Ethical Considerations in Educating Children Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

5. Educating Students Who Become Hard of Hearing or Deaf in School: Insights from Disability Studies

87 5 Educating Students Who Become Hard of Hearing or Deaf in School: Insights from Disability Studies WENDY S. HARBOUR I begin this chapter by sharing my personal and professional experiences with audiological changes that happen postlingually. I do this for two reasons: to situate myself as author of this chapter and to reveal some of my own biases and hermeneutical positions from the start. In this chapter I encourage readers to look at their own personal biases and those of the field; I cannot write with integrity unless I am also willing to do the same. Furthermore, my background is not in the field of ethics. Most of the questions and suppositions I pose have roots in the field of education—in my work with people who became hard of hearing or deaf1 while they were in school. This chapter has four parts: a summary of the influences on my writing, a discussion of the difficulty in identifying students with changes in their hearing, an overview of how academic literature describes students’ experiences in school after their hearing changes, and reflections on the application of ethical principles in deaf education to students who become hard of hearing or deaf in school. I conclude by discussing limitations on current ethical frameworks in deaf education and suggest that disability studies may offer new ground for the field. My Personal and Professional Background As a child, with the exception of studying American Sign Language (ASL) fingerspelling at camp one summer, I had no exposure to ASL or deaf people. Throughout my childhood , my parents noticed I was a daydreamer, not remembering directions when they had just been explained to me and off in my own little world even in the midst of conversation or chaos. A routine hearing screening at school detected a mild-to-moderate hearing loss, which my doctor disregarded as an error because I was getting good grades in math and English (apparently believing that good grades in those subjects were more reliable than hearing tests). When I was in eighth grade, further failed hearing tests at school and thorough testing by audiologists, however, confirmed that I needed hearing aids. During high school my hearing levels changed several more times, necessitating more powerful hearing aids each time and eventually an FM system just before I entered college. The etiology of my progressive hearing loss is unknown. 88 Wendy S. Harbour It is difficult to describe how devastating these changes were, coinciding with all of the usual angst, upheaval, and drama of high school. By my senior year, after a great deal of agonizing, I decided to give up my dreams of a career in music and to take advantage of a small liberal arts college curriculum. I hoped the small campus, which prided itself on personal attention, would give me flexibility as I tried out increasingly powerful hearing aids and newly purchased gadgets like flashing alarm clocks and an FM system. I planned to try out a number of academic fields until I found something that suited me. For a while, I felt like any other college student and didn’t worry much about my hearing or my future. During my third year of college, however, my hearing changed again, and this time I was unable to understand my friends, follow discussion in classes, use my FM system, or talk on the phone. My grief reappeared, and I dreaded a life as a deaf person. An undergraduate course called “The Psychology of Handicapping Conditions” took my class on a field trip to the Indiana School for the Deaf, where the National Theatre of the Deaf performed the “Odyssey.” The title of the show proved prescient on a personal level. I had resisted learning sign language, which seemed like elaborate miming. Convinced that deafness and sign language would mean never driving, having children, going to college, or living a happy life, I was shocked to see Deaf people at the Indiana School for the Deaf driving with their children, arriving after their professional jobs, and smiling and joking with each other. I was stunned to see someone in the first row of the auditorium signing with someone in an upper balcony—I had difficulty understanding someone right in front of me! After that, I started my own odyssey, eventually learning sign language, working with sign language interpreters, and becoming active in Deaf culture. This also led to my interest in on-campus groups for students with disabilities, and I eventually...