Some in hearing world not familiar with culture of the deaf
Students and teachers throughout Utah, Idaho and Wyoming attended a series of deaf awareness workshops held Saturday, designed to educate hearing people about the deaf culture.
“Many people are not quite familiar with the deaf world we live in,” said President of the American Sign Language club Craig Radford. “Many questions are unanswered and we feel that [the workshops] would be the best approach to answer many questions.”
Hosted by Utah State University’s ASL club, the workshops featured creative activities including guest speaker and master storyteller Bobby Giles, who brought to life the treasures of deaf folklore.
Renowned educator Jerry Wilding, principal of the Jean Massieu School for the deaf, spoke to participants about living in the deaf world and the importance of maintaining the deaf cultural differences in a predominately hearing world.
“Of all the handicapped people, the deaf are the most talented but the least understood,” Wilding said.
But deaf people are not, in fact, handicapped, he emphasized. Deaf people can do anything but hear. Their emotions, feelings, skills, learning abilities – all are the same. The only difference is the form of communication, he said.
One doesn’t consider a black man handicapped because of the color of his skin anymore than one claims a German- speaking person is handicapped because he doesn’t speak the English language. So it is with the deaf, Wilding said.
“Hearing people don’t understand us,” Wilding said. He is deaf himself. “They don’t understand how we perceive things. Most of the people who teach the deaf are still hearing. They are the ones who teach parents who have deaf children what to do. That’s why I say we are the least understood. They aren’t asking a deaf person what to do, they are asking a hearing person who is seeing things from a hearing perspective.”
Mike Barney, ASL club historian, said, “People tend to think deaf people are dumb because we cannot hear. We can be involved, we can talk, we are not disabled. We are not dumb. We just have a different way of communicating, that’s all.”
“Many of the students are unsure of how to approach the deaf,” Radford said. “They even freak out or assume many [false] things about the deaf person. The biggest challenge the deaf community has to face is being accepted among the majority. They are also frustrated by those who try to ‘fix’ them,” he said.
This would include trying to make the deaf speak or hear. Radford gave the hypothetical situation of deaf parents removing the cochlea of their hearing child to make the child deaf.
“They would be put in jail,” he said.
It is perceived the same by deaf when they see the reality of hearing parents trying to make their child hearing, or forcing them to speak instead of trying to educate their child in deaf culture.
“They should be put in jail, too,” Radford said.
Perhaps the most important thing hearing parents of deaf children can do is learn ASL. Rhonda Wilhite, a deaf teacher attending the workshops, said her biggest challenge as a child was the lack of communication with her parents.
“Hearing parents need to learn sign language first,” she said. “I wish my parents had learned sign language. It would have made things a lot easier.”
The director of the deaf Education Teacher Preparation Program at USU, Freeman King, also spoke to participants of the workshops concerning the missing link in the education of deaf children.
“It is imperative that deaf children not be judged by how well they have adapted to an education-cloning process which has attempted to make them out and respond as hearing children,” he said.
The worst thing a person can be is a clone, conforming to what other people expect and want, King said.
“If that happens,” he said, “how sad.”
King emphasized the importance of quality teachers in the deaf education field. Studies show that although the average hearing person is at a sixth-grade reading level, the average deaf person is only at a fourth-grade reading level, King said.
“But is there a level that the teachers are at in signing?” he asked.
Wilding said many people say the knowledge of the deaf world is limited because of this “fourth-grade literacy test.” But Wilding attributes this deficiency to parents and teachers who cannot speak ASL fluently.
“Hearing children have speaking voices all around them, but deaf children don’t have [signing] all around them so learning is slower and takes longer,” King said.
Jonathan Webb, vice president of the ASL club and interpreter at the workshops, said interpreters in Utah only need a level one certificate to interpret, “which is not very hard to obtain,” he said.
“Ninety percent [of deaf children] don’t have good language at home. Then they go to school where their interpreter or teacher only has a level one certificate and don’t get good language skills there, either. That’s scary,” Webb said.
“I don’t want to go to a doctor who doesn’t stay up on technology,” Webb said. Similarly, parents shouldn’t allow their deaf child to go to an interpreter who doesn’t stay up on his or her signing skills. “We need to stand up and be the best that we can be and know our limitations,” Webb said.
King said to overcome differences between the hearing and deaf communities and bridge the gap between the two cultures, they need “for hearing people to listen to what deaf people have to say.”
The deaf are proud of their differences. Radford’s wife, Jill, was asked why she made the switch over from calling herself “hearing impaired” to labeling herself “deaf.”
“There was a time in my life that I totally looked down on the deaf culture and what it represented, and I resisted it,” she said.
But as she attended a deaf residential school, Jill said she began to love and appreciate the deaf culture.
“I found my identity. I labeled myself as deaf because I found out who I really was. I found there was a language in the deaf culture and that was my language. It’s who I really was,” she said.
“If there ever were any possible cure to make my ears able to hear again, I would never even consider it,” Craig Radford said. “I love this culture. I love this language. Deaf culture is what I am part of. Deaf is who I am,” he said.
There are currently 30 deaf students attending USU. Of the 70 people who attended the workshops, only 15 were deaf. For more information about the deaf culture, contact the communicative disorders and deaf education department or the ASL club.