You still dont have a clue. Along with current medical research I personally know children now receiving an implant who are testing at 10dbs. Thats a fuck'n whisper.
Cain, I am perfectly aware of how well some kids do with their implants. That doesn't mean ALL kids hear that well with implants. There are still kids who hear at mild-moderate and even worse levels with the CI. There are still oral failures even today! Even at the latest yuppy auditory-oral schools, there are oral failures!
Even if a kid's processor is set at 0 dbs(someone over at Hearing Exchange said they'd met someone at an AGBell conference whose child's implant was set on 0 dbs) or 10 dbs, that doesn't mean that they are able to understand EVERYTHING or EVERYONE all the time! In some places they can understand pretty much everything someone says...but that is probaly not due to the CI being loud. It's due to the fact that virtually EVERYONE who works with deaf and hoh kids has a really good speaking voice.
Teachers, speech therapists, audis, and auditory-verbal therapists tend to enunciate and articulate extremely well. (they tend to have "professoional speaker" voices)
Not everyone in the real world has a "professional speaker voice"
Not everyone enuciates and articulates well. People mumble and have poor speaking habits, so that even hearing people have trouble understanding them!
People have thick accents and so on, complicating things a lot!
Also the child may be able to hear and talk quite well in a typical sitution, but when they are tired or emoitional their comprehension probaly goes WAY down! (espcially if they were deafened before their first birthday)
No one believes a CI is a cure for deafness. Its simply a tool to help hear better. Once you take off the CI the person is still deaf. Dont you even know that?
Yes, I do...however far too many people like you make it seem like "Oh lordy hallilajah! My child is "normal" and can hear just like a hearing person! My child doesn't have to learn ASL and be a begger who sells ASL cards in the streets!" Wrong.....deaf people with hearing aids and CIs cannot hear normally. They can get the gist of hearing, but they will NEVER EVER be 100% hearing!
Lots of kids with CI still have deaf voices, and they still have to have extensive speech and language therapy. Bet you didn't know that most kids with CIs still have VERY significent language delays. As a matter of fact MOST oral deaf people have significent language delays. They may be able to articluate and enuciate well but they don't really grasp the complexities of the English language that well. There are some deaf/hoh people who are really good at English but they are in the minority.(and they aren't nessarly oral. There are Deafies who are fluent in English) It's sort of like the percentage of English-speakers who become fluent enough in French, Japanese, or whatever language to be totally 100% familiar with the syntax and grammer and idoims and things like that.
Cain marko...why the HELL are you here anyway? Just to piss people off? I am not here to bash CIs. I'm actually quite neutral on them. I'm just cautioning on a Monolingal(oral only) education. A big part of the reason why Monolingalism is so popular is b/c of parents who can't accept that their child is deaf/hoh (oh, no my pweshoius wittle baby is not "normal" We can't expose them to sign. Sign isn't "normal") Believe me I know....I went through a LOT of the same stuff(and I see a LOT of parents going through the same stuff that my folks did as a child) as I grew up oral and I didn't get involved in the Deaf Culture until recently. I am not even totally fluent in ASL. (hoping to change that thou)
Hope u see my point of view.