What does it mean to be "oral"?

Daredevel, I get accused of the same thing which is why people gave me a hard time whenever I misunderstood or didn't understand them.
 
I only have three words to say. "C'est La Vie"...
 
Due to the fact that I grew up totally blind, I do not judge others who have physical disabilities. I never have and I never will. Each of us is different and how well one functions can vary across a wide spectrum. It is not for me to judge someone based on how well or little they can hear or even if they live independently. We all have our crosses to bear which is a part of life. If someone wants to judge me for whatever reason, let them. That's their problem -- not mine. Besides, I don't have to live up to anyone else's expectations but my own.
 
One of the reasons why we judge is because we can't always believe what other people say or that they are accurately describing their experiences. For example, seems like every time an oral only person says "I'm perfectly happy with my experiences", some deaf people take it with a grain of salt and rationalize it ("he was brain washed", etc etc.). In order to not judge, you have to 1) 100% believe what others say and 2) trust that person's judgment on their own experiences. That's a lot of faith right there for a stranger.
 
I had been in the mainstream in both elementary and high school. They both only deal with oral-only program. They forced us to work on our speech and read lips. Then we had to go into the hearing classrooms to learn what we were to suppose to learn and it was difficult not understanding the teachers and students in the classroom without sign language interpreters and notetakers. The principal (hearing) refused to get us the necessary accommodations for them to understand what the hearing classrooms are saying. It all centered on the AGB (Alexander Graham Bell) who want us to be oralist without ASL and notetakers. He and other groups rejected the ASL. We all don't want to be oralist. Sure we can talk but not as perfect as hearing people think we should talk like them. After graduation from high school, I took Sign Exact English back in the late 1960. The sign language open a door for me as it is much easier to understand than trying to lipread. No Deaf or Hard of Hearing don't like to be force when things are not working for us in the oral-only program. I have tried to explain my principal years ago that we need sign language in the hearing classroom so that I can understand what we were to suppose to discuss the subject of each classroom. The oral-only method is not that good way to go about.

That is why we need all the toolboxes of getting us Deaf and HOH needed accommodations to be able to understand in the hearing classroom. I do not want to be an only oralist 24 hours and 7 days. I love signing and very happy with it. I learned how to use ASL instead of SEE later as soon as the National Theater for the Deaf from Connecticut make the change from SEE to ASL. That is the purpose why we discuss in many of our threads in this forum. :cool2:
 
even a mild hearing loss can have a negative impact on a child's language development and ability to learn. As someone who claims to be an advocate for the deaf and HoH, I would have thought you understood that.

Case in point: I did not start talking until age 3. I also required speech therapy when I was in elementary school. I never mention that on AD only because I saw a speech therapist for a few months, so it was not intensive by any means.

Please do not presume to know about my background or how my hearing loss affected me. I would also appreciate it if you refrain from minimizing the effects my mild hearing loss had on me.

When you are totally blind and have a mild hearing loss, come back and tell me what your life is like.
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No, I'm not minimizing your experiances at ALL. I don't get why you think I'm minimizing your experiances. I'm simply saying that your experiance growing up " oral" with a mild loss was different then growing up "oral" with a more significent loss. I'm not saying it was easier or that you're not " really" deaf. Just that your experiance was different, that's all. I do know that mild losses can still impact spoken language development in a significent number of cases ......but at the same time, there are still a lot of kids who managed to compensate pretty well and didn't even need speech therapy. (you hear all those stories of hoh kids who weren't identified until kindergarten b/c they compensated so well)
As a matter of fact, off the top of my head, mild losses make up the largest group of dhh kids to go unaided. Granted, it's still hard....and you still dealt with the disadvantages of having a mild hearing loss while having no usable vision....that would be like not having the advantage of glasses if you had a mild vision problem and you were deaf or hoh. You did experiance what it's like to be oral and mildly hoh, yes......Well I think we're really qubbling on sematics right now.....
Wait.......actually.......How old are you? B/c actually a lot of mildly hoh kids got misdx as MR instead of hoh back in the '70's. .....and they didn't nessarily get a lot of intensive intervention prolly. They prolly just got hearing aids and got pushed into the hearing world....and I mean most hoh kids (especially mild hoh kids) until relatively recently got pushed into the hearing world.....
So, actually I wouldn't nessarily call you "deaf" oral, but you did seem to experiance a lot of mild hoh "oral" stuff......so in one sense you did grow up oral.....but what I was trying to say is that the "deaf" oral experiance and the "hoh oral" experiances are two different things. They're related, and have a lot of commonalities but also a lot of differences.
Again, I never implied or anything that you weren't "deaf enough" or that it wasn't hard growing up hoh. ...Just saying that the hoh oral experiance can be different from the "deaf oral" experiance.
Oh, and I'm sorry I used what some see as a slur.....I'm confused....I have seen "postie" used by people who are postlingals. Sorry for any hurt caused.
 
DD,
could you enlighten on the differences between deaf oral and hoh oral?
Its a really interesting way you put it like this, but i am still abit unsure so maybe you could summerise so that we could 'identify' these when we encounters various oral-orientated deaf people.

i think you got good ideas there, its like going from another side, like grassroot, native signers, fluent signers, codas signers gifted linguistic types then oralist-all-life-can sign (whats that one called?) later then deafened....your description seems to relate from the far-hearing (oral side) towards the middle oral-deaf.....i like it so I hope you might find this well, its a good remark, should i say a remarkable way to describe, and worthy of elaboration.
cheers
 
Daredevel7 said:
One of the reasons why we judge is because we can't always believe what other people say or that they are accurately describing their experiences. For example, seems like every time an oral only person says "I'm perfectly happy with my experiences", some deaf people take it with a grain of salt and rationalize it ("he was brain washed", etc etc.). In order to not judge, you have to 1) 100% believe what others say and 2) trust that person's judgment on their own experiences. That's a lot of faith right there for a stranger.
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Well, to not judge you don't have to believe 100% of what the other person has to say. You only have to understand that they are describing their experience from their own perspective.
 
DD,

Being totally blind and mildly HoH is NOT the same thing as being sighted without glasses and mildly HoH. A sighted person can still see their environment (even if it is blurred) whereas a totally blind person cannot and MUST rely on their hearing for information, navigation, etc.

You're comparing apples to oranges.
 
DD,

I'm 38 and was educated in the mid 70s through the late 80s. I wasn't diagnosed as being mentally challenged (I don't like the term MR -- it's offensive), but I was misdiagnosed as having a learning disability in 1st grade due to my blindness.

However, my 2nd and 4th grade teachers wanted me to advance a year, but my parents refused due to the fact that they didn't want me to be the youngest person in my class.

If they made the decision to advance me 2 grades, I would have been the youngest person in my senior class at age 15.
 
DD,

I don't like labels. Call me whatever you want. Call me oral, call me HoH, call me deaf...I really don't care.
 
To me, oral is learning by hearing. I don't differentiate between oral deaf or oral HoH. I also do not believe there are varying degrees of oral education unless it involves TC. If Shel or Jillio are reading this, I would like to read their perspective.
 
DD,

Just curious...what's the difference between speech therapy for someone who is HoH vs. someone who isn't? You asked me if my speech therapy was designed for d/HoH. I don't know if it was nor do I care. All I care about is that I learned to talk. I still have problems pronouncing words that contain the letter "S" and "R" but I don't obsess over it. If someone doesn't like the way I talk, too bad.
 
DD,

Re: Your apology regarding the use of "posties" is accepted.

By the way, would you mind using another term besides mentally retarded? That's an outdated term -- not to mention offensive.

One more point should anyone bring this up. Under my username is the phrase "Proud Beeper." A "beeper" is someone who has bipolar. I use it to jokingly refer to myself. I would never use it to define another person.
 
I don't think people should get into a competion as to who got the worse upbringing. I wouldn't win anyway.

My parents did care about me. They made mistakes when I wasn't given access to signing but it was all done in good faith as they didn't know any better. I only had a mild hearing loss too but I don't think I ever managed to hold a meaningful conversation on the telephone. It was always a struggle.

Saying that you would need to really experience it to really know what the oralism was like for people with a severe hearing loss. Especially for those that where banned from using signs and physically punished if they did so. It never happened to me luckily enough but it did happen to others. Some here on All Deaf. Lives have been screwed up due to that degree of oralism.

So I think it would be useful to define oralism after all.

(This entire post is meant to be taken literally. There is no hidden meaning anywhere in this post and if people think there is I'm very sorry).
 
and was educated in the mid 70s through the late 80s. I wasn't diagnosed as being mentally challenged (I don't like the term MR -- it's offensive), but I was misdiagnosed as having a learning disability in 1st grade due to my blindness.
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Well I think, that the hoh kids who were msdx as MR could have quite possibly had more severe losses. I don't use the term mentally retarded, since as you stated that is offensive and getting to be slightly outdated. However, I do use the term MR simply b/c it's more specific then simply using the term "developmentally delayed." I know that developmentally delayed is the "new" term....but that term isn't as good since "developmental delays" can include things like autism, cerebal palsy, and even some learning disabilites.
Being totally blind and mildly HoH is NOT the same thing as being sighted without glasses and mildly HoH.
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No. I know the difference. You misunderstood me. I didn't say "mild hoh" I stated hoh in general......meaning a very significent loss.
 
Just curious...what's the difference between speech therapy for someone who is HoH vs. someone who isn't? You asked me if my speech therapy was designed for d/HoH. I don't know if it was nor do I care
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Well most hearing kids who have speech tend to only need articulation therapy. You basicly learned how to say sounds you couldn't right?
Well speech for dhh kids is a lot more complicated......It usually involves language therapy (I don't remember the specifics of it since I caught up in spoken language by the time I was in kindergarten. However I DID have spoken language therapy as a preschooler and kindergartener) as well as some articulation therapy (some common sounds that dhh kids work on are the s sounds and the th sound. I clearly remember sitting in the speech therapist's office learning how to say that sound) Dhh kids also have training on things like pitch, volumne, modulation etc.
 
Hear Again said:
Just curious...what's the difference between speech therapy for someone who is HoH vs. someone who isn't? You asked me if my speech therapy was designed for d/HoH. I don't know if it was nor do I care. All I care about is that I learned to talk. I still have problems pronouncing words that contain the letter "S" and "R" but I don't obsess over it. If someone doesn't like the way I talk, too bad.
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Good post -- the bolded part. I know I don't speak entirely correctly either (I used to think I did until I was told otherwise! :giggle:) But I don't care either, as long as I learned to talk and am understood for the most part.
 
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