I read the last few posts in here. It is all about whether the deaf population is accepting of people with CI or not. How about the hearing people's acception of the deaf population? Look at the history. The hearing people are not being too nice about deaf people. Look at the history of eugenic and how they sterilized any people they consider to be inferior, including deaf people. Nowadays, the knife moved up higher (CI). No wonder, some deaf people are upset about this. It is like the hearing people shouting at the world that their child is not deaf as he/she can hear with CI. It is like they are in denial that their child is deaf and they are most likely refuse to learn sign language. What if the CI failed down the road? What if the child's body reject the implant later on. What if the child develop infection and the CI has to be removed for the infection to go away? What if the child only can hear environment sounds and not able to understand words on hearing? If so, what happened to the child's language development? They need sign language eventhough they have a CI as the Sign language is a back-up language. In reverse, my spoken language is my back-up language to my ASL. The hearing people, especially my family refused to learn sign language. What if they lose their hearing? It is like they are demanding that we adopt their way and forsake our own culture. It is like they are saying "Me, Me, Me!".
At my oral school when I was little, they divided the kids into who can speak good and who can't speak good. Those who can't speak good get lousy education compare to the ones who can speak good. This is not so good to those who can't speak good. Jobwise, some of us have a hard time getting a good job/getting promotion. They refuse to promote us if we already have a job. They refuse to put us in where we want to be in - like computer operating instead of computer programming. You know, more menial jobs than professional jobs where there is no chance of promotion. They refuse to learn sign language. After all that, they turned around and complained that we are being a burden to them (actually they are being a burden to us). They ignored the fact that they pushed us into this stituation. They ignored the fact that we need sign language like we need air to breathe after they imposed the oral method on the deaf schools (Just look at Martha's Vineyard time when everybody know sign language and the richest man at that time happened to be deaf).
With all that double standards, give me a good reason why should we respect those who disrespect us historically. I know now why I don't want CI is because of all that deaf history. I just refuse to bow down to what they perceived to be their superiority.
Somebody need to do the research on the hearing people to find out why they have the compulsion to attempt to change the deaf people into hearing people. They need to find out why they ignore what really works for the deaf people and go for things that work against the deaf people. If the hearing people think they are smarter than us, then they should learn sign language - especially ASL.
Thanks!-- Avery
