From: rggentry@gallua.gallaudet.edu
Subject: Re: Slang, fluency and translation
Organization: Gallaudet University
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 15:29:28 GMT

In article <9207240558.AA20800@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>,         Miriam Clifford <DMIMI@ECSVAX.BITNET> writes:
> Randy, you have used "deaf and hard of hearing" as though they are synonymous.
> They are not.  Very few hard of hearing people, children or adult, use or
> need, or want to use ASL.  Even if the hearing impairment is very severe,
> a hard of hearing person is likely to have or be able to learn speech if,
> he/she does not already communicate oral/aurally.  I have not intention of
> getting into the argument about oral versus sign for deaf/Deaf people,
> especially for pre-lingually deaf people, but do let's be a little more
> careful with terminology.
> 
> dmimi@ecsvax.uncecs.edu  dmimi@ecsvax.bitnet
> Miriam (Mimi) Clifford; 2535 Sevier St, Durham, NC 27705; 919-489-4821


>>Miriam, you make an important point when you say that "deaf" and "hard of
hearing" are not synonymous terms. I agree with you wholeheartedly. As a hard
of hearing person who spent the first 25 years of his life passing as hearing
and is now a Gallaudet graduate and second-language ASL user, I know the
different lifestyles that the widely varying 25 million people in the US who
are deaf or hard of hearing live. My friendships and professional relationships
with people from that group range from the oral to the deaf person from a deaf
family.

>>As you may know, lots of people didn't like the "hearing impaired" term. In
casting around for a better term, Roslynn Rosen, president of the National
Association of the Deaf, and Rocky Stone, executive director of Self-Help for
Hard of hearing people, and people from those two groups, discussed the matter
for some time and settled on "deaf and hard of hearing." The idea is to try to
recognize that there is a large group of people with hearing loss that have
some basic areas of common ground--say, captioning, access at public meetings,
TDD service, etc--while not ignoring the special needs of individuals, or the
right of individuals to the communication mode/method of their choice. There
may have been some other people or groups involved also.

>>I think where we would disagree is whether or not hard of hearing children
want, need, or would benefit from exposure to sign language, the deaf
community, deaf history and culture, and deaf and hard of hearing adult role
models. I can cite my own experience. For example, here at Gallaudet there are
many people, students and staff, who are hard of hearing but nonetheless have
learned some form of sign language at some point and who have joined the deaf
community or even assimilated into deaf culture to some degree. I am one of
those. But my process of assimilation did not begin here, but in Olathe, Kan.,
where Kansas School for the Deaf is located, 11 years ago when I was working in
a factory one summer. Some deaf people were working there and we became
friends. Through associating with them I met hard of hearing people who learned
sign language, etc.

>>I can't tell you how many of us there are. I can tell you there are more than
"very few." I can also tell you that those of use who were forced, either by
sheer circumstance or through the conscious decision of parents and educators,
to use only oral methods very much wish we were exposed to sign language and to
people like ourselves as children. 

>>The parents of hard of hearing children, and the children themselves, need to
know about sign language, deaf history and culture, and the like. As the
children grow up, what the families do with or how they act upon the
information is up to them. But to assume that most hard of hearing children
would not benefit from exposure to sign language, etc., has often been a
mistake. I speak here from my personal experience and from the results of
conversations I have had with people who were hard of hearing as children.

>>And let us, whatever or beliefs about these matters, not pour upon the heads of
of the parents of these hard of hearing children any kind of dire apocalyptic
prophesies or other guilt trips. (I'm not speaking to you here, Miriam, but for
our wider audience.) A basic question of identity for people like me: I am deaf
or not? I am deaf part of the time? When am I deaf and when not deaf? It took
me awhile as an adult to sort through those questions...only to decide that the
best thing, and the thing I feel most comfortable with, is to tell people I am
hard of hearing :). And if it took me awhile, with access to lots more direct
experience and support than lots of families out there, why, then, let us be
empathic and relate to how difficult it is, for a time, at least, for these
families.

>>To conclude (and thanks for bearing with me), I recognize that not all member
of the deaf and hard of hearing group have the same needs. I do think sign
language and deaf culture and deaf and hard of hearing role models have a place
in the education of head of hearing people.

Respectfully yours,

Randy Gentry@GALLUJ
"Anything that can be done, can be done backwards."
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