Reply to thread

You misunderstand.  I am not intolerant, nor have I aever been intolerant of anyone who has had a positive experience with a CI.  As said before on numerous occasions, I work with deaf students at the college level who have CIs, my son has pesoanl friends who have CIs and I know a few adults who use CIs.  It is not the implantation that I am intolerant of.  I am, however, intolerant of the view that the CI somehow makes one less deaf, and with the CI, sign is no longer necessary for the full and complete language acquisition of the deaf child.  As you are obviously continueing to use sign with your son, and state that he is still very reliant on sign for communication, you obviously do not fall into this category.


What you have mistaken for intolerance of those who have chosen another way is frustration over the attitude directed toward those who offer the evidence for another way other than the CI that can be just as successful.  I sim0ply cannnot, for the life of me, after having been directly involved for over 20 years on a personal and for the last 5 at a professional level, how anyone can still advocate that the separation of a deaf child from Deaf culture and langauge is sound educational or social policy. 


I have said it before, and I will say it again, and will continue to say it.  I do not oppose the CI.  I oppose the attitude that too often surrounds it, and that is the medalized perspective of deafness as pathology and something to be treated and overcome.  That is the perspective that has kept deaf individuals disabled for too many years.  It is the perspective that defines them as partially hearing, rather than wholly deaf.  And I refer to that not in the sense of auditory funciton, but in the self perception and in the perception of others.  I am refering to issues that lead to mental health issues that do require treatment--not because of the deafness, but because of the social issues that lead to marginalized status for the deaf individual.  I watch these forces at sork on a daily basis, and have devoted my master's level wrok, and now my doctorate level, to research on these issues.


If you will go back and check my posts previous, I believe you will find that I have indeed supported you, and other parents who come here to learn about the issues, whether their child has been implanted or not.  The implant is not the issue with me.  It is the well being of those deaf children.  It doesn't matter to me what level their says they perceive sound, or what frequencies.  What matters to me is that they are deaf, some with CI, come not, still deaf.  And it matters to me that they are given the fair opportunity to thrive and be successful that all children have.  Unfortunately, that is too often not the case.  They are handicaped not by their deafness, but by the attitudes of those that believe that the only natural and useful language is an auditory verbal language, and that ALL must adapt to and adjust tothe linguistic environment of the whole.  That is not integration, it is assimmilation, and it destroys the very systems that can help to support and encourage the deaf child in the face of the wider society's marginalization.


When you begin to deal with issues such as schooling for your son, and have the experience of attempting to obtain services that you know are necessary for your child to thrive in an educational environment, and run up against those systems that are insensitive at best, at worst downright uncaring, when you encounter the situation of funding being more important than the proper education of your deaf child, when you see individual teachers allowing him to sit in the back of the room to grasp whatever he can by sheer effort on his part becasue they have neither the training nor the time to work with him on his own terms--after some of these experiences you may change your mind and see me as justified in my intolerance.


I do not advocate for those who only use sign.  I currently have under my office, 4 oral students as well.  I advocate for them, as they as well, need special support services to insure that they receive equal opportunity for education that is equal to that provided the hearing students.


When you see my responses to some of the posters who continue to insist that deaf children with CI can now hear and therefore have no use for deaf culture or sign language, you perhaps judge my beliefs and my convictions on those posts alone.  Deaf children with CI can hear, and some deaf children with HA can hear, and some deaf children even receive benefit from personal FM systems.  However, they are all still deaf, and they all still need to be recognized as such.  It is the distinctive communication needs, and the distinctive experience that they all share that unites.  And they share another experience as well.  No matter that they are thrown into the world of the hearing, and perhaps are never in contact with another deaf individual, they will always be the one that stands out as being, in some fundamental way, different.  And because of that, they will strive to be more and more like those around them, but will never quite be able to achieve that for which they strive.  This is what has such a negative effect on the development of self esteem, on the ability of the deaf child to see themselves as valuable and equal to their hearing peers.  The only way to combat that, in a proactive way, is to allow thaose children exposure to deaf adults and children so that they may have role models that they can relate to and friends who share what the hearing peers never can.  Instead, it seems to be the standard to spend their childhood trying tomake them as near totheir hearingpeers as we can, and then, when they become teenagers and young adults, start to deal with the problems that we have created for them.


I have taken the time to post this as it would appear to me that you are truly open minded and trying to weigh all of the issues.  Pleasse continue to do that.  Do not become one of those parents that shuts out any inforamtion that doesn't agree with the view that they currently hold.  All I ask is that you recognize the possibilities that the future hold, not just negative, but positive as well; and understand that as that child grows and develops, the issues also change.


Back
Top