The Human Right to Language: Communication Access for Deaf Children

9: Equal Protection and the Right to Communication and Language

9 ! EQUAL PROTECTION AND THE RIGHT TO COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it. —Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 1914–1916 I worked extra hard in my high school art class because I thought art was one thing I could do on my own, and I really liked it. However, I never got over a D, and most of the time it was an F. I never understood this. When I would ask for help, the teacher would say she was too busy. One day, I went to class early and saw her telling another person that she hated when they put special education students in her class, so she automatically failed them. I was so hurt, I gave up my dream for art. ! I had a fifth grade teacher who really didn’t care if I didn’t understand what she was teaching. She always moved around the classroom or faced the blackboard when she spoke. I remember reminding her to turn around to face me when she spoke. She responded, “If you didn’t hear what I said . . . Tough!” ! My worst teacher in grade school didn’t care that I was deaf. He sat me in the back of the room where I couldn’t possibly see him. He talked while facing the chalkboard so I could never speech-read him, and he talked so fast that I would never understand what he was saying. He made me feel worthless. He made me feel like being deaf was a 116 Equal Protection and Communication and Language / 117 disease that he didn’t want to catch. The experience turned me off to teachers for a while, as well as to education. ! Probably one of the most painful of my experiences was taking a major spelling test and flunking because I could not lip-read single words out of context. After I tried to tell the teacher of my predicament, she scolded me in front of the entire class and then picked a peer to read the words to me in the back of the room during a retake. Because the class was still in session, she whispered the words to me. Needless to say, I flunked the spelling test even though I knew how to spell every single word. ! The worst experience I ever had was with a junior high basketball coach. From the beginning of the year, he never showed an interest in helping me. I remember going through the year in a daze of confusion, never really sure what was going on. When my parents came into school for a special meeting to express their concerns, he commented, “She hears what she wants to hear.” He insisted that I was too smart to be deaf and that I was playing with everyone, audiological evidence to the contrary. ! One day, I missed something she said. She approached me and told me to sit properly. I complied, but she uttered the word “deaf-mute” in the most demeaning way. The class laughed at me. With this public humiliation , I felt this rage burning inside me. . . . The years have passed, but I still have this rage against that woman.1 THE IMPORTANCE OF, AND RIGHT TO, LANGUAGE: AN OVERVIEW AND HISTORY I F T H E C O U R T S have applied the Fourteenth Amendment ’s equal protection clause to a child’s right to an education, 118 / A Constitutional Right what of an individual’s more specific right to his or her language? In order to discuss bilingual rights (chapter 10), I must note the significant difference between “new” Americans learning English but maintaining their native language when they have the aural and oral capacity to master both and deaf and hard of hearing individuals whose capacity to learn English orally and aurally may be in question. This difference makes the matter of a right to, and the need for, one’s native language that much more dramatic for deaf and hard of hearing children. Americans are generally interested in language, whether it appears in the form of referenda to make English the official (and only) language or in the form of laws and programs that recognize and protect non-English languages. It is a curious push-pull because language defines, and is necessary for the continuation of, distinct cultures within American subcommunities, and yet there is pressure...