Gallaudet: Mother Sees Signs of Times
My daughter is deaf. During the protests, I drove down to Gallaudet University every chance I could to stand with her in the midst of the community that means as much to her as family. Every evening, I attended the open meetings in Hughes Gymnasium and marveled at the cool expertise of the students, but not without counting up the costs in my own heart and reliving much of the pain and confusion that was so suddenly and unexpectedly being redressed.
Like most parents of deaf children, I am a hearing person. Since as many as 90% of children with hearing loss grow up in hearing families who have no prior knowledge of deafness and no contact with the adult deaf community, it is not surprising that we turn to medical experts for advice. Until now, their response has been to direct us to “speech and hearing” clinics and centers for “communications disorders,” where deafness is often regarded as an unspeakable handicap.
In New York City, where my daughter’s hearing loss was first evaluated, the word deaf was never used. Hearing impaired was the preferred designation, carrying with it the idea of something broken, something that could be mended if only I worked hard enough.
I did work hard. We came to clinic twice a week for speech therapy and auditory training. At home I talked relentlessly to provide a stimulating auditory atmosphere, then lay awake frozen with fear because I sometimes responded to my daughter’s gestures without insisting on vocalization. Even after I was warned that I would “have only myself to blame,” I did not always force her to wear the hearing aids she so desperately resisted.
I can say, now, that from the day my daughter’s hearing loss was diagnosed, she became the object of professional strategies designed to make her “pass” for hearing. At the time, I was too terrified to stage more than token rebellions. I kept her in public schools, forcing myself to concentrate on her good grades and test scores, ignoring my own best instincts as well as the evidence of our day-to-day lives.
In spite of her apparent “oral success,” I was haunted by the tense way she held her body, her hunched shoulders and darting eyes. At first I blamed her genes; after all, her father never sat still without his knee jerking or his fingers tapping. I blamed myself for the terrible tantrums that erupted for no apparent reason and blew over with no clear resolution.
Our makeshift hearing world finally collided with the deaf world in the middle of summer when my daughter was 10 at a workshop on American Sign Language, Deaf culture and the Deaf community. An interpreter voiced while a deaf woman signed the story of her growing up years in a hearing family, her education in hearing and deaf schools, her life as an independent adult.
I had never seen an interpreter before. I had never been face to face with a deaf adult, but this much was clear to me in an instant. No matter what I had been told, my daughter was deaf. In front of her shining eyes, I was witnessing a future that was undeniably her own.
On the face and hands of the workshop leader I saw the experience my daughter needed to become a self-conscious, self-defining human being. In those capable hands, deafness was not the tragedy of the clinicians’ invention. It was not a pathology or a barrier to education, but a normal human variation. As my daughter’s shoulders relaxed in that welcoming circle, I saw that deafness could be her strength, not a weakness.
On the crest of that enthusiasm we moved to Washington, D.C. We clung to that sense of homecoming even as I was becoming aware that Gallaudet was not the mecca I had imagined. Instead, more than anything, the bureaucracy at Gallaudet reminded me of the British in India. Deaf people were everywhere except in positions of authority. I had traveled halfway across the country to give my daughter a good education only to discover that deaf schools nationwide are colonized by hearing people and operate at their convenience.
Long after linguists and social scientists have recognized deaf people as a distinct minority within American society, American Sign Language still has no status in the classrooms of deaf students. Teachers and students frequently use different languages, and most education takes place, as it always has, as students teach each other or learn from the deaf adults in the dorm. Kids mainstreamed into regular schools, even the academically successful, have little or no direct communication. They pay in bitter isolation for the appearance of integration. It is a system too cruel and wasteful to prevail.
At that workshop, almost seven years ago, I thought I was the last person in the world to be getting the good news. At Gallaudet I discovered I had seen the start of a movement that only now has exploded into public consciousness.
The students have won their four demands.
Now I have a few demands of my own:
- I want parents of newly diagnosed deaf children to be introduced to deaf adults at the earliest opportunity.
- I want professionals who work with young deaf children and their families to be sensitive and knowledgeable enough to help us begin to build the linguistic and cultural bridges we will surely need.
- I want teachers in the classrooms of deaf children to be fluent in the language of deaf people and to respect that language equally with English.
- I want institutions in the deaf community to be controlled by deaf people who have the determination and resilience to create a self-determined future.
Over the years I have learned a lot about the power of language, the strength of community, and the wisdom of patience. My spirit and vision have grown immeasurably because of this opportunity I have had to interact in the deaf world. Standing beside my daughter, I envy the animation and pride I see glowing on her face and on the faces of the people around us. I hope I can also learn to leave behind the bitterness and cynicism of the past and join wholeheartedly in the celebration.