I read Sunday’s NYT Op-Ed titled “A Poverty of the Mind” with great interest and like many other culture-related articles I read, I often consider the deaf analogy.
The piece discusses not only the “tragic disconnection of millions of black youths from the American mainstream” but also, the “failure of social scientists to adequately explain the problem, and their inability to come up with any effective strategy to deal with it.”
The deaf analogy made me think about the progress our social scientists are making in improving the livelihoods of deaf people. For example, Chomsky and other linguistic researchers have proved that the bombardment of ASL to deaf infants before the age of three enables full access to language and cognitive development. Otherwise, a parent beats a dead horse.
I really want to believe that influential organizations like NAD, AGB and the American Society of Deaf Children are armed with this linguistic research and more - and are maybe even evangelizing its findings as part of their missions. And in this increasingly hostile day and age, I believe that the advancement of this knowledge will require an unprecedented collaboration of everyone - deaf, hard-of-hearing, hearing, signers and non-signers.
However, what I fear is this:
Given the prevalence of audism in the world - given the default desire for physical and social normalcy on the part of hearing parents of deaf children, our legislatures can easily be lobbied, politicked and convinced by the wrong factions or coalitions.
The two key questions for me become:
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How do we strategically defeat legislative audism?
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How do we trailblaze delivery of current linguistic research to the parents of newborn deaf children and their doctors?
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Why can’t I see the three comments? Anyway, I think that a non-profit needs to be established for the simple purpose of disseminating non-biased information to “surprised” parents of the deaf. A for-profit corporation can definitely do it in “trailblazing” fashion, but the information would likely be more biased. We cannot trust the government.
And.. lobbying is all about networking, which unfortunately can be very difficult for the signing deaf population to master in this hearing world. Sorry, I know. Problems, not solutions!
Like you, I always think of the deaf analogy whenever reading such articles- sometimes I wish I could escape that- but I think it also gives me added perspective! ;)
Julie, those three comments were tagged as spam, so they weren’t shown on this page (and later deleted), but they are included in the comment count on the front page. Hmm.
Here’s another good deaf analogy situation: Miracle Workers. It’s a great show where doctors cure various people’s disabling ailments (last night’s episode covered a teenager with Tourette’s and a young child with a severe spine-warping condition), but I’m often left disturbed by the parents’ exclaiming, “My child is normal now!”
I was thinking some more about this post. You mentioned Chomsky’s ASL research, and then AGB in the next paragraph. When I first moved here 6 years ago, I asked AGB if I could volunteer in their library. Upon learning that I was a signer, they said no (I’m not kidding). Although I think AGB is still a wonderful organization in many ways, what makes you think of them as a possible candidate for promoting Chomsky’s research?
I think the biggest problem for any deaf/hard of hearing population is the medical community. If we can educate the medical community everything about deafness, I am sure the medical perspective on deafness would change. I believe that parents, teachers, legal professionals, politicians would trail along with the medical community. Don’t you think it is about time that the medical community learn more about deaf/hard of hearing people? Don’t you get tired of going to the doctor’s office and he has only one side of information (pathological perspective) about deafness? I am! So why dont we do anything about it now??
One big problem is how powerful AGBAD and other oral/audist organizations are. They have money behind them and they are on the boards of so many organizations. They have a powerful coalition and their PR machine is so slick, it’s unbelievable. Rob’s right - ideally, they’d be evangelizing these findings. But to do so would run completely counter to their entire raison d’etre. ‘Tain’t happening. Now what can we do about it? I’d love to know.
[…] But while you’re grumbling, there’s always DeafDC to keep you occupied, right? Last Saturday night, the dream ended for George Mason University, but not without a whoo-whoo post from Adam as the suburban commuter school team entered the NCAA Final Four. Rob lamented the existence of legislative audism in determining deaf children’s education policy. Juicy datin’ gossip was delivered courtesy of Erin, while Julie lauded the enduring magic of books. Did anyone read Time last week? If the cover story about global warming’s got you concerned (but you should already have been concerned years ago), give some thought to joining Zipcar. […]
perfectly stated…..
We do have a non-biased organization– Hands & Voices. Check them out at: http://www.handsandvoices.org.