Sign Language, Cochlear Implants And Turns Others Essay

Cochlear implants are becoming more and more popular now. Even babies as young as 12 months are receiving a cochlear implant. For hearing parents it’s more convenient to have their child get a cochlear implant rather then to learn sign language. Hearing parents usually just look for the simple way out because they don’t want to have a child who is “different.�

To implant or not implant? Many parents’ who are hearing that have deaf children contemplate this question. Because they want to fix the “problem” of deafness. For they want the best for their son or daughters and the “best” is to hear. For those of the deaf culture, they believe a parent who implants their child is abusing the child. Deafness is not a “problem”, but a way of life. Who is right? Unfortunately, there is no right or wrong answer, there is no manual, or signs that say “this way will lead to a better future”; it’s a personal judgement call.

Those that oppose cochlear implants argue mostly from a minority standpoint. The deaf community feels that as the minority, the hearing majority is threatening their way of life. “The deaf community is a culture. They’re much like the culture of the Hispanic community, for example, where parents who are Hispanics, or shall we say deaf, would naturally want to retain their family ties by their common language, their primary language, which is

When your child is born, you want to make sure they're healthy. The doctors tell you that your child cannot hear and that he/she is a perfect candidate for a cochlear implant (CI). You have to decide, as a parent, whether to give he/her an implant and to be oral, not to give the implant and to be Deaf, or both. My decision is to give my child a CI, teach he/her to be oral, sign language, and being Deaf.

Studies have shown that if a child receives a cochlear implant before the child is 18 months old followed by intensive therapy the child is likely to develop language skills that are comparable to their peers and many children are able to attend mainstream schooling. This sounds great to parents, but what happens when the cochlear implant doesn’t work or if the child doesn’t receive the necessary therapy for understanding sound using the cochlear implant. Because the children were not exposed to American sign language (ASL) this can delay the children education and learning compared to their peers. When children are born to hearing parents they want the child to be like them and be able to hear. To the hearing, deafness is a disability and if there is a way that they can make their child hear, most parents will do everything in their power to make sure they can give that to their child. Then again, many parents forget is that living with a cochlear implant is a lifelong process and involves years to decades of therapy for their child. And if a child receives the implant later than 18 months old it becomes harder for the child to understand speech from a cochlear implant and more intensive therapy for the child. Children start learning language from their parents listening to them talk to others and talk to the baby. If the child is deaf, they are missing this important development of speech, which makes it harder for the child to learn to speak and understanding language. Also, most hearing parents don’t know ASL or sign fluently to be able to teach their children the language and help them to start learning and be able to communicate with society. Today there are still parents that will not learn ASL even though their child is deaf or maybe they received a cochlear implant and it didn’t work. This

Language is communicated in various ways. Yet, there are still children who are denied the privilege of having one. Only ten percent of deaf children are born to deaf parents. This means around ninety percent are born to hearing parents. Most hearing parents have never been exposed to American Sign Language (ASL), so they do not teach it to their deaf child. One of the main reasons this happens is hearing parents tend to deny their child's deafness (Gray, n.d.). Instead, they choose to have their baby get a cochlear implant (CI). Parental decisions regarding cochlear implantation may be influenced by what they understand it means to be deaf. Basically, they see being deaf as a disability and are more apt to consider

By researching this topic, I intend to correct the extremely common misconception that ASL is just “English for Deaf people”, which I also believed before taking multiple classes on the subject.

The nature in American sign language is to create signs to add to deaf people signs for communicating. Deaf education is the same as the hearing education because it incorporates the

Deaf children are entitled to know that they are heirs to an amazing culture, not a pitiful defect. In order to follow through on that obligation, one of the best things I feel we can do is try to educate other hearing people about the realities of American Sign Language and Deaf culture. Language is one of the most critical aspects of most cultures, and one which sets deafness aside from other defects such as blindness, physical disability, or illness. Sign language is not universal, nor does it always correspond to the spoken language in the same country. For example American Sign Language is native to the United States and Canada. Deaf Canadians might use English, French, or both as a written language. But deaf people in Great Britain, while they may write in English, use a completely different sign language. (nad.org)

In learning about the deaf culture I have taken on a new understanding about the people it includes. Through readings and the lessons, I have learned that being deaf has both its hardships and its blessings. The beauty of the language alone makes one want to learn all that he or she can about it. In this paper I will discuss the beauty of the language and the misconceptions the hearing world has about deafness.

Recently I attended a seminar for work, on childcare and development, where they discussed how to work with children with hearing disabilities. At this event there was a population of predominantly people who used American Sign Language as their primary language as opposed to hearing people speaking. I have had interactions with deaf people before but only on an informal level, because most of the deaf people I have

Sign language teaches deaf children to use the other senses such as sight to communicate with others. ASL centers on several techniques such as “hand shape, position, and movement, body movements, gestures, facial expressions, and other visual cues to form its words” instead of sounds and tones in the spoken language (“American Sign Language”).

Imagine one day, waking up and you couldn’t hear. “What would you do?” “How will you communicate?” Having schools offer sign language will increase students knowledge. American sign language, also known as ASL is a language for the deaf and hard of hearing community. According to the article “American sign language as A foreign Language,” Asl is one of the languages used most in the country. Schools should offer sign language because it would help students IQ’s to increase and helps the brain acquire language easily.

The employment of sign language is best supported by this model as signing is an accommodation that acknowledges a person’s deafness while also allowing them to navigate the world and supports the manual method. The oral method would best be supported by the medical model of disability which stresses that a disabled person’s lack of ability to navigate in the world should be solved by changing the person, and not their surroundings (How the social model of disability evolved 1). In this case, educators tried to teach deaf children by teaching them to be “hearing”, an impossible task. The problems with this model of disability can be easily seen by the results of this conference which made restricting sign language as a form of communication the standard in the education of the deaf leaving 70% of UK deaf children nearly illiterate and lacking social skills illustrating the flaws in this teaching method (BSL History). It wasn’t until the 1960s, the same time as the “educational revolution” mentioned by Wallin’s above that American Sign Language was officially considered a legitimate language by linguists, a major stride for the Deaf community and for the social model of disability as a whole (BSL

The assumption of the general public is American Sign Language, or ASL, is just for deaf and hard of hearing people. People who are mute also use ASL. This includes people who are on the spectrum, deaf and people who have trauma to the area of the body required to speak. For this reason, I believe that ASL, or American Sign Language, need to have more of a presence in schools.