Oh and I’m teaching my 3-year-old daughter sign language, even though she is hearing, because I am proud of my family and so she can talk to her grandparents. She LOVES it.
I suspect any deaf child brought up by parents who speak English to each other and to the child, but who also sign or arrange for the child to be taught sign or be immersed in a signing environment from an early age, will inevitably grow up knowing both languages with equal facility.
And likewise, being brought up with sign language at home (I signed before I could speak) and English out in the world means I am equally fluent in both. I had no speech delay either.
You made me remember: there’s a line in a Robert Fulghum book where he describes seeing a group of deaf people signing jokes to each other, and he wrote something along the lines of not knowing exactly *what *they were signing, but that he could tell *that *they were sharing jokes. Made me realize: that’s such an integral part of human nature.
My super fancypants summer legal job revolved around regulatory hearings to bring Video Relay Service to Canada, so I was surprised to see this thread at this time.
From the consulting reports prepared (which I had to read for months), a lot of the research seems to suggest that early CI surgery and an emphasis on “oralist” pedagogy stymies a deaf person’s ability to learn written English, with anecdotal evidence that deaf Canadians before the second world war, typically could write at a high school level or better when they didn’t bother learning to read lips or practice oral English. A change in pedagogy decimated this reading and writing comprehension for the boomer generation of deaf persons.
Obviously someone who went to Galludet has access to better stats and resources than I do, but I thought that was interesting.
To the OP’s point (I guess his daughter must be in grade school by now, huh?), I can understand why someone would want to be able to communicate with their own child in a comfortable manner with cochlear implants. I can also understand the points of deaf advocacy groups–which can sometimes come off as rather “militant,” if I can say that in a mild fashion–that it might damage learning and socializing for a deaf child. I sure as Hell feel sorry for the OP, and I don’t feel it’s right to judge a parent based on such a difficult decision. YMMV. My life is fairly occularcentric these days, with most meaningful socializing coming by Facebook or text messages, even with my family, so I don’t know what I’d do if it was my child.
Since you’re the first BSL signer I’ve (talked to? Written to?) Francesca, mind if I ask you how you find using the telephone in England? Precocious summer student who’s idly curious. 
I suspect at least some of that failure rate is from implanting people who are not appropriate for a CI.
I come at this from a different angle. I used to work at a health insurance company in their medical research division, tangential to the medical policy division, which I also did some work with. CI’s only work in specific circumstances. If you talk to anyone who had hearing, lost it, then got a CI they’ll be the first to tell you that while it might be useful hearing it’s not normal hearing. So the insurance company (completely aside from cost) was only interested in paying for CI’s for people who met criteria that indicated that they could benefit from CI’s. Which makes sense to me.
The problem came in from people - usually parents - who were convinced that CI’s were “cure” for deafness. No, they aren’t. Getting a prosthetic leg doesn’t “cure” amputation, and getting prosthetic ears don’t “cure” deafness. We’d get appeals from families where, for sound medical reasons, the child had been turned down for a CI but the family kept pushing for one. Some of these families were clearly engaging in doctor-shopping to find a doc to give them the answer they wanted instead of the answer they needed. It’s not beyond imagining that some of them either get an OK after being annoying enough, or raise sufficient funds to pay for a CI out of pocket, and their kid gets a CI that does them no good whatsoever.
Plus, sometimes, even if someone is a good candidate it just doesn’t work.
There was a certain irony here in that one of the final people such parents encountered in the “no” process was a woman who was herself deaf. She didn’t have a CI, despite having lost her hearing in adulthood. That’s because her deafness was not due to a malfunctioning cochlea, hers was, in fact, completely intact. Her deafness was due to brain damage, the part of the brain that processes hearing had been destroyed and a CI doesn’t fix that. So she was an example of someone who could not benefit from a CI, although she’d very much like to have her hearing back.
I think far too many hearing people are oversold on CI’s. I blame too many media feel-good stories and highlighting the exceptional successes. It’s rather like expecting every leg amputee to run like Oscar Pistorius. Just ain’t gonna happen.
I use the phone fine, but I can hear I am a BSL user because both my parents are profoundly Deaf. Neither of them can use the phone at all but they both text and Skype.
Beg your pardon, I misunderstood!
Yes, I read some OFCOM papers that described how the British have video relay phones, but it’s primarily am accommodation for calling banks, government, etc. I find this all quite fascinating, now, and how different national approaches vary.
Oh, man, this. I dated a girl who was deaf for a couple of years in my university days. The open, naked hostility we both faced from her college student-aged Deaf friends was shocking and sad, and was in stark contrast to how my 60yrs+ Japanese wife’s parents welcomed their foreigner son-in-law.
After a couple of years I was reasonably decent at signing, which pissed her friends off even more.
I love this thread, especially the OP, and am glad it was brought back so I could read the first page again. And am interested in an update from the OP, wherever he is.
Regarding the oralist vs ASL vs CI question, what is wrong with All Of The Above? The way our brains work a small child can pick up two languages as easily as one, and that often makes it easier for the kid to pick up more languages into adulthood. In my simple world it seems like anybody who can should raise their kids bilingual–my wife is pretty good with Spanish and I wanted her to start our kids on it bright and early, but she didn’t want to. My suggestions that her own early exposure to languages besides English had greased her way to learning Spanish as an adult fell on, well, let’s just say they were ignored. Our oldest, who has picked up some Spanish in recent years by working at it, wishes I had won.
So, why can’t it work both ways? Or is some of the resistance coming from people sour grapesing about paths they had not been able to take? Learning any language as an adult is a bitch and ASL and Spoken English both require you to develop physical skills you never needed before.
As mentioned upthread, there was long a belief that attempting to teach a child two languages at once would somehow impair or delay language development. This definitely was a factor in the either/or approach to deaf education in the past.
And far too many people still believe that ASL is not a real language, or that it’s a “crutch”.
So, I see confusion. ALL Deaf children now being educated in a ASL-centric mode receive education in both ASL and in written English. I know of no place where they are not teaching Deaf students to read and write in English grammar.
Oralism is not the teaching of written/read English, but specifically it is about teaching speech. For children who are born Deaf forming speech and lipreading are enormous efforts that requires intensive, expensive training and deep parental involvement. For example, acquiring 50 clear spoken words in a year would be a tremendous accomplishment. Comprehensible speech under age 10 is rare.
Furthermore the results of oralist education for those who are born severely or completely deaf are not very good and most hearing individuals interpret the Deaf accent as being “retarded” ie, it sounds like the speech of someone with intellectual deficits. The owner of my ASL school was recently mocked in a Starbucks for his accent (and is suing the shit out of them) and his speech is fairly clear. It’s not some “weird Deaf thing” to prefer silence if other people interpret your speech as “stupid.” Hearing students of foreign languages do the exact same thing. Its the natural reaction for individuals of normal intelligence to not want to be thought “stupid.”
So, for one, oralist education requires a ton of work that takes away from time that could be spent on social skills, vocational skills, and academic subjects, you know, “education” I think they call it? For two, the results are normally unsatisfactory at helping Deaf people move in hearing society. And that’s why most Deaf adults feel their oralist education was a complete waste of time.
I would note that the equation w/r/t to speech and lipreading is different for the postlingually Deaf - that is, those who went Deaf after acquiring spoken language in childhood.
However, if you think lipreading is easy – even for fluent English speakers – I invite you to watch the “Bad Lipreading” series of humorous videos. In this series, comical voiceover that plausibly matches the lip positions is overlayed on famous people, political speeches, etc. The videos are extremely funny, but I hope that watching them makes clear what an incredibly intensive task accurate lipreading is.
As far as CIs, there are several issues.
-As others noted it does not “fix” Deafness. There will still be a hearing deficit and there may still be a hearing deficit in the range of human speech. ie, it might not help at all.
-The implantation process destroys all residual hearing, making it a one-way path to permanent use of the CI or nothing.
-With the implant in, you can never have an MRI – you can’t even be near an MRI machine.
-it will set off metal detectors, retail theft detection systems, and can be muddled by cell phone signal, and dealing with this will be a fact of the Deaf person’s life forever.
-It can be incredibly limiting for children - for one example, any sport or activity in which they could receive a conk to the head is contraindicated.
Some people can legitimately feel that, setting aside the risks of the surgery itself, the lifelong implications of CI implantation are not worth the risk. Others can legitimately feel that they are. There just isn’t one answer for every family.
Hello Again: Your post (#252, just above this) is the most succinct and informative one on the issue of cochlear implantation I’ve seen to date.
Would have been quite ironic if it had happened to be post #258. 
I’m talking earlier. By school age children are already beginning to lose the ability to be easily bilingual.
Like I said, I only reread the first page since this thread was new and I apologize for screwing up the terminology. Speech is overrated and a waste of time when they can spend that time learning to read and write. And sign, in a standard dialect. Want to order something at Starbucks? Write a note. They are slightly less likely to screw it up then, anyway. And yes, I know lip reading is tough and CIs are imperfect.
Dropzone, I don’t really follow you. Are you suggesting that deaf pre-schoolers should learn to read and write?
There are no deaf education programs where deaf kids aren’t taught to read and write English. There used to be plenty of deaf education programs where deaf kids were not allowed to sign. The theory was, if voice is the only method of communication the kids have, they’ll be forced to use it. Give them an easy natural method of communication like sign, and they’ll give up on learning voice because it’s too hard.
And this is how we ended up with deaf adults who couldn’t voice, couldn’t read and write, and couldn’t sign.
My oldest sister is Deaf, and she started Speech Therapy at a very young age, so now she is not only fluent in ASL, but also has some decent speech skills (especially for someone born Deaf).
We have had the Deaf culture, Deaf Community discussion many times, and as much as sometimes it can really tick me off (like when she was 15 and refused to wear her hearing aids as it was “trying to be Hearing” and if someone wanted to talk to her, they should “learn ASL” - she was a teen, after all) they have provided her with an extended family that she obviously needed. We are her family, and we love her, but her friends understand what her day to day struggles are with better clarity.
Well said.
I really don’t get the deal with using ‘D’ in deaf , I am hoh and we had
no deaf culture growing up and I never heard of ASL as a child . I belong to a deaf forum and they’re so double standard about deaf and hoh people . Deaf people can pretty much be rude and insulting as they want and not get banned !
I am banned right now b/c I return the favor and was rude back ! So I agree
Fuck deaf community ! And I can’t relate to the crap about people wanting their baby to be born deaf ! Why the fuck would any parent wish that on their child ! This so sick to me. There is nothing cool about being hoh , it SUCK big time! No one knew I was hoh until I was 8 yo and I slapped by dad b/c I didn’t come when he called me! And some damn fool think being deaf is a
gift! WTF! I join this forum b/c I found this thread when I was banned the last time on the deaf one.