This week’s Moral Maze was most disturbing, showing that those who make decisions about the Deaf as ‘experts‘, are unable to communicate with them, know nothing about Deaf people or their culture.
When my husband and I who are both hearing, were asked how we’d feel if our baby was born deaf, I, from a hearing family was rather scared at the idea, but to my husband, the only child of Deaf parents, it equalled being asked if having a brown eyed baby would worry him, a blue eyed man. I was ignorant, he informed. Having had many wonderful years as a teacher of the deaf and spending most of my social life with the Deaf community, now having a Deaf child would cause me no more anxiety as having my hearing sons.
Because English is their second language, care has to be taken to make sure Deaf children become fluent in English and literate, to a facilitate a full education but hearing children may have the same necessity.
Deaf people lead independent full lives ( their interests may not always be the same as hearing people, so what?) Nobody mentioned the community of Martha’s Vineyard on the east coast of America, where the vast majority of the population were Deaf and held all the important positions in the area and where everyone signed. They were a prosperous thriving community. Do these so called informed experts think they should all never have been born?
These experts also encourage parents to feel the best thing for their Deaf child is to make them like a hearing child with no thought that the child will always feel they are not the ‘perfect’ child their parents wanted.
I wouldn’t presume to pass an opinion on the other children discussed in the programme as I haven’t spent time with those groups.
Norma Hunter