I Can't Hear You!

Articles

I Can't Hear You!

By Ambria Lee
Apr 23, 2004

We all take for granted everything in our lives. From the electricity we use, the TV we watch; the clothes we wear, to the cars we drive. In our daily lives, we go on about our business with no second thoughts.

Let me take you into the world of the hearing.

Listen!

What do you hear?

Do you hear papers shuffling or someone moving in their chair?

Can you hear someone whisper around you?

How about the sounds of your own breathing?

When you walk down the sidewalk or shop in a store, do you hear other people talking and laughing?

This is our world of sounds. Everywhere we go, we hear the sounds of the people and things that surround us. When you go to leave school today, you will get into your car and probably listen to your favorite music cd or the radio. This is just one thing in our everyday lives we take for granted.

When you are a parent, you hear your children laughing and talking, or when they get hurt, you rush to their aid because you can hear their cries or screams.

Have you ever walked down the sidewalk and suddenly you hear someone or something coming up behind you? You suddenly turn around and you see a man running down the sidewalk with his big Great Dane. You know you have to move out of the way in order not to be trampled. You were happy you heard the sounds coming so you could move out of the way.

When you look at the person next to you, you never really pay any attention to them unless something stands out that is different in our “normal” world. Can you define normal? If you looked it up in a dictionary, normal means; typical, standard, common, and usual.

So are you normal? Is everyone in this room, normal? Yes, we are all normal. What about the person who is sits in a wheelchair? They are as normal as we are other than they sit to do things and they may be limited in their abilities, but they are as normal as you and I.

The world is filled with different people. The hearing culture has an advantage over the deaf culture but only because the deaf can not hear what we hear. We will look at the hearing culture first verses the deaf culture.

From the first day a baby is born, their world is filled with all types of sounds. From their parents’ soft words to the everyday sounds such as the telephone ringing or the refrigerator door being opened and closed. As that child gets older, his or her world is surrounded by sounds. From a dog barking or just the sound of the falling rain; all of these are everyday sounds. When we send our child to school, we give them the best education and they come home to us every evening. They rush off outside to play with their friends, listen to music, watch TV, or just talk among themselves in general conversations.

As adults, we raise families and have a social life that consist of; company picnics, going to Broadway plays, concerts, movies, and the list goes on and on. Almost all of the ones sitting in this classroom know what it is like to have their hearing. The hearing people have an extreme advantage over the deaf person. As we heard in this class before, hearing loss can suddenly occur, or over a period of time. Hearing loss can come from either an injury, illness, old age, or exposure to loud sounds such as music or equipment. From a recent article in Fresno's Northview publication, they stated that, “Hearing loss affects more than 30 million Americans, and is especially common among people over the age of 60.”

So it is easy to explain about the people with normal hearing so let me take you into the world of the deaf.

Now,step through the world of silence and enter the world of the deaf. When you speak, they hear what you heard. Nothing. So what is it like to be deaf and grow up in a deaf culture?

A doctor that diagnosis a deaf baby is a sensitive matter because the parents are often in dismay and will need extra support from their family to deal with the emotional conclusion. With a hearing baby, there is no need for the extra support. Nine babies a day are deserted to deafness. That comes out to 3,285 per year who are abandoned because they are labeled different.

Deaf parents cannot hear their babies when they cry, so they need to buy special equipment such as a baby monitor with strobe lights, or a device you would carry in your pocket that when the baby cries, it will vibrate.

In the hearing able children, they go to public schools, but with a deaf child, if there are no special classes with the right teachers to aid the deaf children, then those children must attend a special school. The payment for the deaf school is paid through a Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act that was amended in 1978, which states that a child with a handicap could not be excluded from any program that has federal financing assistance. This means that if a deaf child has to go to a private school, federal funds are used and the parent’s liability is zero.

In higher education, the Section 504 still applies. The disabled student has all the rights of the non-disabled student. Section 504 plays a very important role. If a deaf person is turned down from services federally funded, then it is in violation. If a deaf person fills out an application and the business does not actively seek placement within the company, but chooses to ignore that person because they are deaf, violates Section 504, also.

Deaf person seeking medical treatment are sometimes abused because they cannot call for help or their food and personal belongings may be targets for others. People tend to take advantage of a deaf person. In the lawsuit in Minnesota – Doe vs. Wilzack – a deaf woman who had been committed to a mental hospital for more than 20 years, received no treatment until a lawsuit from the National Association of the Deaf Legal Defense Fund stepped in and won the case which forced the hospital to establish a treatment program where the woman and other deaf patients could be issued treatment.

Another case involved a deaf child who was diagnosed as mentally retarded until it was proved that medical malpractice was involved and after treatment, he was pronounces a normal, bright, deaf child. The child was awarded $1, 500,000.

When you are a hearing person, jobs are plentiful. They have jobs like accountant, actor, biologist, carpenter/painter, chemist, clerical worker, draftsman, engineer, financial consultant, gardener, landscaper, librarian, mechanic, printer, social worker, writer and the list is long. What about the deaf person? What type of jobs do they hold? They are artists, business leaders, dentists, doctors, elected government officials, engineers, medical technician, park rangers, teachers, and they have the same jobs as I stated previous for the hearing.

Just because a person is deaf, it does not mean they need their hearing to do a job. With the proper education and training, the deaf person can hold any job as the hearing person.

Some famous people you may recognize as being deaf include:

Beethoven slowly became deaf.

Helen Keller was deaf and blind.

Marlee Matlin who is a deaf actress and who starred in Children of a Lesser God, Hear No Evil” and also starred in a TV series that lasted two seasons called, Reasonable Doubts.

Heather Whitestone was crowned “Miss America” in 1994.

There are many famous people in this world today who was either born deaf or have loss their hearing at a later age.

So exactly what is the deaf culture? An eighth grader at the Lake Drive School for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children in Mountain Lakes sums it this way; “it’s the way people live including their beliefs, arts, customs, ideas and inventions [with] no difference between the deaf and hearing except the language each group uses.”

Remember, you are not exempt from hearing loss. It can happen to you.

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