Can the "Culture" Argument Be Applied Equally?

Today I came across a dvd I'm sure many of you have seen. Maybe some of you are even in it for all I know. . . haha! It's called The Sound and Fury. I watched it several years ago with mixed feelings. Seeing it again reminded me of a blog I read recently -- Cochlear Implant On-line. Rachel, a young woman who was implanted at age two said one reason her parents decided to go through with the cochlear implant, rather than teaching Rachel ASL was because her parents were not deaf and didn't know ASL themselves. If they had wanted to teach Rachel ASL, they would have had to learn it themselves first, and the ASL would have been a second language to them. She explained how ASL was not their culture. She then used an analogy of American parents who adopt a Chinese baby. Adoptive American parents of foreign children usually teach their babies English because they live in America, she said.

Rachel's mother Melissa then commented in Rachel's blog there were additional reasons. They HAD in fact explored the pros and cons thoroughly, then decided a cochlear implant would offer their daughter the most opportunities in life. You can read the entire blog here. I'm not judging. I might have done the very same thing myself 20 years ago if faced with the same options. I don't know. I'm not sure what I would do today. It's no longer my decision to make, since I'm past the age to have children.

I thought Rachel had a valid point. Parents normally raise their children in the culture they live, not the culture the child came from. In the case of Deaf children, the vast majority are born into hearing families.

However I saw some holes in her analogy. For example, adopted Korean children often go to Korean school or meet with other Koreans to learn about their culture and country. Also adopted children from other countries are hearing and can learn any language, where as Deaf children are Deaf whether they have a cochlear implant or not. They're still Deaf in many situations-- at night, while swimming, water-skiing, snorkeling, taking a shower, when the batteries die or the implant malfunctions. Even though a piece of technology helps them hear for awhile, they are still d/Deaf. No matter what country you live in, it doesn't change the fact you can't hear in those situations.

I had completely forgotten about Sound and Fury until I saw it in the check-in bin today, while working. For those few of you who don't know what it's about I've copied amazon.com's brief synopsis here--

Amazon.com
You might expect that the cochlear implant, a device that can give deaf people the gift of hearing, would be embraced by the deaf community. Josh Aronson's Sound and Fury, a compelling and often devastating documentary, tells a different story. Two brothers, one deaf and one hearing, grapple with a decision concerning their deaf children, and the debate that rages through the extended family turns less on technology and medical concerns than social politics and culture. The deaf parents of a school-age girl fear what the implant would do to her unique identity, while the hearing parents of a toddler see no question at all. Aronson gives all sides their say, but ultimately the increasingly angry arguments reveal prejudices and fears from both sides and split the once-harmonious family, much like they have split hearing and deaf communities across the country. --Sean Axmaker

The first time I saw it several years ago, I thought about it all night. When you're hearing, the argument that "Deaf isn't MY culture seems perfectly sane." Of course. It's hard to learn a second language. How can you teach a child ASL if you yourself don't use ASL?

But when the tables are turned and there are two Deaf parents with a Deaf child who say, "Hearing isn't MY culture, why should I implant MY child?" they have the same argument, don't they?

Worse, because success with an implant depends on AVT, it seems like a quite a hurdle for Deaf parents to cross with their child's oral progress. If a hearing parent with working hands can't learn ASL, I wonder how a Deaf parent with non-working ears could be expected to help a Deaf child learn to speak??

And still-- many Hearing people I've discussed this movie with don't quite understand. They think you can just implant a kid and then they're hearing. Praise the Lord! It was clear in the movie the grandparents of this family didn't understand. They put so much pressure on their Deaf son and his wife to implant their granddaughter.

All I can say is it's sad the way Deafness sometimes tears families apart so much. I see the definitions/labels tearing a community apart in here. I don't think there are any right or wrong answers to the cochlear implant issue. We all have choices to make and God knows we each have to live with those choices -- right or wrong. Hindsight is sometimes best. Let's try to be more gentle with each other as we move along into our own unknowns.