I belive it's an advantage, but I also belive it's much much more important to most hearing people than most deaf people.
I belive it's an advantage, but I also belive it's much much more important to most hearing people than most deaf people.
jillio
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**nodding agreement**
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rockdrummer
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Wouldn't one consider something that is advantageous to be important? Is it that you don't feel communicating with the hearing population is important?
jillio
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The question is not being able to communicate with the hearing world, because that can be accomplished in any number of ways. It is communicating with the hearing on their terms, i.e. speech. And most deaf would consider that to be beneficial, but not the most important item on the list. The hearing, however, do assign a higher priority to the deaf learning to speak because they are assigning importance based on their own hearing perspective. In other words, they look at it from a "Its important to me so it must be important to all" perspective.
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rockdrummer
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While I can't speak for the entire hearing population, for me, if a deaf person is able to communicate with hearing people on any level that is good. And it is important to me that deaf and hearing people are able to communicate with each other. How they do it is not as important. (to me)
Face to face communication options are limited. It may be a matter of what is the most efficient or what is percieved as the most efficient. From the deaf perspective I would bet signing would be considered the most efficient. For non-signing hearing people speech would be considered the most efficient. Beyond that you are limited to reading and writing which many deaf people would prefer not to communicate that way.
If the communication between hearing and deaf people is very important, then why it is the deaf that had to learn speech and the hearing family not having to learn sign language????? My family didn't sign like many of deaf people's families. It is not fair to us deaf people as respect is supposed to be a two-way street, not one way street.
I can speak, but I prefer to write and read quite often. Sometimes it's better because if I speak, hearing people sometimes belive I am hearing, and confusions arise. Keeping things clear and staying behind the limits instad of trying to cross them are much easier.
The conclusions you make on what many deaf people prefer when communicating is extremely simplified and alien to me as a deaf person.
Speaking is just a bonus, but not that important as sign language or sex for example. I do enjoy activities with hearing people, but I would die without my deaf friends.
The importance of speech skills in the deaf population quite often comes from hearing parents that are worried that their child won't be a part of their familiy or their lives as I have seen. That worrying is perhaps the biggest threat deaf kids met.
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Yes it is important but not the most important as flip stated.
Communicating with the hearing population takes up the deaf person's willingness to work twice as hard, giving up some rights to equal access to communication, and possible being left out often so that is why many Deaf people feel unmotivated to go out of their way to establish communication with the hearing population at all times. It is nice to be able to hang out with other ASL users and not have to stress about ensuring communication is clear at all times. Once I learned how easy communication became with ASL, my motivation to work hard to communicate using spoken language has dropped big time.
It is like once I found out I could have had all that with ASL, it made me angry that I was forced to use the only communication on the hearing people's terms. What about me? What about my rights for equal access to communication? That is what I dont want for any deaf kids and to ask them to bear with partial access to communication in the educational setting is even worse.
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Exactly!!! I would die too without my deaf friends. I cant imagine going back to my old life as a "hearing" person..no thank u.
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I'm in the same boast as you, Flip. If I speak, people will assume that I have normal hearing or close to it. In some situations, I'll act like I can't speak at all.
jillio
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Your perspective is a bit wider than the general hearing population because of your experiences with your son. And I agree with you...one of my first relpies to my son's audi who was reccommending an oral only environment was that it did not matter to me how he communicated, but that he communicated. But before one can come to that conclusion, one has to understand that the frustration they see int heir child is not due to being unable to speak, but being unable to communicate. Unfortunately, I have met far too many hearing people who are unable to see the situation from a persepctive other than their own.
jillio
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Exactly. The burden of change has always been placed on the deaf, not the hearing. The deaf are expected to accommodate the hearing population's needs, rather than the other way around. That needs to change. It is a hang over from the old medical model of defining disability, and it is outdated and ineffective. Unfortunately, with the psuh to implant children at younger and younger ages, the medical model, as well as oralism, is seeing a revival in general attititudes and thinking.
Yeah, I would easily give up my ability to speak if it was required to be fluent in any sign language.
jillio
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It's a vicious cycle. They ask you to learn to speak to assist in communication gaps, and then when you do, they use it as an excuse not to have to meet you half way, and to validate their hearing perspective!
Perhaps it's time to change from "deaf" to "deaf mutes" to send the world a message many deaf people are most comfortable when communicating while mute in the spoken language, and we are working to adjust to hearing people, and they should do their part, too. Deaf leaders could speak in the 1800th century, still they labeled themselves as deaf mutes, must be a reason for that?
jillio
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Perhaps it's time to change from "deaf" to "deaf mutes" to send the world a message many deaf people are most comfortable when communicating while mute in the spoken language, and we are working to adjust to hearing people, and they should do their part, too. Deaf leaders could speak in the 1800th century, still they labeled themselves as deaf mutes, must be a reason for that?
It is my uderstanding that a lot of deaf/Deaf object to the term mute. We had a discussion about that a while back on AD. Mute implies an inability to speak, rather than a choice.
That's my understanding, too. I am perhaps a bit supportive of the term "mute", if thinking like Ella did in her famous deaf mute vlog last year. Like you mentioned, that topic and vlog has been diccussed here earlier, and it sure was many good points in that thread, supporting both sides. Wish it was a word that could tell hearing people what excactly deaf means!