equal importance to any opinion held by culturally Deaf people. Yet, one has to wonder. )

For naysayers, the objective is to defend the oral way of life or oral skills. Alexander Graham Bell proposed a world in which people try to forget that some are deaf; and deaf people forget that they are deaf. In other words, deaf people are to be invisible.

Naysayers resist the movement to recognize Deaf Culture and raising its importance as if it threatens their preferred way of life. Since they were raised to believe in Hearing norms (everybody shall hear and speak), a Deaf-centric focus is not only strange, it apparently requires them to change their lifelong orientation. A paradigm shift to one of "we can accomplish equal satisfaction and establish our usefulness without a need to hear and speak." Instead, they feel more comfortable in being invisible and to forget that they have hearing issues.

People who were fortunate to be born with partial hearing or an oral talent can get further with oral training than those who were born profoundly deaf with a left foot in the mouth and skills abounding everywhere except reading lips. People with oral skills land the first jobs and grab the first opportunities offered to deaf people, and are more welcomed everywhere. That's why schools for the deaf offer oral training to every kid just in case.

( Certain courses should also be offered to all d/Deaf children, just in case: visual skills in language, the arts, drama, dance, videography, use of hand tools and devices; i.e. skills not requiring hearing and speaking that are likewise critically needed in the wider society.)

In truth, the oral camp need not be defensive. The Hearing community already favors them and handsomely supports all efforts to create semi-Hearing people from their ranks. For naysayers to be writing and preaching to the Deaf community about the desirability of an oral lifestyle and education is like beating a dead horse--long after the horseless carriage has been invented. The odds and public opinion has always been on their side.

History of Deaf Self-Awareness in America

At one time, deaf people were regarded as an useful pair of hands; as many were absorbed into society in any capacity they were shown. In Martha's Vineyard they blossomed because of a common language; not only did they take equal place alongside hearing people, they also ran businesses, owned property, and even became elected to public office.

Schools for the deaf began to open across the nation, a few founded by deaf graduates of other schools or of Gallaudet College. Deaf people began to form clubs and teams and to raise families within those communities, and to socialize with each other when not working for their relatives or family friends.

Then education with an oral philosophy began to gain prominence. Suddenly deaf people became less than normal unless rigorously educated to become "semi-mutes", as Alexander Graham Bell called it. Almost overnight, a standard was invented: everybody shall hear and speak. With that, people began to think of nonspeaking deaf people as people of lesser status. Semi-mutes, many of which were deafened after they learned speech, became the stars of the oral schools, were given special status and all approaches to education was based upon their achievements. They also defined success in the hearing society because they could hear and speak. Besides suppression of sign language, formation of a community of Deaf people with intermarriage was also decried as undesirable and would result in a "deaf variety of the human race."
Deaf people didn't waste time fighting the oral suppression. They founded NAD the same year that the Milan 1880 resolution passed, and fought for equal rights and for respect of their sign language. When postlingually Deaf people became sparse thanks to vaccinations, prelingually Deaf people took over. Gallaudet College began to admit deaf students to their Normal School (teacher's college) despite the lack of positions available in schools of the day. We soon began to see Deaf superintendents, Deaf people in administrative positions in government and agencies, and as professors in colleges. Engineers appeared in industries, replacing the Deaf printers of yesterday. Computer programmers began to multiply not long after that. After a long period of rarity, Deaf teachers again became more numerous.

Rise of Naysayers and Doubters

The Alexander Graham Bell Association of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing organized an Oral Deaf Adults Section and recruited some of the more prominient oral deaf people. Scholarships were granted to those who attended oral schools and were admitted to hearing colleges. The ODAS was tapped for publicity programs and demonstrations of the success of oral schools. Publications mentioned them frequently and their writings carefully selected for the Volta Review and its sister publications. Advertisements and publications everywhere promoted the deaf person who successfully "made it" in hearing society on its terms. The overall result of this aggressive publicity had an unintended consequence: it devalued the signing Deaf citizenry as a people.

The Internet exploded and brought with it previously-invisible but articulate Deaf bloggers/vloggers. Then we saw the rise of the occasional naysayer who disparaged the renaissance of Deaf society. Some were hard of hearing, or had been schooled in oral methods. Some had been raised to be proud of their oral skills and not to need sign language. Some were social isolates or had experienced rejection during school years, or else were not comfortable for various reasons with culturally Deaf people. Along with a few who thrived socially and prospered, the alienated naysayers grew bolder, and tried to minimize the growing importance of a Deaf Culture.

Certain pro-Deaf groups sprang up: the Deafhood group that based its self-empowerment principles upon a book of the same title by Paddy Ladd of England; the Deaf Bilingual Coalition that focused upon making ASL available to deaf babies and toddlers; the Audism Free America association that identified root causes of audism and exposed them; smaller groups that promoted ASL as a linguistically valid language and its teaching; along with a groundswell of Deaf pride and Deaf identity consciousness.

Naysayers were uncomfortable having a Deaf cultural identity. With hard-earned oral skills, their ability to function in Hearing society as invisible deaf people, naysayers ironically felt their belief system was being devalued. Despite the relatively large numbers of hard of hearing and orally-raised people and the comparatively small numbers of culturally Deaf people, naysayers stubbornly write their opinions of Deaf Culture as follows (exaggerated for emphasis):

Deaf is not desirable. Deaf is selfish and odd in expecting to be respected as an equally valid cultural group. It is impractical. It is better to be like Hearing, to adopt Hearing characteristics and to live by Hearing standards. Deaf wants to take away the choice to be like Hearing. Anybody who thinks Deaf is a culture is lesser in intelligence and maturity, if not irrational.

Not all with oral skills or partial hearing subscibed to this viewpoint. Many more were comfortable with their bicultural status and easy function in both Deaf and Hearing society. The few who felt threatened were on the fringes of either group or were like the proverbial "one-eyed man in the land of the blind" who secretly wanted to be king, and feel compelled to write their disaffection repeatedly.

The Cochlear Implant

Some Deaf indeed did seem irrational in being against the cochlear implant as "an attempt to eliminate Deaf society." An innovative surgical procedure seen against a background of oralist overexpectations and overt oppression of Deaf culture. In the first years when failures were suppressed and disappointments more common than successes, this was a position even the NAD agreed with. However, today times have changed--since devices have improved, the NAD now takes a neutral position leaving it strictly to the medical sphere and having little to say about its everybody shall hear and speak goal.

The naysayers seized upon this early opposition as evidence of an irrational Deaf society and continue to talk about the CI today as if it were a proven instrument that works more often than it actually does. They predict the medical extinction of Deaf culture and Deaf society, and welcome the closing of schools for the deaf as if to prove themselves right. However, the trend now is for Deaf people to regard the CI as an imperfect tool with possibilities but not an end goal in itself, as is the hearing aid.

Goal of Naysayers?

Why do naysayers spend energy writing about shortcomings of the Deaf community, predicting its extinction, and vigorously defend oralism and the CI? Some may be those who see their objective as supporting eradication of deafness, some are hopeful relatives; and some may be businessesmen or politicians who just wish them gone.

And some are deaf or HOH people themselves, who are disturbed by a signing community that they percieve as closed. They could be afraid of competition, of having their livelihoods negated or taken away from them, or fear of being regarded as one of the growing-more-visible signing Deaf. They need not worry; their own ranks are more numerous than those of the signing Deaf.

Is the culturally Deaf population indeed headed for extinction, as some think? No. Statistically there will always be a certain number of d/Deaf people in society and the foreseeable state of medical enhancement still does not guarantee perfect hearing for all. The next blog will be about how the small culturally Deaf population is beneficial to society and why we should actively preserve it rather than leave it to chance or the naysayers.

Contemplating Our Extinction, Part 2

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 16:51:50 GMT

This blog will be playing devil's advocate. Not all hearing people (or even all deaf people) believe this, but there are enough who are saying it for us to be concerned.

We have evidence of whole societies and nations becoming extinct--either by disaster or by design--and with each one we lose something. Whether we accept this as inevitable points to the quality of humanity we possess. Do we consider these as necessary extinctions--the elimination of the weak, the annhilation of the meek? If we are accepting that the Timucua Natives of Florida became extinct at the hands of the colonists, so do we accept that the remaining tribes such as the Cherokee and Choctaw nearly disappeared at the hands of Andrew Jackson's armies driving them out of the South? Does "survival of the fittest" apply to human beings, and do we care?

Medical advances changed people. Those that would have died in infancy, we save and some grow to adulthood and achieve great deeds. Whole generations of African and South American tribes have been saved from epidemics or famine. And we turn on ourselves with a medical eye, in the quest for normalization unquestioningly condoning the elimination of the deaf among us. Those who are "normal" cannot understand the implications of eradicating deafness wholesale by any means available. The goal is indisputable: everybody shall hear and speak as if that were a minimum level of competency or fitness to be a human being.

Everybody shall hear and speak. Nothing is said about Deaf people having an advantage in certain jobs such as working around aircraft, in noisy factory settings and bowling alleys. Or in wind tunnels or subways. Even in the mindless cacophony of the typical office, a computer operator who is deaf has powers of concentration that fellow workers envy. Yet these same people are frequently told they are unable to work at these jobs because hearing is required.

Everybody shall hear and speak. Anxious parents who cannot imagine any future for their deaf children rush to implant their children and spend millions shuttling their kids from doctor to doctor, therapist to therapist, looking for a cure, an answer, hope. If they somehow met a working Deaf person or a professional Deaf person, they might be reassured that hearing and speaking are not neccessities for a happy life, after all. But still...! And parents are today counseled about abortion if an amniocentesis shows that the next child will be deaf. All in the name of good medical practice.

Everybody shall hear and speak. Politicians look at the cost of special education and vocational rehabilitation programs only to consider whether it is cheaper to just give them a marginal education and then give them SSI. Commercial people grumble about the cost and inconvenience of special accomodations while they squeeze profits from the larger population. Producers of mass media have to be dragged kicking into installing captions in all visual and auditory materials.

Everybody shall hear and speak. Big corporations seize upon this priority to research and manufacture hugely profitable ways to "normalize" deaf people, from surgical implants to businesses providing speech and hearing therapies. Professionals trained to make people hear and speak earn more than professionals who simply teach deaf people to become independent and self-supporting. Medical people frown behind their masks when deaf patients have babies. The ultimate goal is that deaf people would disappear by making deafness a curable, preventable medical condition.

Everybody shall hear and speak. Communities grow around this expectation and "tsk-tsk" over deaf people who are killed crossing railroad tracks or are shot by trigger-happy cops, saying "poor things, they should have heard." Loudspeakers blare away, announcements bounce all over the place, and the deaf person who misses his train or her plane gets a "tsk-tsk" and are grudgingly handled as special-needs exemptions. (Yet, there are places where deaf people are gladly welcomed--such as paying customers in car showrooms.)

Everybody shall hear and speak. This justifies the great expense and variable results of extraordinary tactics designed to make them hear and speak. After all, it is (theoretically!) cheaper to put an implanted child through public schools than a dedicated school for the deaf. It is assumedly cheaper to implant everybody than it is to retrofit all the public address systems and caption all the TV shows. It justifies the salaries of professionals whose sole objective is to "restore" hearing and "make" people speak. Last to be considered is a school system or even higher education institutions friendly to those who do not hear in spite of everything that is done.

Everybody shall hear and speak. This is an absolute expectation by people who feel threatened if people were not expected to hear and speak. People believe that deaf people suffer. So that they never have to face its reality, more will go along with programs to make everybody hear and speak, opposed to programs that also make the same people independent. It's as if the ability to hear and speak alone will solve all other problems.

Everybody shall hear and speak. That is the way it always has been and will revert to in any deviations from the norm. Special accommodations inconveniences other people, impedes development of the future, and slows down progress. People will consider those who do not hear and speak dependents and have little regard for those who fall below expectation, and permit the government to support them on SSI than to provide quality special education.

Realistically, we must face the fact that the direction is to eliminate deafness, the medical condition, and by corollary, all deaf people, including the culturally Deaf. It is irrational and illogical to preserve life with a "missing sense". After all, this is a hearing world and everybody speaks.

Contemplating Our Extinction as a People, part 1

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 17:08:08 GMT

In the mad budget-driven push by politicians, any excuse will do to SAVE MONEY. Dollars translates into votes.

When it became a matter of 1500 children in 11 schools in New York costing twice as much per capita as 4.5 million children at other schools, the politicians became greedily opportunistic with dollar signs in their eyes. What are 15 hundred kids compared with 4.5 million? Chop, chop, throw them into the larger category of special-needs schools with its delayed, difficult-to-justify and unreliable funding and save one-third. Leave it up to the local school districts to decide what to do with them. After all, it's just 1 kid of a lesser god for every 3,000 in public school. Piss off the parents of that 1 kid to garner votes from the grateful taxpaying parents of the 3,000. More votes means a fatter pension and more job security for the legislator.

Oh, yes, there's hearing aids and cochlear implants and that new method of teaching, AVT. Yes, listen to what John Tracy Clinic and Alexander Graham Bell Association say about the "future of hearing impaired children." Yes, don't forget interpreters, and even better, one interpreter and/or itinerant teacher can serve 4 or 5 kids at two or more schools. Shh...Just don't mention what it costs for those measures! Heaven forbid that they realize it ultimately costs the same either way.

For every "successful" kid in the mainstream, we can show a number of children that failed to learn as well as they would have in a 4201 school.

Anna was in danger of losing her first job out of a mainstream high school because she could not file properly. On investigation, it was found that she did not know the alphabetical order of letters and furthermore had not turned in her income-tax witholding papers because she could not read the instructions. Yet, Anna was held up as an example of the successful mainstreamed kid when she was 10 years old.
Micah got a job on an assembly line when he finished public school. He was supposed to count finished items by twos and threes, entering their multiples on a tally sheet. Since he got the figures wrong, he was moved to a lesser-paying job loading on the docks with the provision that someone else told him each line of the orders and checked completion of his work. He was first to be laid off in the next slowdown.
When I transferred to a 4201 school in the eighth grade from public school, my mathematics SAT was 4th grade level. The teacher put me on an intensive catch-up program that brought me to high school level by 9th grade. If not for that determined teacher, my math skills possibly would have kept me out of college or required to take remedial math.

There were institutions and there is the institution as we affectionately called our schools, the " i " hands tapped together in the "school" sign with the implication of WORK. These are large treed campuses, with supportive teachers who spoke our language and who understood the richness of environmental learning and social dynamics. Our peers, of all ages from the youngest that reminded us of ourselves in the past, to older kids that we looked up to--functioning as a family with multidirectional input in an all-day lesson of life. The lively discussions that started in the classroom and pervaded the campus lunchrooms, athletic fields, dormitories and carried out into the community on field trips. The learning that we soaked up from everywhere and brought back to the campus to digest. A haven from isolation by a community that had no patience for "communication disorders".

Yet, our constant hungry chatter exasperated the teachers. One became so irritated by having to flap hands at my class to pay attention, exclaimed "I don't know WHERE you get so much to talk about!"

It will take a larger effort than 1,000 individuals sticking up for 1,500 children at the New York State legislature. It will require a massive public education effort why Deaf and disabled children need a supportive community around them to nurture them, and failing that, at least a whole campus with a visible, living language and accessible environment to grow to adulthood. For every youngster that we lose to a marginal adulthood of unfulfilled potential, we are diminished as a people.

Children, given a good start in life, will put that to good use for the rest of their lives. We need to make voters understand that and to look beyond the immediate needs of their wallets toward a long-term solution that will ultimately prove cheaper in dollars and a greater human contribution to the wider community.

A Thousand Committed People were Just Grand!

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 04:09:39 GMT

For the past month, we had known buses would be chartered from the major cities of New York State, three from Buffalo, one from the Southern Tier, and three from Rochester; with more from elsewhere and downstate to converge on Albany's Legislature buildings. Somehow that didn't seem like many.

The third of three buses arrived at Marketplace Mall for the Rochester community Deaf adults and younger people accompanying them. The excitement was clear: the hope of impressing a staid body of budget-minded legislators was electrifying the air. Chatter centered on how beneficial the schools for the deaf was for them, and how terrible it was to experience mainstreaming. Convincement that everybody would understand that. How could anyone misunderstand the feeling of loneliness, of being shut out from everything except through the narrow pipeline of a single interpreter?

The bus loaded up starting at 4:30 a.m with 52 people boarded by the time doors closed and it began rolling to Albany at 5:15 sharp. The mild winter weather and minimal snow soon changed to heavy sleet and icing: the weather definitely was not friendly by the time we reached Albany. As the bus passed bus after bus parked on the circle, excitement grew as people talked about meeting and embracing others from around the state: long-not-seen friends and old schoolmates from downstate and further west and the southern tier of New York State. It was as if a family reunion was in the offing.

Amidst piles of frozen snow and slushy puddles, we deboarded the bus outside a huge building, meeting two more busloads from the Rochester School for the Deaf. The walk through the building's wide corridors lined with stores, restaurants and offices resembled a huge airport concourse. This isn't for old people, I thought, wondering if my arthritic joints would hold out for the two block walk. Political action is definitely for the young and fit.

The picture above shows part of the Rochester delegation of about 152 people: parents, students, community adults and leaders, teachers who were invited to speak, and RIT students who wanted to give support. Here they are waiting to go through inspection of their totes, backpacks and to go through a metal detector. Belts and watches were removed, cameras, pagers and coats deposited in trays and retrieved later. We soon arrived at the "Well", a large marbled cavern with a huge stairway at one end and a platform at the other. People packed this area, more than a thousand strong, alive with brightly colored signs and school colors. The picture below is composite that gives one an idea of the massive crowd.

Starting at the left, you can see the top of the stairway (partly blocked by a column) and moving to the right where the assembly is watching the speakers at the extreme right.

People representing all eleven 4201 schools wore mottoes like "We will be seen/ We will be heard/ We will take a stand" Other signs indicated what school they were from: ROCHESTER stood out in bright orange while other schools had purple or dark blue. Children in wheelchairs or carrying white canes were greatly outnumbered by those whose hands danced in air--of the 11 schools, 8 were for the Deaf and 3 for the blind or physically disabled. The crowd was quiet, standing patiently for three hours during the presentations and the various invited speakers featuring child representatives of each school. One by one, they spoke of the warmth and supportiveness of their schools, of the confidence inspired by being educated with their peers, of the camraderie of socializing with one's own kind, and of the loneliness of being mainstreamed or isolated in public schools. They spoke strongly that the schools provided them with an education that made them able to live independently and to go to college. They pleaded, "Don't abolish the 4201 schools."

After the presentations, the crowd began to disperse; about a quarter instead went outside opposite the building where Governor Cuomo has his offices. They lined the icy sidewalk in a light rain, cheering and yelling slogans as umbrellas bobbed and most people became soaked. The gray skies contrasted with the bright colors of the signs and the school colors. "SAVE OUR SCHOOLS" we chanted, some adults encouraging bashful Deaf youngsters to scream along with everyone else.

Even with the miserable March conditions, spirits were high and people cheerfully trooped back inside to have a meal of pizza and sandwiches before returning to the buses. Four hours and sore legs was the price of being heard by state legislators...hopefully this day will have been well spent and the disastrous idea of the 4201 budget elimination will be trashed for good. However, this is a battle that may be repeated year after year as long as certain people in government still hold the idea that schools for disabled children can be funded the same way as public schools.

Dear Governor Cuomo,

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 19:23:14 GMT

Governor,

Your proposal honestly left me scratching my head. I voted for you, being a huge believer in that the Democratic platform was citizen-friendly and had its priorities straight. Everywhere we balance many contradictory requirements: infrastructure, big business, the wealthy who control much of our economy, politics, the middle class, the elderly, the young, and the poor who make up most of the underlying structure that feeds, cleans, and maintains our country.

This letter is to emphasize that I became a member of the middle class because of a Democratic platform that fully supported education for deaf children. After graduation from a 4201 school, the Rochester School for the Deaf, I was able to to earn three college degrees that became critical in attaining taxpayer status. Not only that, my employment was in promoting the good of Deaf children and adults, and later, facilitating the publishing of law. This employment supported my three kids through college in New York State. I bought houses and cars, and a substantial amount of the goods produced and sold in New York during my 40 years of residency here. Education also helped me start and manage two still-ongoing businesses in New York State.

Without that education, I would probably have become working poor; giving it up early to live on Social Security as an equal alternative. Certainly without the Democratic platform I would not have afforded or made it to college, let alone support that of my kids.

Cutting the budget of the 4201 schools and consigning them to a generalist, rather than specialized, level of administration WILL lead to cutting corners and loss of valuable specialists in education of children with disabilities. We cannot afford an entire generation or more of inadequately-educated young people who will create more demand on social services. This proposal is ill advised, shortsighted in terms of future cost-effectiveness, and is impossible to reverse once it is in effect.

As a taxpayer who has experienced education both in public schools and a 4201 school, I can assure you there is no comparison. For the deaf child, the expertise and consultation that the 4201 schools offers is irreplaceable and necessary, and full funding is the only way to keep it. As a voter, I will go to the polls with this in mind in every election.

Please take this disastrous 4201 schools proposal off the table permanently.

Sincerely,

A Deaf citizen, voter, and mother of three independent adult children, including one Deaf son.

What Blogging Means to the Deaf Community

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 17:03:48 GMT

Who reads blogs and post comments?

It has been said that people participate in online discussions in the proportion of 90-10-1, or that 90 percent of blog readers lurk but do not contribute, another 10 percent may contribute occasionally, and 1 percent will be active bloggers or contributors on a regular basis.

What about Deaf people?

Add to this the fact that most d/Deaf people do not read blogs or watch vlogs. I often get comments ranging from "what are blogs?" to "I never watch vlogs, too much personal stuff and too time consuming." so would guess only about 10 percent of this population actually do read blogs and/or watch vlogs.

If we assume 552,000 of the U.S. population are deaf or hard of hearing: (cannot hear or understand conversation in both ears):

Then, of this number, we can calculate about 10 percent actually read blogs or watch videos...55,200

Estimate of those that contribute occasionally: 10 percent of this number, or 5,520

Estimate of those that write or regularly contribute to blogs: 1 percent or 552. We are also unusual in being Deaf/HOH, a group traditionally considered to have a lower reading and verbal ability than the average. The thin yellow line in the graph below represents this number. Even among our own kind, we are rare birds.

How influential are Deaf/HOH bloggers in the Deaf community?

On looking through Deafread's list of bloggers, 552 seems like a fairly conservative number. Deafread actually lists 836 "active" and 511 "inactive" blogs. Overlapping this are other groups such as DeafVillage, independent bloggers, and other Deaf blog and vlog aggregators, so this number could actually be higher.

How much does this 552 influence the thinking of 552,000 total D/deaf people? Or even just the 10 percent that read, 55,200? Through community gatherings, club meetings, social events and everyday conversation, the overall influence is hard to measure. However, today 40 years after Stokoe's breakthrough in linguistics, we find everyday, nonreader Deaf people who will argue that ASL is a language equal to any other on earth and that we have rights to have interpreters. Ideas spread independently of being published.

How influential are Deaf/HOH bloggers on the US population?

In the United States, the total population is about 310.5 million. If 1 percent of this have substantial hearing impairment and another 3 percent are people directly involved with them, that is a potential of 1,242,000 people interested in Deaf/HOH people that are influenced by less than 600 Deaf/HOH bloggers. That's a 1 to 2070 ratio (or 1 to each 517,000 of the general population.)

Doesn't sound like we have much impact, does it? On the contrary. In the Hearing community, a relatively few news broadcasters, a few writers and reporters, a few politicians and a few columnists or pundits have enormous influence on the entire population, thanks to the newspapers, radio, TV and the Internet.

The rise of the Deaf blogger and vlogger in less than ten years is amazing. The first Gallaudet protest was a generation in the making; the second one developed almost instanteously by comparision because of the Internet and personal pagers. Today we are still examining how it happened and note the startling increase in literate Deaf people, as if they were hidden in the woods all along. Now we not only have a exploding class of professional and technical Deaf people, we also have hundreds more Deaf educators, researchers, commenters, business people and an awesome array of writers.

There are other ways our blogs affect others: they become referenced by students and researchers. They become grouped with similar blogs to show the thinking of a people. Uninformed people learn from them and pass on to others. Parents, medical personnel, teachers and community workers are enightened by reading blogs and it all comes back to affect the Deaf people including their writers. They are asking profound questions like: what place does ASL have in the world? What does its existence mean for the study of languages? Do we have a right to exist as Deaf people? What is the meaning of a culture defined differently: by disability rather than geographic or national factors? How will future changes affect us, especially those intent on making us extinct, politicians intent on making us invisible, and changes that strip our unique needs from schools?

A psychology professor told me once, "Never underestimate the effect you have on other people." Because we influence the thinking of 500, 1000 or 2000 or even half a million people with each blog, it behooves us to be as positive and compassionate as possible. Yet we have a responsibility to awaken people to make changes for the common good including ourselves.

Audism in Online Job Applications

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 17:13:24 GMT

Recently this came to my attention because Son was applying for jobs while on break from college. Most places nowadays ask one to submit an application online, some providing for attaching or pasting in a resume. So he went at it, completing six online applications for entry-level jobs this past week. He was confident because his resume had a respectable amount of both college studies and work experience. For a young man in his early 20's he could show that he has energy and ambition.

The first one, Toys R Us, was for stockroom work and bicycle assembler work. It was completed at 8:00 a.m. and at 8:30 a.m the same morning, the following email was received:

"Based upon your responses to our pre-qualification questions and/or work experience, we regret to inform you that we are pursuing other candidates for this position at this time."

On further inquiry, the online application had included a questionnaire that covered attitudes about punctuality, honesty, employee relationships, which are good and expected questions. However, among these questions was one asking him to rate himself (above average, average, below average or poor:)

"I have excellent oral and written skills."

As if that wasn't enough, at the end of the questionnaire was the question:

"I (liked, did not like) the questions on this application."

In subsequent applications to other industries, Son got wise and answered all the questions according to what he thought the employer wanted to hear, not what he actually thought was an honest answer. Sure enough, he received two invitations to interview. One was from another company that also had the "oral skills" question. Thus far, the employers do not know he is deaf and will be informed of that fact in face-to-face meetings next week.

Question: is this audism? Specifically asking if one has excellent oral skills? Or even to ask if one has excellent written skills, if the job does not actually require it? In these times, the ADA does not permit asking about one's disability unless it is relevant to the job, such as visual ability for a truck driver position. However, there are ways to phrase questions that gives away information about one's age, disability, race or ethnic origin. For example:

Year you graduated from high school (gives an approximate age)
Name of high school (especially relevant if you graduated from a school for the deaf or in another country)
Location of the schools where you attended, including elementary school (gives a hint to your place of birth or ethnicity)
Languages spoken, 1) fluent 2) reads 3) writes 4) not fluent (hints at ethnicity, also if you are culturally Deaf)
Describe any gaps in employment and reasons for the gap (may indicate periods of illness or disability)
Addresses you have lived at in the past ten years (may indicate socioeconomic status or recent immigration)

And this double-edged sword question:

Do you have a disability that might affect your job performance? (One would answer no, but the employer might consider any accommodations as affecting job performance.)

This blog so far only addresses the screening process that is designed to filter out people who differ from the average. The fact that Son received a rejection letter not 30 minutes after submitting an online application, and even before the store opened, shows that computers are being used to weed out applications based on preset criteria. There are also other ways to screen out d/Deaf applicants at later stages in the process, but that's for another blogger to address.

Points to ponder: where computers and faceless screening techniques are in use, is it ethical to get around them by answering questions according to what is "right" and not honestly?
Is it ethical for d/Deaf people to use whatever means possible to obtain face-to-face interviews?
In hard times where there are more applicants than jobs, is it useful to cite ADA regulations to force employers to make reasonable accommodations such as interpreters for interviews?

Perhaps someone will write a booklet on canny job search techniques especially for people like us, and update it to keep with the times.

Once we found jobs through "pull" by friends or relatives, when one would simply circumvent the competitive process. Or we could use legislated affirmative action programs and quota systems to get jobs. Or it was a matter of physically presenting oneself to a direct supervisor and impressing him so that he asks the hiring department to write you in.

In 1980, Son's father had 100 resumes printed up, with cover letters in yellow manila envelopes including a space to write in factory names. He then drove around industrial areas, picking out those likely to use his type of machines, went in, and asked if they had openings. If they did, he would courteously ask for an application, fill it out, and put it in the envelope with resume before returning it. One weekend he simply dropped off the remaining envelopes in mail slots of factories. Out of that 100, he landed two interviews and was hired at a job he subsequently worked for many years.

Nowadays all jobs are offered on a competitive basis and computers are used to screen by criterions that may not relate to the job under consideration. Faceless processes filter out as much as three-fourths of applicants before one actually gets an interview. There are no more affirmative action or quota systems. In view of this, one has to change one's tactics and devise new strategies.