hear and speak better (a philosophy called oralism) admitted this point back in 1884.
"I admit the ease with which a deaf child acquires sign language and its perfect adaptability
for the purpose of developing his mind; but after all it is not the language of the million of people among who his lot is cast." - Alexander Graham Bell (1884)
Deaf infants are the major population at risk of language deprivation. All infants must acquire a natural language very early in order to develop a full first language complete with complex grammar, social, and turntaking rules. Language delay may not prevent a full first language, but will permanently bar that person from truly learning another language—such as English in school. If you happen to be born deaf or were deafened early, like I was, well, sign language is the key to all language. If you’re deafened after age two or three, then sign language and contact with deaf culture is the key to continuing social growth and identity as a deaf person in this country.
I often think of “what if?” What if my parents hadn’t decided to buck the experts back in the 70’s to try sign language despite the irreversible damage they were warned would occur to their deaf son, my older brother? What if I hadn’t had the luck to learn sign language before I was shown to be deaf, but instead not allowed to
learn at all until say, I was a teenager?
I’m fairly sure I would have been reading early, hungry for information, but books are not people. How much vocabulary could I have learned if I wasn't allowed to point but only ask awkwardly with poor speech? Schoolrooms would have been torture chambers continually marred by confusion over basic instructions. I would have been persecuted by my so-called peers. Perhaps like so many of my orally raised friends, I would have considered suicide in my teens. I would not have reached my potential. I would have been cut off from it by lack of language. Not deafness.
When I consider this scenario, with full knowledge I have of my frequent failed experiences in speech therapy and “trying to hear” with hearing aids, I can say this one sentence with full authority:
Denial of sign language to a deaf baby is child abuse.
Don’t rationalize language deprivation or manipulating somebody to withhold sign language from a deaf child by saying he’s only hard of hearing. Don’t pray for a miracle to happen and for him to recover his
hearing somehow. The deaf child is the miracle already. Why ask God to undo that miracle? Nurture your child, like a mustard seed, and watch him grow into something mightier than you can imagine. (If you are a parent or know a new parent of a deaf child, please direct them to this advocacy site for parents of deaf children.)
Sadly, most experts on diagnosing deafness are not experts on how to raise deaf children. They’ve never done it themselves. They don’t talk to deaf adults. They don’t collect that information. They also rarely advertise to parents any information that shows their proposed treatments don’t work as well as they claim, since they don't always know-- because they don't actually communicate with the very people who have been treated! Their degrees do not mean they know how to raise a deaf child or the complexities of growing up deaf
Special Education teachers aren’t fully trained to work with deaf children; only Deaf Education teachers are.
Early intervention specialists are a huge lifeline to parents trying to figure language acquistion issues out; my first teacher came to teach my parents long before I entered school. Those specialists come from school districts, deaf schools. They cost money. When budgets get cut, this kind of education goes, when in fact it is the quickest, best way to ensure educational success for deaf children. But politicans know even less than the "experts" about Deaf education.
The only people who know the full impact of this loss from the deaf child's perspective are the Deaf and their families. They have shared their stories of being survivors of oralism here. And they're the ones fighting
Indiana HB 1367! hard, out of a very real fear that parents will lose needed services and their children be linguistically abused just to tidy up a state budget. Please join their fight.