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I was Dylan Quick
by Donald A. Grushkin,Ph.D.
Yesterday,the news came out that 14 people were stabbed by Dylan Quick, a student at Lone Star College in Texas. This tragedy, following in the wake of the Newtown shootings, gave me pause to contemplate the debate surrounding gun control; here, another horrific situation arose, yet guns were not at issue. However, an even more important issue soon arose: it was revealed that Dylan Quick is a Deaf (capitalizedto indicate ethnicity, regardless of cultural affiliation) person who was orally-raised and uses a cochlear implant. My thoughts just as rapidly turned from gun control to the issue of mental health, especially where Deaf and hard of hearing people are concerned,and moreover, I quickly envisioned the media reports characterizing Dylan Quick as an “isolated loner” without mentioning he is Deaf, or focusing on causes and issues related to his rampage which have nothing to do with his being Deaf,insinuating that this is an isolated incident. Yet, finding out that Dylan Quick is Deaf himself, I immediately empathized with him in his expression of what must be intolerable rage and frustration, for I, at one point in my life, could have done almost exactly what he did.
I was born Deaf. Upon finding I was Deaf, my parents decided to do exactly as Dylan’s parents did: raise him as an “oral”person, meaning we were taught to speak through auditory pathways and to use whatever hearing capacities we had to the best of our abilities. Unlike Dylan, I was (in my view, fortunately)born too soon to receive a cochlear implant; this technology did not become commonplace until around the 1980s. Through the use of lipreading, hearing aids, intensive and ongoing speech therapy, I learned to speak; my speech is nearly indistinguishable from that of a Hearing person’s. Up until the age of5, I attended an Oral preschool classroom, and then I was transferred full-time into the public schools as what is today termed a “mainstreamed” Deaf student. Although I succeeded in the academic realm through the use of my lipreading skills, lipreading was and is insufficient for participation in any interaction where more than one other person is involved. The limitations of lipreading also limited my ability to form friendships; throughout my mainstreamed years,I rarely had more than one or two other people that I could claim as a “friend”. Prior to the sixth grade, my family moved to another state, where I entered Middle School. As almost everyone knows, these “tween” years are quite often stressful for many students, especially those who stand out as “different” –intellectually, physically, or socially. Being Deaf, I naturally stood out among all these other Hearing students,and as a result, I experienced extreme ostracism and what today would be termed“bullying” wherein certain students would deliberately use my abilities to lipread and inability to hear against me, in order to elicit reactions they thought were funny. It is fortunate that my parents are not gun owners, for I can all too easily envision myself at that time taking a gun or two to school and shooting my tormentors. All too likely, some innocent students would have become “collateral damage” during my expression of rage, if I had done this, and I am thankful today that this never took place. After two years of this personal Hell, I convinced my parents to allow me to attend a school for the Deaf, where I knew that my being Deaf would NOT be a cause for such bullying. I cannot begin to express my gratitude for my education within the Deaf world, for without it, I know I would not today be where I am – a successful, happy, married with children Deaf man with a doctorate who teaches at a major state university.
My story is more than 30 years old. For more than one hundred years, Deaf people like me have been trying to warn of the dangers of the socio-psychological violence done to Deaf students by oral-only methodologies and mainstreaming,and for just as long, the auditory-medical complex and Oral/aural apologists,as represented by the Alexander Graham Bell Association, Auditory/Verbal Therapy (also known as “Listening and Spoken Language [“LSL”] proponents, CochlearImplant developers and surgeons, as well as Hearing parents of Deaf children have pooh-poohed our experiences and warnings as “things of the past”. Yet, Dylan Quick has shown us that our fears and concerns are not obsolete or unfounded; instead they are all too frighteningly real and present. I have at times wondered why, in our more than 30 years of sustained mainstreaming, we have not yet to date had any sort of Columbine-style rampage by a Deaf person who experienced the same kinds of ostracism and bullying that I experienced, and what I suspect Dylan Quick must also have experienced. One answer comes from a blog written last year by a 20-something orally-raised hard of hearing woman who writes:
I hated myself, I was afraid of myself, I hated my deafness... and so much more about me, and what I had to do every day just to get by. I plastered a smile on my face, I always said yes to everything, but all I wanted to do every day, was to be out of this hell I called my life. I wanted to be done with speech therapy, I wanted to be done hating myself, I wanted to be this picture perfect person that my parents, and I, thought I should be... straight A student (I was close), hearing, popular, etc... I wanted to be almost everything I wasn’t...when I wasn’t day dreaming about this other person, the person who I thought should exist... but didn’t... I was contemplating the ways I could kill myself,to get me out of this hell that was my existence... I tried... (One Day at a Time: What have I lost?)
In this passage, she illustrates an important point: that most Deaf people, despite undergoing this psychological trauma for something they ultimately have no control over, often internalize,rather than externalize their anger and frustration. Some may succeed, others merely move on, but the net result is that their stories, their feelings, their issues, tend to become hidden and buried (sometimes literally) rather than enter into the public discourse.
Dylan Quick’s rampage also illustrates another point that the culturally Deaf community has been attempting to present to the general public: that the use of a cochlear implant is not a panacea; it is not a “cure” for what is seen as the “problem of deafness”. Despite having a cochlear implant, which is purported to promote the successful integration of Deaf people into Hearing society, Dylan Quick obviously experienced some sort of alienation from the Hearing people around him, culminating in his rampage against random people he encountered yesterday at Lone Star College.
It is time for the public discourse to begin significantly and seriously examining the social and psychological costs of misguided public and educational policies upon Deaf and hard of hearing people. I challenge the media,in the upcoming days, instead of taking the path of least resistance and framing Dylan Quick as an “isolated loner” who happens to be Deaf, to instead explore the root causes of his rampage, which I would strongly suspect are directly derived from his upbringing in an environment which urges him to function in the world using his weakest sense. It is time for society to begin to recognize that learning sign language and receiving education in Deaf-centered settings wherein Deaf people can learn to enjoy and appreciate being Deaf rather than shamed as “failed Hearing people” is a good thing for all of us, Deaf and Hearing alike. It is time for an examination of the auditory-medical complex, which promotes and encourages Deaf people to attempt to become “Hearing” at the cost of their psychological and social well-being and its role in complicitly giving rise to Deaf people who hurt themselves and others, like Dylan Quick. It is time for a change in how we treat and educate Deaf people, so that future Deaf generations, instead of turning into the semiliterate,underemployed, and psychologically unhealthy adults that all too many do today,can instead grow into fully functional, healthy and educated beings.
