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Child Using Sign Language
If you were deaf, would you consider that a disability?
Many, if not most hearing folks do. As for deaf people born without the capacity to hear (congenitally deaf), most do not. Unfortunately, too many people in my profession are quick to pathologize deafness, believing it increases the odds of developing psychological and social problems.
However, when it comes to the prevalence and severity of mental health issues, people in the Deaf community are no different than those in the hearing world. Those who can hear often assume that the challenges congenital deafness presents, particularly with respect to communication and interpersonal relationships, mess mightily with a person’s overall social adjustment, both personally and in the workplace. But it just ain’t so.
While slowly changing, there remains a prevailing bias in our culture that deaf people, to the extent possible, should assimilate into the hearing world. Translation? To facilitate communication and social engagement, the deaf should accommodate hearing folks more than the other way around. A bit of history illustrates this point.
Hearing World
Schools for the deaf have been around since early in the republic. Many of them had the stated purpose of promoting assimilation by the deaf into the hearing world. Consequently, some of these schools prohibited their students from using sign language, their primary mode of communication, instead insisting they learn to read lips. If you think lip reading is easy to master, try it sometime, particularly in a group of people.
Social psychologists who studied these lip-reading schools discovered their deaf students were just as socially well-adjusted and developmentally on par as their hearing peers. However, lip reading was not the key to their normal development. It turns out, when outside the classroom, the students used sign language almost exclusively, and that’s what facilitated their personal and educational growth.
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Much of what I’ve shared applies to persons born deaf or who became so early in their childhood (prelingual). When total deafness occurs later in life after someone has lived in the hearing world for many years, different challenges emerge.
“Late Deafened Adult”
My older brother, Ev, was one such soul. After earning a Ph.D. in political science from Berkeley and beginning a college teaching career, he lost all hearing, becoming what some term a “late deafened adult”. The life disruptions he experienced, both personally and vocationally, were considerable. Learning American Sign Language (ASL), he struggled to assimilate into the Deaf community while still maintaining his prior connections to the hearing world.
Late deafened adults and others who experience significant hearing loss usually face greater risks of social isolation and loneliness than those born deaf. The latter often integrate into the Deaf community and lead full social lives. The others, like my brother, may feel suspended between these two worlds, not entirely fitting in either one.
As for those born deaf and well connected with a community of non-hearing folks or hearing ones proficient in ASL, the notion that they are “disabled” strikes them as ludicrous, as it should. American Sign Language, and its counterparts in other nations, is a rich, sophisticated vernacular that communicates information, meaning and emotional nuance.
Does that mean all congenitally deaf persons are content with their inability to hear? Of course not. But that doesn’t mean they regard deafness as a disability. It’s a divergent quality that, like many attributes that depart from the majority, can be an asset or a liability.
We decide which.
For more, visit philipchard.com.
