Informed Decisions, Parents Know Best, and Other Mythical Creatures (I of III)
By Chris Heuer on Mon 30 Jul 2007 |
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Over the last couple of days I’ve been closely following various blogs written on the protest at the A.G. Bell conference a few days ago. Over and over I saw these types of comments being made: “It’s the parents’ choice in the end. So long as parents are making informed choices, and getting all of the information, that’s all that concerns me.”
It’s nice to see that so many people seem to agree on this one point, even when they’re standing on opposite sides of the ASL/Oralism advocacy continuum. Most people genuinely seem to want parents to get all of the information, rather than one-sided propaganda (and yes, information is propaganda until it can reconcile the following two statements: “Our approach is just wonderful, fantastic, and getting better all the time. . . nonetheless literacy rates continue to hover around fourth grade levels for huge numbers of deaf high school graduates!”).
In any case, I have a question for all of you: To exactly where do you think “giving a parent all of the information” is necessarily supposed to lead?
Please allow me to clarify what I mean with a quick Social Experiment. Everyone who has ever seen the movie Super Size Me, please raise your hand and leave it up. All right, next question: Those of you with your hands in the air. . . How many of you have gone into McDonald’s since that movie came out—or any fast food chain, really—and purchased a cheeseburger anyway? Don’t lie.
Ha. So much for “informed choices.”
I mean, you do know by now that your heart is going to blow up someday if you keep eating that crap. After all, you’ve been informed! Every bite of your Big Mac, pizza slice, Oreo Blizzard, whatever, is at this very instant turning your chest into the biological equivalent of a deep fryer.
Do you care? Sure you do! Ah, but do you stop?
No doubt there are all kinds of people here who will resent the comparison between X organization actively working to plug your arteries with fat and Y organization actively working to improve your hearing. And no doubt their resentment is entirely justified, but it’s also contrary to the point. Leave aside for the moment the question of “Who does what?” Focus instead on “How do they get you to do whatever it is that they want you to do?”
The latter is the only question that addresses the real reason behind the imbalance of information in the first place. If I want to sell Big Macs, I can’t put up huge billboards directing you to Subway. If A.G. Bell wants you to focus on cochlear implants, AVT, and so forth, it makes perfect sense that there are only a couple of sentences on their entire website directing you to the NAD for further information on all things ASL. This is the only way they can survive. Once you balance all of the information, how can you continue to promote a specific brand of information? The act of promotion is the act of raising one thing up to a higher position in the hierarchy. By definition you can’t promote anything unless you leave behind all of the other stuff on a level lower down.
Thus I restate the question: Is simply “balancing the information” enough to get parents to make different choices? Personally I doubt it. It isn’t a balance of information that counts the most; it’s the frequency of bombardment that counts the most. It’s “what’s easiest” that counts the most. Suppose I receive X number of messages telling me that McDonald’s is bad and Y number of messages telling me that McDonald’s tastes so good! If X is much greater than Y (even though Y is still out there and making its presence known), do I go to Subway? If Y is greater than X, do I wash down my fries with an extra large chocolate milkshake?
I’m not exactly an automaton, but I also don’t live in perpetual confusion. In this day and age, X and Y are usually equal. There are just as many billboards and commercials promoting McDonald’s as there are promoting Subway. After Super Size Me, I now avoid McDonald’s more often than I used to, but even this increase isn’t nearly high enough to keep me alive for the next forty years. The problem is that there’s a McDonald’s on every tenth block. The temptation is constant because the ease of access is so high. I can go home and make my own healthy meal (which will take me fifteen, maybe twenty minutes), or I can simply walk into McDonald’s and purchase the destructive meal that they have mass-produced and pre-advertised for me (which will take three minutes).
What will I do? I don’t know, but I can tell you this: Whatever I decide, I won’t make a bad decision because I’m confused or ill-informed. Lazy, yes. Addicted, possibly. Well-trained after a lifetime of truly hideous eating habits, absolutely. But ill-informed? No. If I told you that, I’d be lying.
And so it is with just about everything under the sun. Car X doesn’t pollute the environment quite so much, but there aren’t a lot of stations that carry the particular brand of fuel it uses. Meanwhile Car Y is the environmental equivalent of an oil spill in the Caribbean Sea, but it’s cheaper, and if I buy it I can get gas anywhere. ASL exposure might help my deaf child acquire literacy faster, but then I have to learn ASL. Meanwhile a cochlear implant might help him too, and it’s easier to have him implanted than it is for me to learn to sign. Harsh but true.
Despise me if you will for my opinions on the game I see A.G. Bell playing. I leave you with the following (and possibly disturbing) thought: It’s the same game everyone else is playing. Regardless of my personal views on the recent protest—none of which, you’ll note, are discussed directly in this blog—I’d hate to see a huge political movement spring up around the end goal of only making sure parents get “all of the information.” That would be a textbook example of a community setting itself up for disappointment, and I love this community too much to see it go through that.
P.S. To those of you out there who think my “frequency of bombardment” argument is full of holes, I refer you to the half a sentence in paragraph seven in which I said “…and no doubt their resentment is entirely justified.” That half a sentence of acknowledgement that the other team might possibly have a point is buried in three pages of examples comparing A.G. Bell to McDonald’s.
What impression were you left with?
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Our goal must be to influence parents to make the *right* choices, not simply hoping that they know what the choices are.
Some choices are immoral. We have to hope that parents stop making immoral choices, and persuade them to do the right thing. It’s as simple as that.
Immoral choices? Like what? Are you implying that oralism is “immoral choice?” If so, then there are many people that consider ASL as immoral choice too.
Jarom, by experimenting on human beings are immoral, pure and simple. Their repeated experimentation on deaf people on how to speak is immoral.
Capisce?
R-
*snort*
Brian,
Influence parents to make the *right* choice?
Don’t you mean influence parents to make *YOUR* choice?
===================
Chris, I agree that informing parents won’t change things anyway. There has to be an incentive for them to change…like there has to be an incentive for me to buy an environmentally safe car or to not to go to McDonalds. Oh well…just my 2 cents…
Hi JJ, Karen,
I never said it wouldn’t change anything whatsoever (giving parents all of the information). Remember those ads back in the early 70s that promoted cigarettes as an excellent way to improve your circulation? To all of you twenty-somethings out there, I kid you not… they existed. Doctors would even speak to this effect, that smoking was good for you.
Now take that, and one of those new “Whudafxup” commercials (you’ve seen them–Google it if you aren’t sure). Which ads do you think convinced the greatest number of people to quit smoking?
The message IS important… don’t doubt that. And getting it to people in the first place… absolutely critical. But beyond that stage I think frequency is what makes the biggest impact. Mike (McConnell), good counter-argument below, but I think my point still stands. McDonald’s has more staying power than Spurlock will ever develop. His movie came and went, but the McDonald’s billboards were eternal. People have short memories–something that enormously aids their sense of denial. It’s a big reason why they’re still stuffing themselves with lard.
Not entirely a sense of denial, Chris. It’s about moderation which is exactly what Sayer was trying to show. Spurlock only showed the extreme version thrown in with a bit of disinformation to boot. He can simply repeat that same version at a Chinese restaurant or at a five star French restaurant and stuff himself up to 25lbs in 30 days will surely suffer the same health effects as he did with McDonalds. Again, I made my point about sensationalism, a bit of disinformation, half-truths and extremism.
Hi Mike: You’re correct… “not entirely.” That applies to denial about the benefits of early ASL exposure for deaf infants, too.
But the denial IS there to an extent, and it needs to be erradicated.
Denial cannot be eradicated. Free will says so.
As for signing (e.g. baby signs, ASL) the benefits may be there for all babies (and I agree) but it doesn’t necessarily mean that not signing in ASL will produce no benefits if other means of communication methods in this day and age are used, especially in the era of technology.
Well, yes and no. Denial itself is a defense mechanism, but it’s also a stage. I agree with you in the sense that you cannot eliminate denial itself any more than you can eliminate grief or happiness as general things. But you can move THROUGH denial, just as you can move through grief. So in that sense, yes, you can eliminate it. If we couldn’t, we’d never have gotten over our first girlfriend Suzie Kellerman in the sixth grade who left us for Toby Brannon (that bastard!) in a shower of blood as she tore our hearts directly out through our sternums and laughed as it pulsated in her pink nail polish capped-fingertips…
Well you get the idea.
To move through denial and make an informed choice of one’s own free will, certain factors have to be present. All the information has to be there. The value attached to contradictory information has to be equal. And the frequency of delivery of the messages stemming from various contradictory types of information has to be equal. That’s not the case with ASL. At least not in my opinion. The medical model of deafness is too prevalent, and those who tout the message that deafness is a medical malady are far more organized and much better funded.
The first step does have to be getting all of the information to the parents, but that alone won’t begin to counter the other factors.
Just my opinion of course.
If you do not agree that parents have the right to make decisions, whether informed or ill-informed, whether correct or not, then who do you suggest make the decision? Anybody who makes the claim that parents are making incorrect decisions needs to clarify first precisely *WHO* will be making the decision?
And before you start blaming parents for making “incorrect” decisions according to your particular perspective on the oral/ASL continuum, remember that every minute, a parent is making a decision one way or another about their child, and the odds are, at least some of those decisions will be wrong, legally speaking, i.e., allowing drinking by teenagers at home, or even, morally wrong, i.e, female circumcision (but then again, some cultures accept this practice; this one doesn’t), according to your perspective. There is a whole range of decisions that parents make on a daily basis and attacking them for decisions that they have to make about their child is not going to help anyone.
That’s all part of free will — at least from our perspective. Just as we are given the ability to think and reason, we are also given the ability to make choices that may not be “correct” or “rational.”
I don’t have a particular stake in this dispute, but I do know that I resent people telling me what I can and cannot do, and, most importantly, with my children. So, I can see where the AGB people are coming from and I can also see where the “D” deaf people are coming from as well. There are no winners in this dispute and I would strongly advocate dialogue instead of exchanging heated words in blogs and actually trying to disrupt a conference that a lot of people spent a lot of time trying to set up for a year or more.
Exactly, what it boils down is questioning the parents’ *informed* decision. It’s either you agree they have that right to an *informed* decision or they don’t.
I’m sorry but I disagree with that bit of McDonald’s analysis because the Spurlock episode was based on a lot of exaggerations and extremes. From my blog, http://kokonutpundits.blogspot.....unkum.html (be sure to click on “previous post” for more info):
“Sayer is a biology professor who replicated Spurlock’s thirty-day experiment to teach his students about how the documentary medium can be abused to further a political agenda. The difference between Sayer and Spurlock: Sayer didn’t deliberately double his daily calorie intake, nor did he stop exercising. He ate three meals per day at McDonalds, diversified what he ate, and was able to keep his calorie count between 2,000 and 3,000. Over 30 days, he lost 17 pounds. His blood pressure dropped. And his cholesterol basically remained the same. He suffered none of the effects Spurlock shows in Super Size Me.”
Really. It’s all about personal responsibility. Spurlock showed none of it.
“The experiment is the most interesting, but not necessarily the most informative, aspect of Super Size Me. Spurlock goes on a one-month McDonald’s spree in which he eats three gluttonous meals per day. He plays by a few rules: everything he eats has to be on the McDonald’s menu, he must sample every food choice at least once, and he only super sizes when asked by a cashier. Over the course of his study, he gains 25 pounds; experiences an extreme increase in cholesterol; suffers sexual dysfunction, headaches, and nausea; and shows signs of addiction. It’s not a pretty picture, and, while the extremity of Spurlock’s reactions are in part a result of his excessive indulgence(5000 calories per day), it illustrates a point about the unhealthiness of fast food eating.”
What many people failed to note is that you can eat 5k worth of calories a day for 30 days practically at any food establishments from the fast foods to a 5-star French restaurant and still suffer the consequences of bloating oneself up to 25 and feel absolutely miserable!
Now, back to parental rights and their *informed* decisions they make. Why bring my McDonald/Spurlock “Supersize Me” response in this? Well, do people like to exaggerate certain things about a subject hoping to get an emotional response rather than an objective response?
Who will be the first parents to throw the first stone telling other parents that they cannot make their own *informed* decision for their children when it comes to ASL, sign language, Cued speech, AVT, oral, aural, neural implant, and so on? However unpopular a decision parents make based on well gathered information ultimately it comes down to that those on the outside have absolutely no say in all this. Say it first while you can but the decision still rest with the parents regarding their deaf/hoh children on deafness and education issues. There is no getting around to it.
Yup, I agree that the agreement to have a dialogue would be a good start… we all make the decisions with hope that the decisions would turn out to be benefitical in the long run. Reading the blogs for/against AGBAD is a bit tiring… especially when we ALL DO NOT KNOW what is fully going on (yeah, yeah, call me “colonized” deaf person, etc.) Even I make the decisions influencing my two deaf children (one is mainstreamed and another at deaf school… just to meet their vastly different needs.)
But I get your point about McDonald’s. Another example would be smoking… knowing smoking is bad, but deciding to continue smoking anyway. I mentally shrug my shoulders at the fired up protesters… who cares? Because at the end, there would always be still two opposites, whether we like it or not. We need the opposite views to help us make decisions.
Parents of deaf children ought not to treat their offsprings as some kind of property to be acessorized and fitted under such an illusion for leading a perfect life in near future.
Deaf youngsters are human beings, not to be reckoned with and experminted upon. Almost every upotian concepts always fail anyway.
Deprieve any babies access to the language acquistion during their crucial language and congentive development period are purely a violation of human rights.
The AGBAD people are the ones, who really don’t give parents of deaf babies any options at all and want to protect their bottom lines at all costs! The AGBAD people are cahoots with the medical and speech therapy industry to inflate their bank accounts in name of educational choices!
Have you, Chris and others read the superbu nonfiction book, “Campaign Against Sign Language”? You would understand much better why the use of sign languages in deaf classrooms are more practical and cost-effective than the oral classrooms.
Too many deaf oralists and individuals with CIs often have the psychological and emotional scars from the world of oral deaf education. Why???????
Parents of deaf children ought to know the real consquences of oral education especially the AVT. The AGBAD people choose the ideology over practical means of communication access and educational necessity.
You, Chris and others ought to watch “Artifical Intelligence” (A.I.) film how the scientists and artifical life developers manipulate the concepts of love and submission within the artifical life in name of serving at the pleasures and whims of humans. In the end, humans scorched and abused their own creations.
Many seals are trained to please the human crowds for entertainment purposes. In the end, seals don’t know how to hunt and gather for their own survivals in the wild. The power of knowledge is real necessity for the whole human being, not being partially emotionally and intellectually.
Robert L. Mason (RLM)
“Almost every upotian concepts always fail anyway.”
Kind of an ironic statement considering what’s being discussed about ASL.
Babies who cannot hear, i.e. visual beings, should be allowed to be exposed to a natural visual language at birth. That is not a utopian notion, but rather it is a very down-to-earth, non-utopian view.
Don’t tell me it’s the parents’ right to decide. Of course it is. That’s a side issue and it’s dodging the issue if people constantly say that.
FYI, many parents really don’t know better. Look at the Fifties in America - most conformist period in the American history with the famous phrase - “Parents always know better”.
Many parents could not know how to deal with the explosive rate of junivelle deliquence during the 50s.
The well-known sociological agruments about whether parents ought to get the license to raise children as compared to the drivings of vehicle(s).
Too many parents have no clue about how to raise children properly or provide the right choices for their children.
You, Chris, have to see the viewpoints of the Deaf Bilingual Education Coaltion about the nowaday parents of deaf babies rarely have time to do extensive research on the educational choices for their deaf offsprings in the fast-paced and time-deprived society.
With the world of 300+ cable/satetille television channels, the Internet and mega-bookstores and countless errands leaving parents of deaf children less time to investigative and determine what’s the best for their own deaf youngsters.
I was very forunate to have my deaf mother used her gut instincts. My deaf mother had been academically deprieved til the age of nine. She was schooled in the regular school which my grandparents with many deaf relatives still do not have any clues about my deaf mother being deaf at birth.
No questions about many parents are in such denials about their offsprings comes with some physical flaws or being deaf. They choose to be fazed with the so-called promises for the perfect cure!!
Robert L. Mason (RLM)
Hi Robert:
All I ask is that you wait for Parts II and III. I don’t want to seem like I don’t support this protest, because I do. I just have some very tough and disturbing things to say first.
(I haven’t read Campaign Against Sign Language yet, but I will. Author and publisher?)
Chris,
You have to check out my own blog with the list of recommended book readings regarding the recent AGBAB protest controvesty. Those books are real excellent materials on WHY and HOW we ended up protested against the AGBAB organization so far.
My blog title is RLMDEAF within the DeafRead -
http://www.deafread.com, then look up the list of deaf blogs and vlogs. You will see RLMDEAF. Okay? Thanks.
Robert L. Mason (RLM)
RLMDEAF blog
I am not a linguist. I am so curious. What’s your (any of you) thoughts on “Early Intervention Providers”, a position statement, by NAD. Is AVT considered as “auditory, speech, and language development” and “spoken language”?
http://www.nad.org/site/pp.asp.....;b=2639887
Dang! That’s one heck of a blog entry. Really blew up the ‘informed choices’ strawman I’ve been using all along, when it comes to the ASL/Oralism schism.
Actually, it doesn’t. The central weakness in Chris’ argument is the assumption that the information at issue (ASL is better for deaf babies) is widespread. It isn’t certainly reaching the parents that find and follow AGB.
In other words, the Deaf community has abysmal marketing skills, both in terms of the research and of itself, i.e., Deaf Culture.
I believe Deaf Pundit touched on it a little in her 48 Powers list.
As for the often cited research about ASL benefiting deaf babies, I believe it purely on observation, anecdotes, and other life experiences, but I can easily believe that the AGB/oralist adherents will be able to provide their own research proving exactly the opposite. So, where does that leave a hearing parent of a deaf baby?
Maybe I’m not communicating this clearly enough because I agree with you entirely. See my reply #85966 to McConnell above. I think getting the information out is crucial. I think equalizing the frequency at which this information (ASL exposure) impacts parents is crucial. In truth I think the message of the DBC has nowhere to go but up at this point, because the message of A.G. Bell is ALREADY so overwhelming. It’s just that one protest alone won’t get the job done. The frequency of exposure to the message has to be “upped” MUCH more, and in a myriad of ways.
My 48 Powers list focused extensively on our lack of marketing skills. A lot of power comes from that skill, actually. And make no mistake about it, we are engaged in a power struggle. This whole thing is a struggle for equal access, to have self-determination for ourselves. That’s a power struggle.
As for your comment about research - a lot of the Oralist research can be debunked with more solid research. Advocates do it all the time, but the deaf community has yet to pick up on that skill on a wide-spread basis. Keep pointing out that hearing parents are teaching their hearing babies sign language. Why is that happening?
Not only that, but like I said in my blog, we need to put a public face on ourselves. Show the public successful bilingual ASL deaf. They’re out there. I’m one of ‘em as a matter of fact, but I ain’t gonna be the deaf community’s public face. :P
Chris — gotcha.
That’s one of the things that frustrates me the most about the Deaf community, the lack of marketing and the sometimes unreasonable expectations.
You’re right, the Deaf community’s image or “face” is in dire need of revision and the message of “ASL exposure” needs to be widely disseminated. But it won’t just happen with one protest, or even two. It requires a steady process over the years and it won’t happen overnight. It’s more a matter of steady pressure over time instead of one crucial event.
If the literature is indeed widespread and supports the position that ASL benefits deaf babies, then, perhaps, a concerted effort should be made to place such articles within medical journals, because, as we all know, parents frequently turn to doctors for advice, and doctors read those medical journals. Not all doctors focus on deafness as a medical issue, you know.
Another observation about the recent AGB protest is that it was publicized in blogs, but I didn’t see anything in the newspapers or other news media like TV. There was (apparently) no concerted effort to contact reporters, such as the same ones that covered the Gallaudet protest. That’s how news reporters find their stories — someone “sells” them their stories. Public relations companies frequently fax over their own articles about something and the news reporter chooses to investigate it if it is found worthy of coverage.
There are also other thoughts I have regarding the completely lacking strategic and tactical forethought displayed by the AGB protesters but I’ll keep my mouth shut for now.
DP —
“Show the public successful bilingual ASL deaf. They’re out there. I’m one of ‘em as a matter of fact, but I ain’t gonna be the deaf community’s public face. :P”
Why not? Sacrifices have to be made. ;->
Hi FB:
But I do so very much admire and respect them (the A.G. Bell protesters). And it’s not even because I’m so very dead-set against EVERYTHING A.G. Bell stands for (something I’ll try to clarify in Part III). I’m not. I’m just against some things, and the way those things are done.
Those protesters are amongst the first of us to stand up and fight. I respect people who fight. This kind of thing is scary as hell. It’s hard to control, it’s harder to predict, and at every turn there are a million things that can go wrong. The easier thing to do will ALWAYS be to do nothing, and that’s why the rest of us are stuck in this despicable situation. The second hardest thing to do is to endlessly discuss it and end up going nowhere.
But the hardest thing to do is always to take that first step.
So you’re in favor of half-assed protests simply because they’re doing (supposedly) the right thing? Gotcha.
Tell me, what exactly did the protest accomplish other than self-congratulatory blogs?
I’ll tell you. It accomplished precisely nothing. It was half-assed. That’s a particular problem within the Deaf community – doing things in an incomplete way and expecting things to turn out in your favor.
To get what you want requires WORK. You have to go out and talk to people and the fruits of your labor may not be apparent for a period of time. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King didn’t do half-assed protests. They both spent nearly 20 years talking to people and then organizing mass protests when the talks didn’t work.
In this case, it was apparently an ad hoc decision by a small group of people that thought, hey, AGBAD is bad, and we ought to do something about it. (Never mind the fact that AGB refers to itself as AGB and not AGBAD. Relying on acronyms to make the other person look bad is completely juvenile and serves to underscore the lack of seriousness behind the ASL Bilingual Coalition argument.)
Tell me something. Did the protesters, at any point, talk to AGB before the protest? Clarify AGB’s attitude, if any, toward ASL and sign language? Perhaps some consideration should have been given toward lobbying AGB and its board of trustees about being a lot more inclusive about sign language in general and ASL in particular. Instead, Talmudic consideration was given to the AGB Web site about what it did and didn’t say about sign language. If you were so dissatisfied with the language in the Web site, why not contact AGB for some consideration of changing the language on the Web site? If the research is so strong that ASL benefits deaf babies, then, perhaps that should have been submitted to AGB as support for the Coalition’s argument that ASL should be given equal consideration.
Contact and dialogue – that’s how you clarify positions of similarity and positions of differences. Once you have determined sources of differences, then, that’s where you decide if you want to take action.
Given that there were booths in the AGB conference, did the protesters think about setting up their own booth within the conference? Apparently NTID and Sorenson had their own booths there. Why not the ASL Bilingual Coalition? Of course, that would require some long-term planning and some professional courtesy on the part of the Coalition. After this protest, I have to wonder if AGB would be willing to entertain that possibility.
Or, why not lobby NAD to reach out officially to AGB with respect to broadening support for ASL?
Or, as I suggested earlier, start publishing all that research data in medical journals so as to expose and sensitize doctors (who are, after all, continually exposed to a constant stream of C.I. information) as to Deaf Culture. Why not?
Or, if a protest is a necessity, then, perhaps, you should be reaching out to members of the news media and “educating” them in the first place. The news media is the first step towards educating the wider population. That’s where you win allies and adherents.
As far as the outside world is concerned, the protest didn’t happen. That violates the first law of protests — you need to get attention. The Gallaudet protests got attention. The AGB protests failed in that.
Moreover, this particular protest failed to win any friends or allies within the attendees at the AGB conference. More importantly, the hearing guests at that hotel aren’t going to think very much of Deaf people (”Oh, they’re protesting *AGAIN*. What else is new?”)
What galls me is that there was no consideration given to the possibility that there might be other options than protesting, and, if a protest was deemed necessary, then no planning beforehand, and a complete lack of tactical and strategic planning.
Instead, the ASL Bilingual Coalition decided to take the easy way out and demonize AGB by crashing the conference and having a protest. I might also point out that, like any other conference, that conference was restricted to people who had registered for that conference. So AGB was well within its rights to close it and Marriott was well within its rights to shoo people outside. Then again, I don’t endorse what apparently happened with the Marriott manager and hope that the Coalition contacts Marriott headquarters about that lack of professionalism
You know what? It doesn’t do the Deaf community any service by having a protest at the drop of a hat. You get dismissed very fast if you keep on having protests without EDUCATING people about the reason behind the protest. That means reaching out to the news media instead of just talking about it in echo chamber blogs. That means talking to hearing people – as scary as it is. You need to reach out to EVERYONE and more importantly, you need to appear to be reasonable. You have to show that the facts are on your side. You have to persuade and sway outside people that true justice lies in your demands/requests. If you get people on your side, you start a momentum that’s very hard to stop.
That takes work, planning, and a great deal of patience something which I don’t think the AGB protest and the Coalition displayed very much of in the last couple of weeks. That’s why I call the protest half-assed.
I agree with what you said about the protest being half-assed, but at least it was a start. You could copy and paste what you just said on DBC’s website (in more polite words, ha), to show a need for a more sophiscated dialogue. That is why I understand where Mike McConnell is coming from, just like you (FB). The way I see, the protest accomplished almost nothing, instead it made DBC look immature and uneducated and unfortunately, the hotel management did not help much, made AGB look a bit more hostile.
FB, you nailed it.
Too bad I can’t edit my previous comment… I wanted to add one thing.
What kills me about this whole thing is after I posted my blog, the criticism I got was that the tactics in the post were for businesses.
What? Advocacy isn’t a business? Then what the hell is it? A giant party?
Karen –
I think you just pinpointed my issue with the entire AGB protest — “need for more sophisticated dialogue.” The recent protest didn’t display any level of thought or sophistication. Resorting to an half-assed protest (which in and of itself is a nuclear option that is not to be used as first resort) makes us look like incompetents, yokels, and bumblers. Is this the message we want to send to the outside world? Is this the message we want to send to PARENTS of deaf children? I think not.
DP –
You got it. What we need is sustained advocacy over a period of time, and a lot of planning and thinking beforehand about the strategic and tactical choices.
Why is it that whenever I think about the protest, I think about a black and white movie with villagers with pitchforks and torches storming up the castle to find Frankenstein’s monster? Except, in this case, the Frankenstein’s monster is daintily dining with a mother of a deaf child and having an intellectual conversation of equals.
Whom do you suppose the parent will be more interested in?
I also saw the comments posted on your blog. I suppose from the point of view of the critics, it’s better to have heart than planning and thought in a protest.
Hi FB:
Okay, now you wrote a very long reply above, which is cool, but I can’t answer that in one paragraph, so I hope you’ll stick with me here.
I never said I supported half-assed protests. That’s your interpretation. I said I respect people who fight. Don’t think that this field isn’t stuffed up to its eyeballs with people who have been beating their heads against the Deaf Education Brick Wall for the last thirty years. Many in this community LOVE to talk. But after a while it gets so that’s all that ends up happening… TALK.
Why do protests happen? Frustration. I ask you to look at this from another viewpoint. The reaction of this community to anything BUT talk is almost invariably negative. I’ve known of
“protests” that consisted of taping little pieces of paper on the doors to show that the problems in these classrooms persisted (I forget if the program was a Deaf institution or a mainstream program, oral or manual, etc). I’ve seen protests that consisted of rallying around new Deaf administrators and then trying to impliment changes only to have the staff basically rebel and block everything and anything. I’ve seen people starve themselves without blocking anyone’s gates. I’ve seen people block gates and take over buildings. I’ve seen people do nothing more than hand out leaflettes.
ALL were labelled at least one of these (and possibly several): Militants, Extremists, Radicals, Terrorists, etc.
This community is so mired in apathy, in inertia, that it has completely lost touch with what a TRUE range of extremism, radicalism, and terrorism represents. A person who flies a plane into a skyscraper… THAT is an extremist. A person who tosses a pipe bomb through a window… THAT is a radical terrorist. People who hand out leaflettes are pretty much just handing out leaflettes. They’re maybe one step up on the extremism scale from people who sit at home and write letters. And somewhere in between them are people who tape little slips of paper to classroom doors. All of those things ARE a form of communication. They’re an expression of entirely civil frustration. When an expression of frustration turns uncivil to the extent that it can turn uncivil elsewhere in the world, start looking for explosions. Until you see one, maybe we should all tone down our negative reactions to ANYTHING that deaf people do to improve their current situation in their lives (and in the lives of children who haven’t even been born yet, whom many deaf people don’t want to see grow up only to go through the same types of pain and humiliation they have already experienced).
When Shane wrote his two blogs on the AG Bell protest, I suggested a Social Experiment: I’d write to the AG Bell association myself, publicly, and be perfectly polite. Do you really think anyone there would have written back? Remember that we can still put this to the test. I can write such a letter in Part III. But I probably won’t, because even if we do put it to the test, any possible result will send us right back to the stage of debate and argument. If they don’t write back, you can say it’s because they’re all wary and paranoid about the recent protest. If they do write back, I can say it’s because they’re feeling growing public pressure because of the protest. And that’s not even counting the political picking apart of anything they might say that will inevitably happen here.
Why is this commuunity so divided? It’s because there has never been a middle ground until relatively recently. There has never been any type of a road between one side and the other. AG Bell did in the past try to get signing out of the picture, and that’s a fact. ASL-using deaf people responded by continuing to use it and then by making it a point of cultural pride, rejecting many non-signing deaf people in the process. And that’s a fact. So all we’re left with is this big evil mental constuct known as “Deaf Culture” that many simply equate with a bunch of shrieking apes bouncing around with protest signs, and a second mental construct known as AgBAD (their emphasis, not mine) which in the right light would look exactly like Satan, complete with horns, a pitchfork, and little puffs of brimstone smoke coming out of its nostrils.
But is any of that true? It can’t be, because all of us have had different experiences growing up in the world these two extreme camps created for us. I did not learn to sign until I was fourteen, nonetheless I do not equate my linguistic “acquisition success” with successful oral educational methods. I hated my mainstream school. My grades plummeted in mainstream schools. I did much better at the Wisconsin School for the Deaf, and not because the curriculum was easier. I did better in college too (UW-Milwaukee) because I was around deaf people. I wasn’t made to feel like a freak, like a big medical malady pain in society’s ass.
On the other hand I can sympathize with a lot of horror stories about those idiotic “Think-Hearing” signs that were made at me, and the rejection that went along with that. It gets to the point where I think to myself, if my kid is born deaf, NOBODY is getting him. Not mainstream schools, not deaf institutions, nobody. Not until your attitudes change, because BOTH sides are too extreme. Or at least they were. And if one side has to step into the middle to start solving some of these problems, then the real bad guy is the side that doesn’t immediately follow suit.
If you want to see this happen, you have to do more than just talk about it. And you CERTAINLY have to do more than just endlessly pick, pick, pick apart everyone who TRIES to do something about it. There’s a Deaf Bilingual Coalition. I say Glory Hallelujah and God Bless Us All Everyone Amen! AG Bell has a growing number of members who are signing! I say Praise the Lord and Put Down the Ammunition!
Give me the middle ground. Give me both sides working together to make sure nobody has to go through what so many of us have gone through. Show me that the Victorian Era shame of Alexander Graham Bell is no longer the driving force behind physically pinning a kid’s hands to his lap and making him repeat “hotdog” until he either gets it right or breaks down crying. Show me the end of Deaf Elitism; a world where whether or not your parents were Deaf, and the school you went to was a Deaf school, and the language you were first exposed to was ASL are no longer factors in whether or not we end up hating each other’s guts. Show me a world where we diligently and with passionate dedication to the truth seek out what approach is best for THAT child. Show me a world where he’s accepted no matter who or what he is.
Anyone willing to take us closer to that world has my full support. And if handing out a leaflette gets us even an inch closer, that action has my support. But both sides have to come to the middle… and not one side takes one step while the other is expected to take ninety-nine. That’s not the middle ground. That’s just a lie. And I am tired of lies.
I hope that clarifies my feelings for you.
FB, about better fruitful dialogues, it could be using your imagination a bit better, too.
See http://kokonutpundits.blogspot.....music.html
Mike –
Thanks for pointing out the video.
Chris –
Believe me, I certainly can empathize with your frustration with the fact that the Deaf constantly harp on faults in proposals to the point that nothing gets done. However, that doesn’t mean that we should accept a lack of critical thinking, poor planning, in conjunction with an equally shoddy execution of a protest. Criticism of the AGB protest and of the ABC leadership is and was perfectly valid on those grounds.
That said, it looks like, and I hope, that others are taking up the idea of having a booth in the AGB conference seriously. I hope that they take the idea and run with it.
My view of AGB is a lot more nuanced than I find in the one-sided views expressed here and elsewhere in the Deaf community. There is undeniably a track record of success in their oral approach as evidenced by the members that attend their conferences. However, and that is a big however, the oral approach isn’t for everybody. I, too, shared the attitude that they were “the enemy” but I later met quite a few AGB people and discovered that, hey, we have a lot in common. They have similar experiences and, in many ways, similar points of view.
So, I hope that greater contact between AGB and members of the Deaf community will lead to greater dialogue and perhaps some change on both sides. I’m not optimistic to say everything will change overnight, but ….. a footstep in the right direction is the right start. (And it does not matter if one end is 99 steps and the other is one step. All that is required for change is one step toward each other! What is left at that point is nothing but negotiations.)
A final thought. Anybody who focuses on AGB solely to the exclusion of everything else is either politically immature or simply missing the bigger picture. We should be focusing on getting the FCC to require live captioning of Internet-based news videos instead of accepting transcriptions after the fact (as in Shane’s previous blog on that subject). We should be raising a stink and lobbying for an improvement of the dismal state of deaf education throughout the country. We should be protesting the lack of action (and priority and funding) given to discrimination cases affecting Deaf people by the Justice Department and the EEOC. These are just some of the things we should be focusing instead of dissipating our energies on an organization that quite simply has a different approach to deafness.
Concrete action with real world consequences instead of fratricidal warfare. (“Oh, they’re Deaf and they’re protesting something.” “Again? What are they protesting?” “Looks like they’re protesting AGB and cochlear implants.” “That’s weird. Why wouldn’t they want to hear? But then again no one said Deaf people make sense.” )
FB:
“I certainly can empathize with your frustration with the fact that the Deaf constantly harp on faults in proposals to the point that nothing gets done.”
I said nothing of the sort. But I think this exchange underscores the point I’m trying to make above. Saying your message once is obviously not going to get the job done. Saying it again and again and rephrasing it (without changing the basic message) until you get through is probably more important.
In our own case, I believe I may have successfully communicated some points, but beyond that–no offense–I thing you’re still just seeing only what you’re predisposed to see.
“I never said I supported half-assed protests. That’s your interpretation. I said I respect people who fight. Don’t think that this field isn’t stuffed up to its eyeballs with people who have been beating their heads against the Deaf Education Brick Wall for the last thirty years. Many in this community LOVE to talk. But after a while it gets so that’s all that ends up happening… TALK.”
I thought I understood you to be saying that you were frustrated with the tendency to talk instead of action. If I misunderstood you, then I apologize.
I look forward to seeing your further thoughts on this (Parts II and III).
On that part you’re right. I hope I’m not insulting you here. I don’t mean to. I just don’t see what happened as “half-assed” in this case. And I don’t see everything Deaf/deaf people do as “protesting AGAIN.” Maybe much of the hearing world sees it that way, but I don’t, and I think quite a few other D/deaf people don’t either, and it’d be nice if we could have some INTERNAL unity before we go off worrying about whether or not everyone else is going to support what we want.
Peace. No apology necessary.
What about successful oral or even aural deaf/hoh people out there? In fact, I’m one of them (ie aural).
Well, so am I. Possibly not “aural” (at this stage in my life, anyway), but I CAN speak.
McConnell, that’s not the point here. People KNOW about the successful oral/aural deaf and hoh people. But they know squat about the successful bilingual ASL deaf/hoh.
That is why we need PUBLISHED educational works about ASL… statistics, etc. Not hearsays. Dr. Kim Brown-Kurz made a point a few years ago that with published works, the major organizations and government would be more willing to listen.
Well, yes and no, DP.
If someone were to lookup the STAR reports for California schools to see how well schools do that use bilingual education (ie ASL) for deaf/hoh students they wouldn’t be totally enthralled or even convinced about the success of bilingual ASL.
All one has to do is look up Fremont and Riverside School for the Deaf where both promote bilingual ASL to see proficiency ratings in various school subjects.
Here’s Riverside as an example:
http://tinyurl.com/3y2a4z
Between 85 and 95 percent of the scores rate at “Basic,” “Below Basic,” and “Far Below Basic” with the majority of the percentages falling in the “Far Below Basic.”
Success is relative. If you’re going to tout the successes of ASL to parents of deaf/hoh children would you try and convince them to go to Riverside or Fremont if they live in California? I’m sure that any parent seeing scores like that from those schools would no doubt question the “bilingual success of ASL”.
Were parents fully informed about Riverside or Fremont before sending their deaf/hoh child to school from grade 2 to 12? Did they have a choice?
McConnell, I am talking about showing successful bilingual ASL deaf ADULTS. There are some out there.
As for the state school of the deaf test results, that is not surprising. If you do a study of that, you will find that those who did dismally on the test, did not grow up in that environment.
It’s well known that state schools for the deaf all over the country are a dumping ground. After the parents become outraged at their local school district for failing to educate their child, the local school district caves in and sends the kid to the state school of the deaf.
DP:
Bingo. I would say “may discover” instead of “will discover” but yeah, I agree. Another factor to consider: how many of these bilingually fluent (supposedly) teachers can actually sign? If a school calls itself bilingual but even a handful of its teachers can’t sign well, that has an impact even if the kid grew up in a signing home environment.
FB I’ll reply to you later on. Busy day.
DP, sure. There are successful ASL using deaf adults. The idea people are trying to promote, as far as I can tell in this discussion, is about the early use of ASL in a bilingual format which ensures or produces successful Deaf adults.
Again, I said that “success” is a relative term here. What do you mean by “success”? If there are no real successful bilingual programs/schools out there since you cannot use CSDF, CSDR, Arizona School for Deaf, Sante Fe School for the Deaf, Rhode Island School for the Deaf, etc, because you bring up the premise that half of the faculty cannot sign fluently eough in ASL as reason for poor bilingual successes. Then why advertise successful bilingual Deaf adults? People will soon invariably ask questions about those successful bilingual Deaf adults, “Which schools did they go to?” Since good education is usually an indicator of potential successes later in life as adults.
This whole discussion begins about promoting the idea more frequently that deaf/hoh children ought to use ASL as their 1st and only primary means of communication. And now it’s “No…no..no…it’s about successful Deaf adults.” Well, like I said, people will ask the questions about schools, how did he/she become successful, about teachers, hearing or deaf parents, do they sign, etc..
What I’m seeing here are lots of excuses, some truths, some half-truths, a bit of knee jerk responses here and there, not about kids but adults when measuring successes, it’s about advertising ASL and so on.
Be careful on how you advertise your successful products because people will ask questions.
My answer to that question would be, it is more than just education that contributes to the person’s success. It’s the parents, as well. They have to learn ASL, and that is a tough part to get around, I admit. Not many parents are willing to devote the time to learn a new language. It’s far easier to force the kid to lip-read and speak.
The reason why I think it’s important to show that there are successful bilingual ASL deaf, is because the Oralists’ point of view is basically their results are successful. We need to do the same. We need to show our results.
By the way, it’s my understanding that the majority of the faculty at the California State Schools of the Deaf have are fluent in ASL. Same for Indiana State School for the Deaf. I’m not sure about the rest.
And you know what? People need to ask questions, instead of having blind faith.
Which is why a lot of parents take up Cued speech since it’d be easier to master in terms of “signing.” Rather, I see a whole range of tools available whether they can be used combined or alone. No one particular tool fits all.
Now, if the majority of the faculty at CSD are fluent in ASL, then explain the STAR report.
I already did, McConnell, in comment #86006.
Mike:
“What I’m seeing here are lots of excuses, some truths, some half-truths, a bit of knee jerk responses here and there, not about kids but adults when measuring successes, it’s about advertising ASL and so on.”
I don’t see it that way. I see it as taking a car to a mechanic for the first time in five years because it won’t run. He says “Well there’s no oil in it,” so the owner says “Well put some in!” So the mechanic does but then he says “The spark plugs are no good.” So the owner says “Put some new ones in then!” So the mechanic does but then says there’s no water in the radiator. So the owner, becoming frustrated, says “Well put some in then!”
Then the mechanic says “Okay, but you also need some gas in this thing.” Suddenly the owner starts jumping up and down in frustration and screams “I’m sick of all of these excuses!”
You need oil and spark plugs and water in the radiator and gas. The car won’t run without them and saying so is not an excuse, and it’s not blaming, and it’s not a knee-jerk reaction. If you want to see successful bilingual education programs, you need early detection screening, parents who start learning to sign immediately, schools with teachers who are expert signers, and a curriculum built precisely for getting you from one mode of grammar to another and back with ease.
Because Deaf Ed has been neglected for so long, many pgograms don’t have ANY of these things (though some do).
I find it ironic that you say Deaf Ed has been neglected for so long becuase 1 out of 3 deaf people I meet seem to be majoring in deaf education. Whatever happened to those people?
Don’t Agree:
They were sucked into a System where the most important thing is the maintainence of the Status Quo.
Um, Chris. Are you saying that CSD schools (as well similar Deaf schools) have been neglecting Deaf/hoh students over there? Mind the fact that previous STAR reports going back several still showed the same results, even for the younger ones (ie 2nd grade, 3rd, 4th) to make a difference from, say, 2001 versus 2006 students of that same age group. Did it change? Like DP said, if true, that most of the teachers at CSD are fluent in ASL and that the schools support a bilingual education. You have had more than several years to try and correct this poor education results among CSD (per the STAR reports).
I’d say it is a knee jerk response to all this by blaming all on, as I see it, hearing parents for not being ASL proficient enough themselves as the sole cause of education failure. The school holds the biggest accountability on education to children. More so than parents in many cases. The burden is heavily shifted toward the school side alongside with numerous other support mechanisms which includes parental support.
Correction: “Mind the fact that previous STAR reports going back several YEARS still showed the same results…”
Mike, the most crucial stage for language acquisition begins right at birth. Various research articles place the end stage for acquisition anywhere from the age of five to the age of thirteen. A huge portion of it takes place in the home before the child ever arrives at school.
Southern California is known for its large Deaf population, DP. I’d be hard pressed to even accept your notion “that those who did dismally on the test, did not grow up in that environment.” I am assuming when you say “that environment” meaning Deaf parents with Deaf children in a signing environment. Why I reject your notion, DP? Because Riverside, Berkley and Fremont are located in Southern California and their surrounding counties hold one of the largest area of concentration of Deaf people working and living there. So, what do you think the majority of those kids in CSD came from Deaf parents? What’s more there are more residential students as they get older meaning they grow up ((Elementary Dept. - 52% residential students; Middle School - 65%; High School - 74% for 2003 – 2004 - http://www.csdf.k12.ca.us/acad.....003-04.pdf )
And even if we assume that there is a small ratio of Deaf kids with Deaf parents go to CSD and that there parents are extremely involved then we should be seeing on the STAR reports some figures in the ‘Advanced’ English skill row. But we don’t. Few in the ‘Proficient’ and the rest in the ‘Basic,’ ‘Below Basic,’ and ‘Far Below Basic’ as compared to other schools in California that fills up the ‘Advanced’ and ‘Proficient’ rows. Looking at it that way, then whose fault would this be? The teachers who are mostly fluent in ASL?? Or the Deaf parents?