Adolescence is a time of rapid physical, emotional, and mental
development, which is occasionally complicated by the high school
setting, increased responsibilities, and the desire to become an
adult. Researchers describe it as; “The period from approximately
eleven to eighteen, can be seen as a ‘way of life’ different from
childhood to adulthood. Problems of emancipation, independence, and
freedom from the family occupy the early stage, while problems of
social role and personal purpose within the wider world occupy the
later stage. Over the whole span of adolescence, the developmental
task is to integrate earlier elements into a true sense of identity
as a separate individual, no longer taking a partial or external
view of self.” (Schlesinger, 2000, pg.356) The process tests even
the “normal” teenager, but what is the process like for someone who
can’t hear? Deaf children go through the same experiences as
hearing children. Does being deaf affect their development, ability
to participate in school, or impact their relationship with their
parents? The answers to all these questions is a resounding yes,
being deaf affects adolescent development, in mainstream settings,
which are made more complicated in today’s auditory/visual world
versus, deaf adolescent development in Deaf settings. “Deaf
students face considerable challenges in developing interpersonal
communication skills. This presence of an auditory disability means
that spoken language is largely inaccessible.” (Akamatsu & Musselman,
1999, pg. 305) This does not mean that deaf adolescents are dumb or
slow; it only means that their deafness impacts their lives,
especially in school, and in ways hearing people probably don’t even
realize.
The
word deaf literally means someone who can’t hear. This however is a
broad generalized term. “The level of hearing a person has is
determined through hearing tests, to discover the amount of decimals
of hearing lost at various sound cycles.” (Spradley, 1987, pg. 42)
“In America about 80% of the population have some degree of hearing
loss.”(Akamatsu &
Musselman, 1999, pg. 317) Deaf people and doctors today use three
broad categories to describe hearing loss; profoundly deaf,
moderately deaf, and hard-of-hearing. Each of these three
categories can be broken down into even more specific and complex
terms, but the three categories listed above are the general terms
that are used most often, and are the terms that will be used in
this paper. It is important to note here that both profoundly deaf
and moderately deaf students are and will remain unable to hear most
– all conversations that go on around them in school settings, even
with a hearing-aid, based on the amount of hearing they have lost.
“Sometimes I was treated like I was a normal hearing person, which
can be good, but then I’d have to remind people that I can’t hear
well and they need to speak louder and clearer, and face-to-face so
I can lip-read. Otherwise, I won’t be able to understand a
conversation.” (Punch & Hyde, 2005, pg. 3)
Our
culture used to view deafness as a defect in the brain that left you
unable to think, and so we used the term deaf and dumb to describe
people who couldn’t hear or talk. This view is completely
unorthodox and there is no scientific research anywhere to prove
that deaf people are dumb. Most deaf students are in fact quite
smart; the only thing they struggle with is learning how to
communicate. “All of the existing research assumes that cognitive
development in deaf children follows the same course as that found
in hearing children, although the rate of development may differ,
most of the differences are based on the fact that learning,
comprehension, and cognition all require an understanding of
language, and the understand of language is a struggle for some deaf
children.” (Clark, Marschark, & Karchmer, 2001, pg. 130) From this
statement it is fair to assume that deaf adolescent’s development is
affected because of their language barrier in a hearing world.
“In
the mid-1980s, the Regular Education Initiative (REI) pushed for the
mainstreaming concept, as set forth in the Education for All
Handicapped Children Act, even further by advocating that all
disabled children both deaf and hard of hearing, be educated in
their neighborhood public school as a simple matter of policy. With
full inclusion, there is no need for a separate special education
system; in a socially just system, the regular classroom teacher
must be the teacher for all children.” (Oliva, 2004, pg. 10) The
experiences that have been recalled and recorded by researchers from
deaf adolescents seem to show that inclusion may be good for the
hearing students but it’s not always good for the deaf student, some
things just aren’t good for all.
Some
of the issues that deaf students face each and every day in the
mainstream setting include; teachers who for some reason don’t want
to help a deaf child succeed and instead treat them as if they can
hear, extra-curricular activities involving large groups and
conversations, eating lunch with a group of “friends,” not being
able to hear the bell ring, making friends, and paying attention in
class. School is challenging, this is true, but if students can’t
hear and everyone around them can, their self-esteem, and
motivation, will be affected. A few high school deaf students said
that sitting in class and any form of group activity were the two
most frustrating experiences of their lives.
The
lunchroom was the most frustrating because of sitting at a table
with about eight to fourteen other teens made understanding
conversation impossible, turning up their hearing-aid only allowed
them to hear all the chaos in the lunchroom and did nothing to make
their “friends” voices more intelligible, and trying to lip-read
what the others were saying left the deaf student with a headache.
“I was involved in several school activities and loved it. But,
with the involvement came a lot of stress, especially when it came
to team bus rides, team meetings, and group lunches. I would miss
many of the jokes or secret whispers, it was impossible to follow
all the chatter. (I would just sit very quiet and feel invisible.)
Being involved was fun, but I never remember feeling included or
like I belonged.” (Sheridan, 2001, pg. 156) “I didn’t have friends
in high school since I felt that people would be better off without
me. I felt like I was a burden to others, always asking them to
repeat stuff, so I felt it wise to keep a distance.” (Oliva, 2004,
pg. 82)
Daydreaming and doodling in class is a common confession of deaf
high school students. The reason for not paying attention is not
because they don’t want to know what is going on around them, but
rather because many teachers tend to talk while writing on the
blackboard or other “unfair” but normal classroom occurrences. “My
worst experience was with an eighth grade social studies teacher who
would not give me a front seat because I had a last name beginning
with T, I belonged in the back right corner, she said, and seating
me in the front would ruin her beautiful alphabetical order.
Insisting that I needed a front seat so that I could see the board
and hear was to no avail.” (Oliva, 2004, pg. 43) “It’s dumbfounding
to remember just sitting in classes’ day-dreaming, reading the
homework, or just being off in a daze somewhere. When I actually
tried to pay attention or understand what was going on around me I
would quickly become overwhelmed, since it all sounded like “mumbo
jumbo.” I probably had the classic “eyes glazed over” look every
single day.” (Oliva, 2004, pg. 68)
Educators are torn about the idea of mainstreaming. On one hand it
gives an opportunity for “normal” children and “special needs”
children to learn how to work together and get along, which
diminishes prejudices. On the other hand there is the fact that
mainstreaming is not in the best interests of deaf and hard of
hearing children and, in fact, can be detrimental to their emotional
as well as their academic well-being. In an article titled
“Inclusive Education and Personal Development” found in the Journal
of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education from the summer of 1999;
educators and researchers said that; “School experiences appear to
influence feelings about oneself as a deaf person. The experience
can be positive or negative based on the support of the school
environment. While the general expectation is that one primary goal
of adolescents is peer acceptance for which a considerable number
have to struggle, the deafness dimension suggests that those in
inclusive settings have to go an additional mile in establishing
such relationships to ensure some modicum of success and minimize
feelings of failure. Communication difficulties, resiliency, and
the extent to which educational settings support individual needs
may have implications for the making and molding of identities.
Educators need to be aware of the school environment and how it
affects deaf children.” In other words some adolescence will
benefit from being included, but other won’t, especially if the
schools don’t know how to help and support the children through the
process. “School personnel, classroom teachers, and guidance
counselors need to be made aware of deaf students concern, and need
for confidence in the area of career decision-making. Deaf students
need support and guidance to help them make informed decisions about
career and education choices.” (Punch & Hyde, 2005, pg 18.)
The
alternative to mainstreaming is exclusion, and special schools just
for the deaf; places such as Gallaudet University in Washington D.C.
and Maryland School for the Deaf in Frederick, Maryland are two
examples. The benefit to having special schools, is that deaf
children will have opportunities to “talk” together using Sign
Language, develop a stronger sense of personal identity, and be
exposed to the opportunities and benefits that exist in the Deaf
culture. “Culture promises a great deal; it promises equity and
opportunity. If a community has its own language and its own
culture, it could claim certain right and an interest in affairs
having to do with deaf children and deaf adults. It could realign
the relationship of Deaf people to their schools and claim an
interest in independent school curriculum.” (Padden & Humphries,
2005, pg. 131.) The Deaf culture is a strong and powerful part of
most Deaf individuals lives, and in Deaf schools, children are
taught about their rich “heritage,” including people like Helen
Keller, Thomas Gallaudet, Alexander Gram Bell, Heather Whitestone,
Lynn Spradley, Dorothy Miles, and many others, that they might not
learn about in a regular classroom. “The idea of culture offers the
possibility of separation and inclusion at the same time; they are
included in the world of human communities that share long
histories, durable languages, and common social practices.
Separation allows Deaf people to define political goals that may be
distinct from other groups. Inclusion allows Deaf people to work
toward humanist goals that are common to other groups such as civil
rights and access. In this way, the idea of culture in not merely
an academic abstraction, but very much a “lived” concept. Culture
provides a way for Deaf people to reimagine themselves not as
unfinished hearing people, but as cultural and linguistic beings in
a collective world with one another. It gives them a reason for
existing with others in a modern world.” (Padden & Humphries, 2005,
161.)
Many
profoundly deaf and moderately deaf adolescence enjoy their deaf
schools because it gives them a freedom to communicate that they
would never have otherwise. “Sign language is relevant because it
is a supreme human achievement, accomplished over a long history
that has accumulated in time and in people, the collective genius of
countless human beings. Deep in its structure are clues to the
workings of the human brain and the wisdom of social groups that
work together to make meaning and to find a purpose for living.
That Deaf people can preserve a language despite attempts to keep
them apart from on another, and efforts to banish the use of the
language from schools, is testimony to why Sign language exist in
the first place – as uniquely human inventions for the problem of
how to transcend the individual and form social contact with
others. Sign language shows what humans can do if they do not hear
speech, and they show what signers can do even if they hear speech:
they make and use language. We strive to make meaning in as many
different ways and forms as we can. To express is divine.” (Padden
& Humphries, 2005, pg. 76) In Deaf schools students don’t have to
pretend to be “normal” and struggle to understand what is going on
in class using only their lip-reading skills; instead they can be
themselves and have access to language through signs. “I remember
when I entered Berkeley School for the Deaf, that I had trouble
learning how to share a room with three other kids in a huge
dormitory. Now, I share a campus apartment with several other
girls. We plan our meals and shop for food together. Our
counselors have taught us important independent living skills. The
teachers and staff are wonderful! I have made many friends. And I
believe that deaf kids are just as smart as hearing kids and with
sign language we can do anything.” (Spradley, 1987, pg. 281)
Total
exclusion can be just as harmful as total inclusion. It has been
reported that some Deaf people are so involved in their Deaf culture
that they don’t want anything to do with hearing people and view
hearing people as inferior. “Deaf people encompass a diverse group
of people, unified by experience and a process of socialization. If
you want to be part of the Deaf world you must share in their
experiences and go through a process of socialization or else you
don’t belong.” (Padden & Humphries, 2005, pg. 160) Being part of
the Deaf culture in itself is not bad, but only being able to use
Sign language and not knowing how to communicate in the hearing
world can create a problem. “Language offers us tools for
thinking. Having a word for a particular notion may make it easier
to manipulate that notion in thought and relate it to other
notions. Deaf children lack some of the codified names and
structures that come with conventional language. Sign language can
substitute and create conventional codes and add thought. However,
gesture systems cannot substitute for all of the codes and
constructions found in conventional language, and then the deaf
children may suffer the consequences, not only in communication, but
also in nonlinguistic tasks. For example, deaf children seem to
have some difficulty adopting an accusative organization in
communication, which means they will have more difficulty than
hearing children in seeing patterns, associations, and categories in
word groups and various types of activities.” (Goldin-Meadow, 2003,
pg. 227.)
The
problem then for deaf adolescents, who don’t know how to lip-read or
speak, becomes trying to get a job in a hearing world, while having
to rely on writing notes and Sign language interpreters. “That’s
why I haven’t gotten a part-time job, because I don’t really have
too much confidence in my lip-reading skills, and it would just get
awkward having to have customers and co-workers write notes and
stuff.” (Punch & Hyde, 2005, pg. 15) Even hard-of-hearing students
are concerned about being able to communicate effectively in
part-time jobs. “I really would like to work as nurse, but I worry
if sometime a doctor said something and I didn’t hear it and that it
would be a matter of life and death, and that’s really not safe. I
love the idea of helping people and would like to be a nurse. But
still, if I make a mistake in another career it’s just money, you
know, just money, I could try to pay it back and stuff, but if I
made a mistake as a nurse it would mean, ohhh, I would feel guilty
for life.” (Punch & Hyde, 2005, pg. 16).
If
mainstreaming doesn’t work and exclusion doesn’t work; how can we
find a way to work with and help deaf adolescents? Recently,
researchers have begun to evaluate this question and one of the
major results is the idea of Total Communication. Total
Communication is an educating method that relies on the deaf student
learning how to lip-read, use Sign language, and speak as much as
possible. This method gives students the tools they will need to
communicate in any setting, plus give them the option of being part
of the Deaf culture, the hearing world, or both. “Educators need to
be aware that merely placing a deaf or hard-of-hearing child in a
classroom will not necessarily be conducive to personal development
without careful attention to the child who is “different.”
Educators have to understand that school do make and mold identity,
self-perceptions, and perspectives on life, although the passage of
time and new experiences will reshape all these aspects. If minimal
attention is given to the social needs of the deaf or
hard-of-hearing student who struggles to be included in interactive
opportunities with hearing peers, social isolation is more likely.
Social support and interaction opportunities need to be programmed
into educational planning. Inclusion programs cannot ignore the
deaf dimension, since it is part of the individual who has a hearing
loss and therefore perceives the world through a somewhat different
lens. Even though the deaf dimension varies in saliency for each
deaf person, schools would do well to ensure that teachers
understand this personal perspective on deafness and the need to
make meaningful social connections to others who are deaf or
hearing. It is desirable for teachers to structure interactive
learning experiences that incorporate participation by deaf students
in ways that foster a positive sense of self without singling them
out as different in a negative sense. Bringing deaf adults into the
classroom whenever possible will enhance role model opportunities.
Above all the voices of those deaf and hard-of-hearing adults who
have gone through inclusive and non-inclusive educational settings
must be recognized. These individuals should be viewed as desirable
consultants in formulating school programs. Educators who follow up
on these recommendations will enhance positive personal development
and identity formation in deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals.”
(Leigh, 1999, pg. 244.) Schools are supposed to supply equal
opportunities and the tools students need to survive in this world.
With deaf students that means teachers need to sometimes give them
extra homework help, allowing them to sit near the front so they can
lip-read better, making sure that they are able to successfully
interact with their peers, and providing interpreters or speech
therapy classes; this will help ensure that deaf adolescents will
have the confidence they need to develop into who they want to be.
The
other result from recent studies on deaf education is that it
important for parents to be given information on all of the options
for their child and allowed to make an educated decision based on
what they think is best for their child. Parents of deaf children
will be crucial in providing a strong foundation for their child to
be able to learn; if they want their child to learn to speak they
will become the child’s first speech therapists; if the child is to
learn Sign language they will be the first to demonstrate the
gestures and explain the meanings. “Deafness. How powerful this
invisible handicap had become. It sealed Lynn away from our words,
from our thoughts, from everything we knew. We would have to teach
everything consciously. Training. That word was the key to Lynn’s
future.” (Spradley, 1987, pg. 90) This especially important since
each deaf child is different and will require different things based
on the amount of hearing they have lost. “Deaf students are a
relatively heterogeneous group of learners, and no single
educational technique or approach will remove all academic or
developmental hurdles. It has been noted that deaf and students who
have broader experiences in both academic and nonacademic areas,
because their parents are more involved in their lives, tend to have
a greater advantage in acquiring new information and skills.”
(Clark, Marschark, & Karchmer, 2001, pg. 83)
In
conclusion, it can be said that being deaf affects adolescent
development, in mainstream settings, and in Deaf settings. Also,
there is no “right” way or perfect solution to make deaf
developmental issues disappear. What is important is that
researchers, educators, parents, and deaf students continue to
strive towards a middle ground of Total Communication, combined with
inclusion of the hearing world and the Deaf world together. “While
deaf and hard of hearing children are diverse, it is beneficial to
recognize their similarities. These similarities can pull us
together, panethnically, as we move into the future with respect for
our diversity and work together to continue to transcend or
transform whatever barriers lie before us. Exploring the
experiences and perspectives of adolescents who are deaf will lead
us to a deeper understanding of the developmental issues and tasks
faced by deaf children and adolescents in their formative years.”
(Sheridan, 2001, pg. 228.) If we all can pull together and learn to
corporate, deaf adolescents will feel accepted and will know beyond
a shadow of a doubt that they are important and can make an
important contribution to society. “For the sake of deaf
adolescents, and future generations of deaf and hard-of-hearing
children, parents and teachers must learn to see each child as
unique, special, and whole. Also, parents and teachers need to
become more open to the value of the Deaf community and that Sign
language is sometimes the only way a child will feel comfortable
communicating. Lastly, the Deaf community must become open to
provide information to the hearing world so that we all can continue
to try and make life for a deaf individual as successful and
fulfilling as possible.” (Oliva, 2004, pg. 184.)
It is
my opinion after evaluating all of the research and information I
could find on deafness that deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals
have a lot that they can offer and contribute to our society. They
are not dumb furthermore they are just as normal as anyone can be
normal both in development and with life in general. The best thing
for deaf adolescents is to be given the opportunity for Total
Communication; this will in my option, increase their confidence,
social skills, and ability to be an active and included part of the
world. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 12:12 “The body is a unit,
though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are
many they form one body.” Basically what the verse is saying is
that while there are many different types and kinds of people in
this world, we are all part of this world and we need to learn to
respect each person’s uniqueness, since each one of us as something
that we can teach or offer to each other. Being deaf is only a
handicap if you look at it as a handicap; it does however require
extra patience and some work on the part of teachers, peers, and
family to include (whether mainstreamed or not) and help deaf
adolescents succeed.
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