A Deaf Adult Speaks Out

8. The Deaf Adult

81The Deaf Adult Types of Deaf Adults Deaf adults cannot be stereotyped; they are essentially human beings with normal faculties, abilities, and weaknesses except for a deficient sense of hearing. However, because of the nature of the etiology of deafness, a larger proportion of deaf people than hearing have additional handicaps. On the other hand, deaf adults possess certain qualities common to them because of the things that they have missed during their growth and development due to their loss of hearing and communicative difficulties. It may be helpful if I attempt to portray the various kinds of deaf adults there are in an average community of deaf people. There seem to be three tnain factors influencing the development of deaf children into adults: (1) the degree and kind of deafness, (2) the amount of native intelligence, and (3) the environmental components, which include education, family, and community. If we examine the three factors, we find that two of them are not controllable. The miracle of modern medicine has reduced the incidence of deafness from various illnesses later in life, such as measles, scarlet fever, etc. At the same time it has contributed toward a greater rate of survival among defective infants. Therefore, the incidence of deafness has shifted from postlingual years toward prelingual years, and the involvement of additional handicaps is greater now. The only controllable factor seems to be the deaf adult's environ72 The DeafAdult I73 mental effects which include the education that he/she has received. As has been said in the chapter on traditional educational methods, the results have been highly unsatisfactory. Moreover, his/her family members and the people in his/her immediate community have been more likely than not exposed to the prevailing dominance of oralism, which has been enforced by great amounts of propaganda and a great number of pseudoauthorities on deafness. They may have been thereby persuaded to confine their communication with the deaf person to the highly restrictive and impeditive oral means. Thus, we see a deaf adult who has been handicapped and impeded in more ways than merely his/her deafness. These three factors should be kept in mind when we scrutinize deaf adults and their communities. There are not two communities of deaf people which are alike; they range from the intellectual and sophisticated community which grew around Gallaudet University, a four-year liberal arts university for deaf students in Washington, D.C., to small and naive rural communities. However, we may find discernible patterns of deaf persons in these communities. Adventitiously deaf adults These persons lost their hearing after they had acquired language and speech, so they are probably the "elite" among deaf people. They have the best language, and are frequently asked by the others to help them with letters, messages, etc. Since most of them still have some usable language, they are usually the spokespersons for the community. These people, on the average, lost their hearing between the ages of five and 12, and completed their education in programs for the deaf, where they became acquainted with other deaf students and were introduced into their community. Persons who lose their hearing at ages older than 12 are more likely to remain with their former hearing friends, and struggle along with the help of hearing aids and speechreading practice, for there are very few of those people who have joined the community of deaf adults. Prelingually deaf adults from deaf families On the whole, these persons are about on a par with those who are postlingually deaf, for they had early communication, and therefore are more likely to have better than average English-language skills although they may have no usable speech. Since they have encountered practically no frustration because of their deafness, they are more outgoing and at 741 A DEAF ADULT SPEAKS OUT ease with other deaf persons. They also frequently become the leaders in the deaf community. Other prelingually deaf adults They are the bulk of the deaf community. They come from hearing families who have had trouble communicating with them when they were little. Consequently, for the most part, they have difficulties expressing themselves in English. Their early deafness has generally prevented them from developing speech as good as that of the adventitiously deaf. They have had more frustrations than the deaf adults in the first two groups, so they, for the most part, lack aggressiveness and self-confidence. Low...