One commenter in my last post asked for better examples of how Deaf parents had their parental rights overridden or violated. Well, here are some, from a source whom I shall keep anonymous:
a) “In Holland, I was told by deaf parents that their child would be placed in a mental institution if CI is not given to him. This occurred in 2009. ”
b) “I know of a family of two deaf children being threatened by the state social worker to take away their children for refusing to enroll them in a public school as they wished to put their children in Fanwood, New York in 2004″
“We had a hard time to enroll our daughter who is hard of hearing in Montessori Children’s House because the school district didn’t agree with the curriculum for our daughter. It took us almost one year after enrolling her there to get the school district off our back. A lot of papers sent “fro and back” … Totally unnecessary.” This was in 1990.
“Oregon School for the Deaf is not permitted by the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) to deal with deaf children under the age of 5. They are referred to their own school districts, and the parents are educated about various modes of communication. There is absolutely no ASL specialists in these school districts. ODE prides in the fact that they know nothing about ASL. There’s no one in this state department who is well honed in the language and culture of the Deaf.”
Even as I type, I am getting more examples of Deaf parents’ rights to make decisions for their Deaf children being trampled.
Readers, if you have further examples, you are welcome to leave them here.
My point here is: that decisions like producing and voting on AB-2072, should NOT be done WITHOUT the input of those affected, which happen to be us… the Deaf community, especially Deaf children in this generation and future generations. Remember the rallying cry of the Blacks during Civil Rights Movement: “Not about us, without us!”
Sigh… I wasn’t planning to blog on the AB2072 issue that was raised lately; however, I was a little disturbed by the lack of balance in this blogger’s post. This blogger and her commenters were all het up on the behalf of Hearing parents of Deaf children at the possibility of having the mythical ASL-only option foisted upon them. She mentioned two scenarios, and I quote:
(1.) The Deaf parents of a deaf infant recently screened for hearing loss have been told by the state that they must have their deaf child undergo surgery for a cochlear implant at 6 months and employ only speech therapy in English for the child’s language development, no other options are allowed. How would the Deaf parents feel upon learning that they have no choice on how to raise and communicate with their child? Of course, resentment and anger.
(2.) The hearing parents of a deaf infant recently screened for hearing loss have been told by the state that they must implement ASL only to begin the child’s language development. How would the hearing parents feel upon learning that they have no choice on how to raise and communicate with their child? Of course, resentment and anger.
Then she spent the entire rest of her post defending the Hearing parents’ right to NOT have ASL foisted upon them by the state against their wishes. Fair enough, I agree that the state should not infringe upon the rights of the parents.
Yet, I see NO one on that post, either on the blogger’s or the commenters’ part, stand up for the Deaf parents of Deaf children who had their rights forcibly infringed upon in the name of the hear-and-speak ideology. The blogger implies that Scenario 1 has not happened yet. I submit that this is inaccurate information. To wit:
I have not seen much if any outrage re: Scenario 1 on the part of these people, and yet Scenario 2 causes them to blame Deaf ASL activists for the possibility of Hearing parents’ rights to decide for their Deaf children being infringed upon. Why is this the case?
Hello! Now that I’ve made my confession re: dysconscious linguicism in my previous vlog, I will discuss what linguicism and dysconscious linguicism are. They are kind of complex concepts, so I will attempt to simplify them and keep this post short and sweet.
It’s a form of prejudice that involves an individual making judgments about another’s wealth, education, social status, etc, based on the other’s choice and use of language. (Wikipedia)
It’s a form of prejudice, an “-ism” , along the lines of racism, ageism, sexism, classism and audism. (Wikipedia)
This concept is best described in this way:
SCENARIOS:
Two persons are talking. During the course of this conversation, one of the persons is assessing the other’s wealth, quality of education, status in society based on the other person’s use/choice of language or dialect.
A) If the other person shows an excellent command of English, the assessor assumes he is quite well-educated, possibly from a wealthy family, which then indicates an elevated status in society.
B) If that other person shows poor command of the English language, or uses another language, the assessor assumes that he’s ill-educated, poor, possibly from a ghetto and therefore from the lower classes in society.
The scenarios described above is linguicism, pure and simple. How does linguicism as described above apply to the Deaf?
A) When a Deaf person is able to speak English with his voice, or write excellent English, he gets lauded as intelligent and well educated. This person is considered successful in life.
B) When a Deaf uses ASL (no matter how fluently), but writes mediocre English, and cannot speak English, he is considered intellectually inferior, ill-educated, and guaranteed to fail in life.
This judgement is blatant linguicism. What is worse, we internalize this attitude and apply it to our own people!
DYSCONSCIOUS LINGUICISM:
What is it?
I will use the terms of racism and audism to aid in understanding the term dysconscious linguicism.
A form of racism that accepts dominant white norms and privileges. (Pewewardy)
If one is Black, Aboriginal, or other, one allocates a high degree of respect to the dominant White majority at the expense of one’s esteem of one’s own racial group. This individual desires to “be as White as possible” and renounce his own racial heritage and norms. (Pewewardy describes it another way: If you have seen these racial antics and negative behaviours … for most of your life, you may become absolutely numb to it.)
A form of audism that accepts dominant hearing norms and privileges. It is the attitude of a Deaf individual that Hearing people are better than Deaf people. ” To hear is better than to be deaf.” It is the desire to be as Hearing as possible. I will apply Pewewardy’s explanation here: If you have seen (audist) antics and negative behaviours for most of your life, you may become absolutely numb to it.)
DYSCONSCIOUS LINGUICISM:
(The definition is similar to dysconscious racism and dysconscious audism.)
A form of linguicism that accepts the dominant language as superior to own minority language.
It is the attitude that English is superior to ASL (or Spanish, or other… insert language here).
Remember my previous vlog that described my perception of ASL as broken English, and how the ASL-using Deaf weren’t smart and required support because they had low-quality education? Well, that was an excellent example of dysconscious linguicism, When we have dysconscious linguicism in the Deaf community, that usually comes hand in hand with dysconscious audism. You might recall the hard of hearing students in the last vlog who thought they were privileged to go to public schools because they could hear and speak better than the rest of us? Those same students also viewed ASL as broken English!
Guess what. I’m guilty. Guilty of what, you ask? Dysconscious Linguicism! What is that? That is something I will explain in Part 2 of this vlog series. In this part, I will give my background and tell my story. In doing so, I will explain the reason for accusing myself of dysconscious linguicism.
I come from a Hearing family of which I am the sole Deaf member. I am congenitally Deaf, with an unknown etiology. At the age of 18 months, my mother placed me in a preschool program that provided a signing environment. (Prior to that time, I had no exposure to language, neither signed nor spoken. My communication consisted of pointing at things. ) Immediately, I began to thrive in that environment. I also began reading books at an early age, and developing a love for books.
At the age of 3 1/2, I enrolled in a residential school for the Deaf. It was during my time at that school that a situation arose. I suspect that this situation was one that began my internalization of linguicistic attitude toward ASL.
One Monday morning, and I clearly remember that it was a Monday because on that momentous day, my classroom teacher was absent for whatever reason, and there was no substitute teacher available for my class. As a result, my class was split up so that we all ended up being assigned to different classes for that day. One classmate and I ended up in a class of 9-10 year-olds while we were both only 6 or 7 years old at the time. The Hearing teacher of that class had us write on blackboards about our weekend. So, my classmate and I shared a blackboard and wrote extensively about our respective weekend activities. Once done, we returned to our assigned seats in the classroom. The older students also returned to their seats once they were done with their assignment. After looking at the other blackboards, we were baffled to see that each of the older students had only two or three sentences about their weekend activities. This was in stark contrast to our blackboard, which was filled to capacity with our writing.
Now, all those older students had Hearing parents, although they were all ASL users. We (my classmates) were not actual ASL users though we did sign. To clarify: we were both nerds. We were both voracious bookworms who devoured as many books as we could.
When the Hearing teacher inspected the contents of all the blackboards and saw the marked contrast between the work of his students and ours, he castigated his students severely. Basically, he said, “What is wrong with you?! These 6-7 year-olds are far better writers than you 9-10 year olds! They are able to fill up a blackboard while you only wrote 2 or 3 sentences! ”
When I witnessed that blistering criticism, I was mortified and felt bad for his students. I think that was when I began to internalize the rampant linguicism against ASL in that school . That is, the viewpoint that when one uses ASL, one’s command of English is poor, and that ASL was broken English. A good number of teachers at that school reinforced my internalization of that linguicistic attitude as I grew up in that school. There were some teachers who told me that ASL was in fact broken English. It did not help that each time I saw an ASL using student, he or she exhibited (what I perceived to be) a poor command of the English language.
When I turned 13, I found myself struggling with math, while I did quite well in English classes. I began to notice that most ASL-using students did quite well in math while I wasn’t. Once I realized that, my respect for my fellow students grew.
By that time, I was also laboring under the misconception that Hearing people, purely on the basis of their ability to hear and speak, were more proficient in English than us Deaf people. There were several hard of hearing residental students from my school who were mainstreamed in public schools. These students exhibited an attitude of superiority simply because they attended public schools (which was taken as a sign of prestige) and we did not, and because they could hear and speak a bit. That was blatant audism… dysconscious audism at that. (Linguicism is closely tied to audism. This will be expanded upon in the next v/blog.) I also internalized that dysconscious audism!
When I became a day student (after several years as a residential student), I was thrilled to be riding a school bus with Hearing kids. I communicated with them using pen and paper. I soon noticed something odd. The person, with whom I was writing back and forth, seemed to be struggling to read my written messages, using the sounding-out and re-reading strategies. I was puzzled by this as I had no such issues with reading. Whenever I fingerspelled to that person, she sounded out each letter I spelled then in syllables, then in complete words. It was a slow process and I began questioning this individual’s intelligence.
That was when I had an epiphany (… at the grand old age of 13!): Just because a person could hear doesn’t mean this person had a better command of English than a Deaf person. Therefore, the logic followed that Hearing people aren’t necessarily smarter than Deaf people. (In other words, the ability to hear/speak alone doesn’t necessarily denote intellectual prowess, prodigious or otherwise). That life-changing insight caused me to begin examining my views on my fellow schoolmates who were ASL-users.
Up to the age of 13, I had been signing in the English order and fingerspelling sophisticated words (think Dilton in the Archie comics, Reed Richards in Fantastic Four or Beast in X-Men comics). The other students finally became quite frustrated with me because while I could understand their ASL, they struggled to comprehend what I was telling them. Things came to a head and I was told in no uncertain terms that I had to start using ASL, or my friends would stop associating with me purely because they were fed up with having to work at figuring out what I was saying. I understood their position, and began the long process of switching from English to PSE to ASL. This process lasted through my university years, both undergraduate (Gallaudet U.) and graduate (U of Rochester) and my early teaching years. Finally, I became quite fluent in ASL.
Looking back, now that I have the utmost respect for ASL as a bona fide language, I realized something. During that time when I was signing in the English order as a child and thinking that my schoolmates were using broken English, I was actually the one who mangled ASL! I reiterate: I had been using broken ASL all along!
Go to Part II, which will discuss the definitions for linguicism and dysconscious linguicism. (Part II will be posted soon.)
PS: If you wish to view comments and discussions under my vlog at YouTube, just click directly on my video twice, and it will take you there. If you wish to leave a comment there or here on my website, be my guest.
