Deaf Awareness

DEAF AWARENESS' James C. WTodward,Jr. Until recently, deafness has been looked upon primarily as a medical problem a sickness-something to be studied and cured. Deafness has been seen as a handicap, as if the only way to help a deaf person is to make him hearing. But because a deaf person is deaf, he can't be exactly like a hearing person. So, many people have reasoned that deaf people cannot be as good as hearing people. People who believe in deaf awareness disagree with the ideas I have just expressed. These people, like, myself, who believe in deaf awareness, believe that deaf people do not have to become like hearing people to be successful in life. They believe that deaf people should have a choice of how they want to be educated and how they want to live their lives. For deaf people really can belong to either or both of two groups. Deaf people can belong to the deaf world or to the hearing world or to both these worlds. We hear enough about the hearing world on T.V. and in newspapers: Vietnam, Cambodia, the Watergate-We do not in my opinion hear dough about the deaf world. By the deaf world, I do not mean some imaginary world. I mean a real world, a living world, a world full of people who interact with each other. The deaf world has its own national organizations, its own small social clubs, its own churches. It has its own schools, and, most important, the deaf world has its own language that ties it together-sign language. 1From an address to graduates of The Montana School for the Deaf, 1 June 1973. Sign Language Studies People who believe in deaf awareness are most concerned with deaf education and deaf language. Many schools for the deaf do not want to hire deaf people as teachers. Some deaf students I have taught did not meet a deaf adult until they were thirteen years old or even older. How can hearing people alone teach deaf people to understand themselves? How many hearing people really understand what it is like to be deaf? I recently read a story in one of the Washington newspapers about some hearing parents of a deaf child who put their child into an oral program. They had discussed total communication and oralism with counselors and experts and had decided on oralism. The main reason they gave was that they didn't want to force their child to take the "easy way" of total communication. That is their choice, but I wonder how many deaf people these parents talked to before making their decision. Was the doctor deaf? Were the counselors deaf? Were the experts deaf? Have these parents ever met a deaf person socially? If they have, I wonder what they think of the real sign for oralism? The philosophy of total communication may or may not agree with the philosophy of deaf awareness. It depends on the definition of total communication. To me, total communication does not just mean signing and speaking at the same time. Total communication means allowing deaf people a choice: speech when appropriate, speech and signing when appropriate, signing like English when appropriate, and signing Ameslan when appropriate. (I want to point out briefly here that Ameslan or real "deaf signing" is not poor English but a separate language with its own grammar.) An ideal total communication program would allow and encourage deaf students to learn several different ways of signing, as well as of speaking and writing. In other words, it would make the students as linguistically flexible as possible. Actually language is at the center of deaf awareness. Communication is the basis for learning. If people do not respect all languages of the deaf community, how can they respect deaf people and the deaf world? How can communication occur without respect? How can learning occur without communication? Strict oralism has not generally succeeded with Woodward most deaf students; total communication will not either, unless it encourages respect for all deaflanguages. When I first became involved in deaf education four years ago, I was discouraged. With all of the negative attitudes...