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How Cochlear Implants Are Being Blamed For Killing Deaf Culture
First time accepted submitter Maddie Kahn (3542515) writes "Deaf culture has its own language, its own social norms, its own art forms, its own theater. But it's under threat. Why? Because most parents of deaf children now choose to use technology to help their kids hear. This piece explores why a revolutionary technology stands accused of killing a culture."
I mean seriously. There is no down side to going from not hearing to hearing except for having to listen to contemporary "music".
I want to put this in top 10 non-stories of the year...
What a BS reason to get angsty. Technology has enabled clidren to hear so a new generation can NOT have the problems of being deaf. Rejoice that children dont need to be deaf, rather than mourn the disappearing kludges they had to do.
What a travesty! We can't allow deaf people to hear! It will destroy their culture!
Why don't you tell this woman you want her to be deaf again and see what she says:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I'd like to see deaf culture go away because there are no more deaf people.
Also:
I'd like to see paraplegic culture go away, blind culture, Amputee culture, and furries culture. That last one may be tricky
I wonder how many people were angry and vaccine destroying the polio culture?
Yes I did.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And yes, they were adamantly supportive of the view that "for many Deaf people, every implanted child is a person stolen from their culture." But, keeping in mind that "More than 90 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents", they are effectively laying claim to other people's children.
Look what happened to polio culture. Not cool, man. Not cool.
Yeah! And what about the loss of the tail having culture. Our ancestors were real dicks for coming out of those trees.
...that all cultures are equally to be valued. Otherwise, why not create more varieties of people with partial physical deficits, so as to have more such cultures?
But that loss is tremendously outweighed by the benefits of including the (previously?) deaf in the greater culture which is humanity (where they belonged all along, I think?).
but I can't find how to mod TFS as troll.
Glad the comments are unanimous so far...
Cars killed horse culture.
Airplanes killed passenger rail culture.
Woman's rights killed (harmed) misogynistic culture.
The civil war killed slave culture.
The Internet killed letter-mailing culture.
Seriously, what the fuck is the point of this?
Destroyed slave culture! We must protect slavery so that our children can continue to live and thrive in slave culture! It's our moral responsibility!
For fear of being modded down into oblivion, I'll post anonymously.
"The very existence of cochlear implants wrongly presupposes that a deaf person is in need of fixing."
This just smacks of self-conscious defensiveness. It is wrong.
The very existence of cochlear implants presupposes that some people who cannot hear may want to hear - much in the same way that the very existence of prosthetic limbs presupposes that some people may wish to use [some limb]. Even better, the very existence of wheel chairs presupposes that the paralyzed may wish to move around from point A to point B.
There is no presupposition of defectiveness in any of those products, only the presupposition that someone may wish to add new functionality to their life. If eye-implants that enable me to see in UV or IR come available, I'll jump! Not because I think I am defective, but because I think it'd be nice to enhance what I am already capable of.
A friend of mine is an interpreter, and she has expressed many of the same concerns -- but I'd be interested in seeing numbers regarding how many in the deaf community are getting the implants. If there's already a stigma in the subculture against them, I can't imagine that this technology really poses a significant threat to the subculture.
If you want to be a deaf person, that's fine by me, but it doesn't give you any moral imperative to suggest that parents should deny their children their right to hearing.
That and fear of change are the only reason to make such statements.
I cherish the thought of killing deaf culture, just like I cherish the thought of killing the smallpox and malaria culture. I get that some are proud of what they've accomplished while deaf, but that's a selfish reason to hold against someone who chooses not to have a disability.
Suddenly starting to hear does not detract from the accomplishments of the deaf, it just opens doors to accomplish new things and new possibilities. It doesn't make their art any less valuable or beautiful, it doesn't make their language any less valuable. My 11 month old son knows som sign language! He can hear fine, but kids can sign before they can talk! My family now knows a bit of American sign just for that alone.
Sure, it's not going to be as common, but implants don't fix every reason for being deaf either.
Simple fear of change is all it is.
I understand the fear, all of us have it to some extent in some form. I fear rapid changes in technology that make me out dated and behind younger software engineers, but that's just my fears, not the end of something great. As a result, though I still fear those changes, I adapt and take on a different roll from that 20 something, code for 72 hours straight until I can't see straight age to leading those 20 something's and guiding them with my experience so that they can be more effective.
I don't know what that means for the deaf, but I'm certain those that remain have other things of value ... Being deaf didn't make them worthless, neither will implants. The fact that they can create culture without the ability to hear is proof enough of their alternative skills.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I will get down modded for this, but how about a testimony from a actual user of a cochlear implant (Rush Limbaugh in this case).
CALLER: Hey. I'm just wondering, when you listen to music with your hearing aid, how's it sound?
RUSH: Music?
CALLER: Yeah, like if you're listening to music on an iPad or something?
RUSH: Well, not very good. I cannot listen to music that I've never heard before and identify the melody.
CALLER: Oh.
RUSH: I have a cochlear implant. It doesn't have nearly the sensitivity of the human ear, it's not even close.
CALLER: I was just wondering.
RUSH: Like violins or strings sound like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.
CALLER: Oh, well, I was just wondering.
RUSH:What I have to do, I can still listen to music, but it has to be music that I knew and that I've heard before I lost my hearing. And what happens is that my brain, fertile mind, provides the melody. I actually am not hearing the melody, and the way I can prove this to you, sometimes it will take me, even a song that I know, it will take me 30 seconds to identify it if I don't know what it is. Now, if I'm playing a song off iTunes and the title is there and it starts then I can spot it from the middle, but if I'm listening to a song from the beginning, and I don't know what it is, it sometimes can take me 30 seconds to recognize it, if I knew it before. But the quality of music that I hear is less than AM radio, in terms of fidelity. I can turn the bass up on an amplifier and I don't hear any difference at all. I can feel the floor vibrate, but I don't hear any more bass. I can turn highs up and I can hear the difference in the highs, but on the low end I actually cannot -- (interruption) I'm getting a note here that says: "You're not missing anything. There aren't any melodies in music today." (laughing) At any rate, you adapt to it. I've adapted.
The worst part of my hearing is being in a crowd. Like right now, I hear myself as well as I heard myself when I could hear. If I'm talking to one other person in a quiet room I can comprehend 90-95% of what they say depending on how fast they're speaking. There are some words that sound alike. But you add room noise, like if Kathryn and I are watching TV and she wants to talk to me about what we're watching, I have to hit pause or the mute 'cause I cannot hear what she's saying. Even if she's sitting two feet away I will not hear as long as there are other noises there. Any room noise when added to other room noise is gonna be louder than the one voice that I'm trying to hear. I've got the implant on my left side so if we go out in a public place, anybody on my right side, it's hopeless. I'll have to literally turn to them, and sometimes as I turn to them they turn with me. They don't know what I'm doing so we'll do pirouettes 'til I finally say, "No, you stay where you are. I'm trying to position my ear so I can hear you."
The way I look at this, though, because when I tell these stories, "Oh, that's really horrible." No, it's not. 'Cause if you look at the timeline of humanity, however long it is, 10,000 years, a million, billion, whatever the number is, my little time on it is not much larger than a grain of sand. And yet I happen to lose my hearing at the same time technology had evolved to the point where cochlear implants had been invented. If I had lost my hearing 15 years ago, it would have meant the end of my career. I would not have been able to hear. And the doctor said you might think that you could speak normally just by virtue of memory and feel, the way voice feels when you speak, but eventually your speech would deteriorate, and it would sound to people as though you had a speech defect. It would just be automatic no matter how good you are, no matter how professional you are at it. So that's really fortunate. It's almost miraculous that my being afflicted with this autoimmune disease happens to coincide with technology. Some call it divine intervention. Some call it the age of miracles. We're all one way or anot
Putting aside the radicalism, there is a legitimate issue: the fix does not work for everyone and those left behind will face a diminished culture as their numbers dwindle. Specifically, those profoundly deaf who reached adulthood never able to hear will never learn to speak even if they get the implant. There are probably others who are medically not able to accept the implant but the articles I have found do not discuss this issue.
Here is some Deaf Leper for your enjoyment.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Deaf culture Destroyed? These parents are assholes, and I'd never write a story about them other than that letting people know I turned them into child protective services.
The fucking nerve of doctors and their trying to help people. What's next, People wanting to let paralyzed people rot because we don't want to destroy Quadriplegic Culture?
And what about the always jolly brotherhood of cancer culture? Gotta preserve that.
And if the child were to need something simple like glasses, hell, there is a blind culture too. Wouldn't want to miss out on that. As a (nearly)deaf person, All I can say to these parents is that if you did that to me, I'd seek emancipation as soon as possible, and then have your sorry whack-a-doodle asses arrested for willfiul negligence and child abuse.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Its a good thing that we can directly address a disability like this and practically eradicate it from society. Lets hope it happens tomorrow.
Or does the poster think its great to go deaf with no hope?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Back in the days of race-based "red-lining" and "Whites-only" legally-enforced racially-segregated neighborhoods, rich and middle-class African-Americans had to live in the "non-white" part of town, along with the poor African-Americans and other non-Whites.
Once the zoning laws, deed restrictions, and race-based morgtage- and homeowners-insurance redlining disappeared, non-Whites had as much choice as white people when it came to where they wanted live. Money or lack of it still limited their choices, but their skin color was no longer a barrier.
Now, middle-class African-Americans who move into a city are likely to move into a "middle class" neighborhood, not a "Black" neighborhood.
We went from a society that had a more distinct "Black middle class" that was created out of racial discrimination into one where if there is a "Black middle class" that's distinct from a "Middle class" the distinction is much weaker than it once was, but where there is no legally-enforced racial discrimination and much less (and someday soon I hope, no) racial discrimination denying African-Americans and other non-Whites the same rights and opportunities enjoyed by White people.
I for one don't want to undo the last 50 years of racial desegregation just to bring back the distinct "Black middle class."
Likewise, I don't think we should deny today's children the ability to hear - albeit in a limited way - just to preserve "Deaf culture."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Alexander Graham Bell's central interest of his life was deaf education or that he was one of the most prominent proponents of oralism in the United States... After emigrating from England to Canada in 1870 Bell began to teach speech to deaf students using a universal alphabet invented by his father called "Visible Speech." In 1872 he opened a school in Boston to train teachers of deaf children.
Bell's second chief interest was the study of heredity and animal breeding, - you can see where this is headed...
----
Bell warned of a "great calamity" facing the nation: deaf people were forming clubs, socializing with one another and, consequently, marrying other deaf people. The creation of a "deaf race" that yearly would grow larger and more insular was underway. Bell noted that "a special language adapted for the use of such a race" already was in existence, "a language as different from English as French or German or Russian." Some eugenicists called for legislation outlawing intermarriage by deaf people http://www.pbs.org/weta/throug...
Found that by accident. I was searching for mass killings of the deaf; due to the mentioning that "the deaf can't have faith" - I would assume the Catholics alone would have a history of it.
Only came across the Holocaust where they were treated very badly (considering).
Could be the deaf weren't found in large numbers in the past.
Since the christaline is opaque to UV while some intraocular lenses are not, some people report that after cataract surgery, they can see in augmented colour, probably due to some sensitivity to UV.
slashdot talked about it a while back
http://ask-beta.slashdot.org/story/11/10/02/1937232/ask-slashdot-how-to-exploit-post-cataract-ultraviolet-vision
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/02/14/165202/followup-ultraviolet-vision-after-cataract-surgery
So if/when the time comes to replace your christaline, make sure to go for the UV transparent lenses
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Maybe, for me, this is more about "minority culture" in general than "deaf culture" in particular. "Deaf Culture" is an adaptation for people who can't hear. Once you can hear, you no longer need the social adaptation.
I'm a member of a minority. For those of you who don't know, I'm black. At one time, black people were denied access to educational opportunities an that in turn lead to fewer career prospects. My parents and grandparents worked very, VERY hard to give me opportunities and I took advantage of them. I finished high school. I attended college. I earned a Master of Science degree. Consequently, I have a pretty good job. I've been accused of turning my back on "African American culture" because I speak like I paid attention in school. I don't use the "What up dawgg?" vernacular that some other people (who happen to look kind of like me) do. I have been accused of having "forgotten where you came from", as if I didn't come from a middle-income, racially diverse suburb.
Once we were no longer denied access to quality education, it was no longer necessary to speak AAVE (African American Vernacular English) or "Ebonics" that some people like to call it. We were able to learn standard American English and it benefits one to do so.
I understand the desire for deaf people to adopt the mantra "There's nothing 'wrong' with the way we are." but in reality there is. You can't hear!
I'm sorry if people take it personally that their social adaptation is becoming less necessary for future generations. I'm sorry that they feel lonely or abandoned. This is a good thing. This is progress. This means that fewer people will have to live with the handicap(sorry for the loaded term) of not being able to hear.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
For any invasive surgery, especially when messing around with nerves that are so close to brain on young children, involves risk. There are existing risks in the procedure, enough to cause disastrous results for the rest of the child's life. There is no undo or redo. When the implant fails, all of the child's residue hearing is lost forever. The child is even more deaf than ever. So, now what? I work at an environment with many teenagers that has failed implants. They became erratic, lonely, and depressed. They couldn't speak or sign well. It is sad to witness their psychological struggles because they are travelling toward a place that are not accepted by many - deaf and hearing. The saddest part is, they are not usually accepted by their immediate family members. They continuously wonder, do deaf people have right to exist? The implant technology is amazing. The processing power and channels has improved tremendously. The size of the device has became smaller and durable. These hardware advances are wonderful, however, the "human software" part hasn't advanced much to "try and catch errors and exceptions." There are ways to better handle "bugs." Instead of panic-and-fix-by-brute-force-patch. Learning a new language, celebrating diversity, developing tolerance, studying cultures, and respecting differences are critical soft skills in many situations, especially interacting with people who are drastically different.
Close, but there's a more powerful factor than feeling "special/different/unique/etc." Money. The vast majority of the Deaf Culture advocates come from the ASL-oriented* state schools for the deaf and universities like Gallaudet. There is a very cozy relationship between the state schools and the state early intervention specialists who visit parents with informational materials. Most of these people are basically recruiters for the ASL state schools who downplay cochlear implants and related educational pathways. If the parents instead chose a cochlear implant and a (usually) private school that specializes in teaching their kid to speak and listen, then the ASL state school has one less student, less money, etc. This is big money in some states. Just drive past the local school and look at their grounds, buildings, and vehicles. My local ASL-oriented state school has a coach bus that rivals most sports teams.
Now, look at the stats. Numerous longitudinal, NIH-funded studies show that kids who get implants early enough to take advantage of the language development window (before 5 years old, and preferably before 1 or 2) and receive intensive speech and listening instruction are mostly mainstreamed into regular classrooms by the K-2 range. This has a secondary effect since mainstreaming into regular schools at this age is one of the strongest indicators of literacy in deaf kids, regardless of communication method. As we all know, literacy impacts employment and independence. (Side note, Gallaudet almost lost accreditation due to poor student literacy.) Unfortunately, many ASL kids end up in the ASL state schools and generally have poor literacy when they graduate 13 years later. Remember, ASL is not English and has a completely different linguistic structure.
The second major stat is that 90% of the kids are born to hearing parents. Aside from the better life outcomes, forcing deaf kids into ASL schools to learn a language and culture differing from their parents essentially removes parental choice from the equation. As a parent, this is seriously messed up. I should have the right, and access to information, that will allow me to raise my kid with my language and culture if I wish. This isn't an immigrant language issue either since I grew up in my society's culture and a native speaker of my society's predominant language.
I have deep knowledge of this, both personally and from a scientific perspective. So why am I posting anon? There are Deaf Culture advocates who are particularly nasty. I have a friend who received death threats at home and wears a flack jacket in certain venues. People find their windshields greased, tires deflated, etc. Proud parents who post videos of they child's cochlear implant activations and progress on YouTube are targeted, insulted, and told they are horrible parents. Extremists pretend to be academics and reporters, but then twist interviews out of context on blog posts. The list goes on.
Again: it comes down to money and parental choice.
* Some state schools claim to be Bi-Bi or Total Communication. This is just propaganda. These are basically ASL instruction with token instruction in lipreading, cochlear implant use, and speaking. Imagine trying to learn to speak or listen with only a couple hours of instruction each week from instructors who are not experts in the topic.
"All Polish people are stupid"
"All Mexicans are lazy"
I'm sure some deaf people are as cynical and mean-spirited as you say. Based on the number of deaf children who have received cochlear implants (and the number I've heard about from time to time that want their children to get them but can't afford it), I'm going to say you need to use a somewhat narrower scope there.
(NOTE: I hope I wasn't out of line with those cracks about black, Polish and Mexican people)
Mental issues are different from physical ones. I can't rightly comprehend how someone who is physically unable to do something that other people can do (like see or hear) could consider that something worth preserving, but there are large communities of people with autism spectrum "disorders" who consider the way that they think and feel to be not less capable than how other people think or feel, but just different.
It's more akin to if society said raw strength was the standard of physical ability, and agility or stamina were neat bonuses to that, but not really important; and then there were other people who were weak by the social standard but had their own physical talents less-valued by that standard, elegant dancers or endurance runners in a world where only power lifters were valued, who refuse to accept that their body's different kind of physical ability is a "disability". (We've actually got something akin to that in body-image discrimination: different healthy body types are usually adept at different kinds of physical activity, but we tend to call e.g. the stocky guy who can lift a car or walk for many miles without even tiring "fat", because he doesn't have a lean body built for running and jumping that we think of as "fit").
In the end, if someone doesn't suffer intrinsically from a trait (thus excluding suffering due only to society's reactions to that trait), then the trait shouldn't count as a "disability" or an "illness".
And whether it does or not, the person with that trait is still a person deserving of the same respect either way.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
8 years ago I went and got myself implanted, and never looked back. I had lost 100% of my hearing in my left ear and 90% of my hearing in my right ear at 8 years old, when I was hit by a car. Despite losing so much, the deaf culture never really accepted me, since I was never really considered truly deaf. I wasn't born into it, and spent a better part of 26 years kind of stuck in between the hearing and deaf world. I could sign, I could speak, and often I found myself interpreting for some deaf friends while I was growing up. But never, during that entire time, was I ever really accepted by the deaf culture.
These friends I lost, when I decided to go ahead and get myself implanted. They couldn't understand why I wanted to be a part of something I never could have been, and I reminded them that the deaf panthers (same vein as the black panthers) never really did accept me as a part of the deaf culture, and I was really sick of being neither "deaf" or "hearing".
They viewed their deafness as something to be proud about. I viewed it as something that was holding me back. They day I let them know I was going to get implanted, and hoped that they would understand, they looked at me as if I was something disgusting. Being called a traitor, could have been nicer than some of the things they called me then.
Deaf Pride? Deaf Culture? Pshaw. While I have nothing really to compare the quality of the sound that the implant has given me, I can compare them to the $1200 digital hearing aid I had purchased an year earlier. When I left the store, and fired up my car, the song I was listening to before sounded completely different. It sounded better, and I realized I was hearing things I never really could with the old crappy hearing aids I had before. Then when I got my implant turned on, there was no comparison. I've tried listening with both my hearing aid (right ear, 90% loss) and my implant (left ear, previously 100% loss), and found that I could not stand the hearing aid any more. It's been sitting in my desk drawer in the 8 year since I had my implantation.
If some people wants to fool themselves into thinking that Deafness is something to be proud of, then by all means, let them. I'm going to get my right ear implanted soon, and while I'll never truly be a hearing person, at least, I'll leave a major part of my deafness behind.
I get that reference! I remember reading it back in high school.
"Harrison Bergeron", by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
I don't read AC A human right
Put any sectarian culture in place of "deaf culture" and it would apply just as much. The anger isn't aimed at deaf people (a common misconception amongst deaf people) but against the separatist deaf culture that this group tends to practice against the rest of the population. Being part of society is a verb, it's called "participating" and it requires you to actively engage with others. If deaf people want to be accepted, they have to participate and not choose their own culture at the expense of being isolated. Any time this sort of choice is made, it is a clear sign of dangerous sectarian behavior and it is almost always damaging to those inside the culture.
I understand that there is certain humor that will get lost in translation and the way deaf people use other senses to compensate for their lack of hearing and it would be nice of those could be preserved. If the price for that preservation would be to withhold a minor from medical care that could enable them to be part of a hearing society, I think the parents should lose custody and the child should get proper medical care. "Special" does not always mean better, you wouldn't operate on a hearing child to make it deaf, just so it would better be able to communicate with it's deaf parents, would you? The decision to operate or not should never be about the parents culture, but about giving your child the best chances it will have in a world were the vast majority of people is able to hear one way or the other.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
> Why the heck is ASL not American English? Perhaps there is a good reason, but it just seems silly to m
Bandwidth. Take the paragraph you wrote above, and try to turn it into signed English (which is a different language). It's much slower and less efficient than ASL, because ASL will leave out a lot of detail not critical to the conservation. There's a good description of the distinctions at http://www.signingsavvy.com/bl.... A lot of gestural, not necessarily linguistic bandwidth becomes more important. But it's ephemereal: it's not easily recorded for others to see the same message, later. The result is to discourage, or to focus less, on _literacy_ for the Deaf community as opposed to people who happen to be deaf. And there is a cultural difference.
Also, do look at the families that _get_ cochlear implants for their children. I'm afraid that the children are the key issue, since a child raised in the "Deaf" culture is much more likely to participate, politically and socially, with that culture, to marry, to communicate, and to participate in enriching that culture. Then look more closely at _which_ children get implants: those of wealthier, better educated families who can afford the procedures, which cost about $30,000 at last check and who have good medical insurance. Namely, they're the cream of the crop of the next generation of potential Deaf members.
Because I am mildly autistic (fka Asperger's) I can do a handful of things brilliantly, such as software development. Yet, it is still a handicap, and if there were some way I could become "normal" in this area, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I would very gladly give up the benefits of being good at a few things, in exchange for being able to learn how to be a friend, or to read people's emotions, or to know how to rejoice with someone who is happy or comfort someone who is sad. Or even to be able to talk to someone without inadvertently upsetting, disappointing, and hurting him or her on a regular basis. While my handicap may be mild compared to others', and while it may even be a part of God's plan for my life, I'm not going to pretend that it isn't a handicap, or that it doesn't hurt, or that it is better to be a rude, socially insensitive jerk than not to.
Nonaggression works!