Alan F.

February 15, 2007

Commission on Education of the Deaf

Thank you for inviting me to this meeting for the Commission on Education of the Deaf. I am honored. I know that I am here to do three things: give a personal testimony of my experience; explain where the problems of Deaf education is; and propose realistic remedies. I am one of the few success stories of oralism. I have grown up without the use of cued speech or American Sign Language. When I was diagnosed with deafness at the age of 5, I was fitted with hearing aids. I used to go to a private school, but shuttled between public and private school for speech therapy until I transferred to public school.

Since I transferred in January, my grades overall improved. I took class time off once or twice a week to get speech therapy. My speech therapy and upbringing were not negative. Yet throughout elementary, middle, and high schools, I did not make many friends. Sometimes I said that I was shy, or that I was introvert, but I was aware that my deafness prevented me from communicating. I wondered if I would have been able to socialize in the deaf school than in the hearing one. It is hard for me to answer that question, because I did not have access to what is normal in a hearing world or in a deaf world at the time: communication on one hand, and on the other the option of going to the deaf school, which was looked upon negatively by everyone. That going to the deaf school is a last resort was a conclusion drawn out explicitly for me by my mother, my speech therapist, and many other people.

I did not start trying to learn ASL until I was 17 and learned of a concurrent enrollment program that was available allowing high school students to take classes at a community college. Since then, as I learned ASL, I learned many other things. I have learned that I am different. I have learned that my difference is what continues the push toward mainstreaming more deaf children and encouraging the oralist methods. Based on what you have heard about my academic success, you may be encouraged to believe that all deaf people can be made to talk and lipread.

Recent statistics, however, show that the state of Deaf Education is dismal. There is such scattershot success with the three current approaches to Deaf education: bilingual-bicultural, simultaneous communication, and oralism. The basic problem is lack of early intervention and parental involvement. All children enter the world eager to learn, but they must be nurtured by parents who are involved in helping deaf children beyond learning to talk and lipread, but to communicate and express themselves with their hands. Neglecting these children until they are five means that the critical time for development of language is lost.

If parents want to raise their children with oralism or cochlear implants, that is up to them. What I want is for them to know that there are other options available. What I find disturbing is that during the period when parents are told their child is deaf, many times only one view is presented, the view of audiologists and doctors. If informed of sign language or Deaf schools, they are often told negatively, "If you child does not succeed in an oralist or mainstreamed environment, and all other methods of education have been exhausted, then the last method is the Deaf school." Parents are not told that statistically, hearing aids and cochlear implants do not help equally because hearing loss varies widely. Yet a single failure is unacceptable. Recent research has shown the benefits of teaching sign language to hearing children. It is ironic that parents with deaf children do not have the same access.

We should encourage all parents, regardless of whether their children are deaf or hearing, to learn ASL by providing booklets that enable parents to believe in the benefits of knowing more than one language, and we can do that by setting up programs, along with breathing technique, to teach parents ASL before their child is born.