October 27, 2006--Fanaticism LXXI--No Deaf Enough
“You’re saying deaf people are not good enough, they need to be fixed. I don’t need to be fixed.”
And thus, because so many students at Gallaudet University, the nation’s only liberal arts college for the deaf, feel this way about their deafness they have been protesting the appointment of Jane Fernandes as president. Her “problem”--though she was born deaf, she grew up speaking rather than using sign language, went to mainstream public schools, and did not learn to sign until she was twenty-three.
In Deaf Culture, with a capital “D,” this disqualifies her. Though there have been remarkable medical advances in electronic cochlear implants which enable deaf people to hear sounds that they can interpret to understand as words, among deaf activists there is resistance to undergoing the operation. They contend that there is nothing “wrong” with being deaf and American Sign Language (ASL) is as good a language, perhaps even a better language than English—it is richer, subtler, and more nuanced.
The NY Times reports that 96 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents and more and more of these parents are choosing implants for them. (Article linked below.) This too is being decried. The chair of the Deaf Studies Department at California State University, Northridge claims that this offers “false hope.” Because the implants do not transmit perfectly formed words to the brain, parents are bringing “magical consciousness” to their children. Meaning that though the consciousness implants impart is way below average parents “pretend” that their kids have a consciousness “they don’t really have.”
Things have gotten so bad at Gallaudet that not only has Fernandes been called upon to resign by demonstrating students and faculty, some asserting that since she is insufficiently sensitive to the learning and cultural needs of deaf students and thus allows faculty to be hired who do not sign well; but she has also been guilty of the ultimate transgression for a deaf person—she married someone who hears!
And thus, because so many students at Gallaudet University, the nation’s only liberal arts college for the deaf, feel this way about their deafness they have been protesting the appointment of Jane Fernandes as president. Her “problem”--though she was born deaf, she grew up speaking rather than using sign language, went to mainstream public schools, and did not learn to sign until she was twenty-three.
In Deaf Culture, with a capital “D,” this disqualifies her. Though there have been remarkable medical advances in electronic cochlear implants which enable deaf people to hear sounds that they can interpret to understand as words, among deaf activists there is resistance to undergoing the operation. They contend that there is nothing “wrong” with being deaf and American Sign Language (ASL) is as good a language, perhaps even a better language than English—it is richer, subtler, and more nuanced.
The NY Times reports that 96 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents and more and more of these parents are choosing implants for them. (Article linked below.) This too is being decried. The chair of the Deaf Studies Department at California State University, Northridge claims that this offers “false hope.” Because the implants do not transmit perfectly formed words to the brain, parents are bringing “magical consciousness” to their children. Meaning that though the consciousness implants impart is way below average parents “pretend” that their kids have a consciousness “they don’t really have.”
Things have gotten so bad at Gallaudet that not only has Fernandes been called upon to resign by demonstrating students and faculty, some asserting that since she is insufficiently sensitive to the learning and cultural needs of deaf students and thus allows faculty to be hired who do not sign well; but she has also been guilty of the ultimate transgression for a deaf person—she married someone who hears!
posted by Steven Zwerling at
11:12 AM
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