Psycho-social issues

faire_jour said:
You show me that "the vast majority" of people with a hearing loss use ASL.
Click to expand...

No one has ever made that claim, faire jour. You are again twisting words in an attempt to get them to say what you want them to say. Try to follow along. We are talking about deaf children here. Deaf children who grow into deaf adults, and the psycho-social difficulties resulting from misguided placement.
 
Just my opinion here -- I looked at that site, and only 6.2 million of those 31 million wear hearing aids - so either the rest choose not to wear any, or have a hearing loss insignificant enough to wear hearing aids. And of those 6.2 million, a huge majority are likely still hard-of-hearing with just the minimal in-the-ear aids. ASL would not be considered a major communication tool among this group.
 
AlleyCat said:
Just my opinion here -- I looked at that site, and only 6.2 million of those 31 million wear hearing aids - so either the rest choose not to wear any, or have a hearing loss insignificant enough to wear hearing aids. And of those 6.2 million, a huge majority are likely still hard-of-hearing with just the minimal in-the-ear aids. ASL would not be considered a major communication tool among this group.
Click to expand...

Thank you. That is exactly what I meant by breaking it down to make the numbers meaningful.
 
faire_jour said:
But if you never learned ASL, why would they learn it?

There is an assumption that all deaf children use ASL (or grow up and use it)and their parents don't know it. The truth is that a very small minority of people with a hearing loss use ASL.
Click to expand...

Where is your source?
 
faire_jour said:
31 million people have hearing loss, 500,000 use ASL.

Better Hearing and Speech Month 2009
Click to expand...

How Many People Use ASL in the United States?

Why Estimates Need Updating

Abstract

This study traces the sources of the estimates of how many people use American Sign Language (ASL) in the United States. A variety of claims can be found in the literature and on the Internet, some of which have been shown to be unfounded but continue to be cited. In our search for the sources of the various (mis)understandings, we have found that all data-based estimates of the number of people who use ASL in the United States have their origin in a single study published in the early 1970s, which inquired about signing in general and not ASL use in particular. There has been neither subsequent research to update these estimates of the prevalence of signing nor any specific study of ASL use. The paper concludes with a call to action to rectify this problem.


Conclusion

It appears that misunderstandings and misrepresentations of what is known about the demography of deafness and ASL use in the Unites States are widespread. Though the tendency for advocates to overstate or exaggerate when citing statistics may have played some role, we suspect that the perpetuation of inordinate claims can as easily be attributed to three simple problems. First, many writers have not exercised due care and precision in identifying their population of interest, let alone having data that corresponds to their presumed target group. Second, once claims appear in writing, especially official government documents, these claims tend to take on the status of fact. And third, there has been a persistent need for statistics on ASL use even though there has never been a true study of ASL use in the general U.S. population; writers are compelled to come up with something even though no statistics exist.

In sum, Schein and Delk (1974) provided evidence that there may have been as many as 500,000 people, regardless of hearing status, who signed at home in 1972; certainly, their estimates suggest that there were more than 250,000 prevocationally deaf persons who were good signers. In the remaining literature reviewed, all of the population size estimates greater than 500,000 appear to result from conflating deafness with ASL use and are based on demography of deafness estimates. In order to pursue an estimate of the number of people who use ASL in the United States, three different strategies have been proposed: 1) a few small but significant changes in U.S. Census practice are made so ASL use can be recorded; 2) changes to the NHIS are made to include a specific inquiry about non-English language use, which would include ASL as a legitimate response, for all respondents; or 3) a far more resource intensive independent survey of ASL use in the United States is undertaken. By realizing that the conflation of ASL signing and deafness is wrong and misleading, it becomes clear that a new and unified approach to the demography of language and deafness is required and that relatively minor changes in current practices are necessary to obtain data that would help to answer the question, “How many people use ASL in the United States?”

Draft manuscript accepted for publication in Sign Language Studies, Volume 6, Number 3, 2006
Click to expand...

http://gri.gallaudet.edu/Publications/ASL_Users.pdf
 
shel90 said:
Right..nobody asked me if I used ASL for a survey so I am sure there are a lot of deaf people who werent counted whenever these stastistics were made.
Click to expand...

Right. And the following was also stated in this paper:

we might imagine that ASL would be counted among non-English languages
“spoken” at home. However, this is not the case. In the initial data processing phase, any mention
of an American signed language is coded as English by the U.S. Census Bureau, apparently on
the curious grounds that signed languages are not written and, therefore, cannot be included in
ballot materials (Day, personal communication, October 26, 2004


AND

Unfortunately, deafness is predominantly treated as a matter of public health and social
welfare policy in the United States, not primarily as a social and linguistic phenomenon within
the general population

AND

The collection of national data on deafness (and other disabilities) is now driven largely
by the priorities of the U.S. Public Health Service and the Social Security Administration in the
form of two national survey programs: the National Health Survey (see National Center for
Health Statistics, 1963) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (see U.S. Bureau of
the Census, 1986). The former published its first estimates of deafness prevalence in 1965
(Glorig & Roberts, 1965), the latter in 1986 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1986). Neither of these
data collection programs has ever inquired about sign language or ASL use.



So, it really is pretty obvious that any numbers provided by a CI manufacturers website are suspect.
 
The truth is that a very small minority of people with a hearing loss use ASL.
Click to expand...
That's b/c the majority of people with hearing loss are late deafened, not nessarily dhh as kids.
 
deafbajagal said:
This kind of educational system (bi-bi) will not work well in the U.S. until changes are made. For one thing, many parents of deaf and hh children are not fluent in American Sign Language, which makes the language not accessible for the deaf/hh child at home...hence hindering language acquistion and development. The US government needs to provide support for parents to be able to take off from work to attend ASL classes, provide money to purchase materials such as books, videos, etc., and to have mentors who are fluent in ASL to come into their homes to promote and expose the language.

I think many parents choose oral education because it is the mode they themselves are the most comfortable with. Some parents say it is the language of the majority (aka hearing world)...thus children needs oral skills to survive in the world. This misconception has hurt a lot of children. Adults today who endured the experiences of oralism are still paying the price.

For one thing, it is not a hearing world. It is a world of both deaf and hearing. I live and breathe in this world, and I'll be damned if they take away my acre of the planet to put a stake in it and say it's the hearing world.
Click to expand...

Well said! Especially the last paragraph.
 
It boils down to the fact of any child growing up.

The what ifs, and should haves, could haves.

The main thing is if a parent is actually seeking in the best interest of the child, not being ashamed of the child, or covering up the deafness. Then it really should be no qualms.
 
Sad that this issue had deteriorated to the old Oral VS ASL argument.

I detest AGBell, Oral Only Advocation, and anything else that takes away or attempts to take away communication.

The sites posted are nothing more than henchmen for Oral only.

The Better Hearing and Speech Institute/Monthly/Whatever name says it all where they are concerned. They have all these hearing aid companies in their pockets, make sales and then tell people there is something wrong with them if they need hearing aids or hearing aids don't work for them, or people refuse to be drilled into for a CI or....(heaven forbid) choose not to wear HA's at all and use ASL.

This thread has surfaced the anger and disgust I still feel for the deaf woman in denial that a group of people were forced to go hear as she told everyone in the room what they were doing wrong and how they had to act and be in the hearing world and flippantly stating to my husband and I when she saw us signing "Oh, hope you do not need an interpreter 'cause we don't have any".

Just as with some political and other HA, audism, and so on issues I tend to let my emotions and empathy and sometimes ire creep in and so, before I say something that will get me banned... I will shut up now.
 
Babyblue said:
It boils down to the fact of any child growing up.

The what ifs, and should haves, could haves.

The main thing is if a parent is actually seeking in the best interest of the child, not being ashamed of the child, or covering up the deafness. Then it really should be no qualms.
Click to expand...

Good Point!! :)
 
ASLGAL said:
Sad that this issue had deteriorated to the old Oral VS ASL argument.

I detest AGBell, Oral Only Advocation, and anything else that takes away or attempts to take away communication.

The sites posted are nothing more than henchmen for Oral only.

The Better Hearing and Speech Institute/Monthly/Whatever name says it all where they are concerned. They have all these hearing aid companies in their pockets, make sales and then tell people there is something wrong with them if they need hearing aids or hearing aids don't work for them, or people refuse to be drilled into for a CI or....(heaven forbid) choose not to wear HA's at all and use ASL.

This thread has surfaced the anger and disgust I still feel for the deaf woman in denial that a group of people were forced to go hear as she told everyone in the room what they were doing wrong and how they had to act and be in the hearing world and flippantly stating to my husband and I when she saw us signing "Oh, hope you do not need an interpreter 'cause we don't have any".

Just as with some political and other HA, audism, and so on issues I tend to let my emotions and empathy and sometimes ire creep in and so, before I say something that will get me banned... I will shut up now.
Click to expand...

U can go ahead and vent your feelings without the fear of being banned cuz we r talking about audism not anyone on AD?

I feel u. I despite audism and any views that contribute to it with a passion.
 
ASLGAL said:
Sad that this issue had deteriorated to the old Oral VS ASL argument.

I detest AGBell, Oral Only Advocation, and anything else that takes away or attempts to take away communication.

The sites posted are nothing more than henchmen for Oral only.

The Better Hearing and Speech Institute/Monthly/Whatever name says it all where they are concerned. They have all these hearing aid companies in their pockets, make sales and then tell people there is something wrong with them if they need hearing aids or hearing aids don't work for them, or people refuse to be drilled into for a CI or....(heaven forbid) choose not to wear HA's at all and use ASL.

This thread has surfaced the anger and disgust I still feel for the deaf woman in denial that a group of people were forced to go hear as she told everyone in the room what they were doing wrong and how they had to act and be in the hearing world and flippantly stating to my husband and I when she saw us signing "Oh, hope you do not need an interpreter 'cause we don't have any".

Just as with some political and other HA, audism, and so on issues I tend to let my emotions and empathy and sometimes ire creep in and so, before I say something that will get me banned... I will shut up now.
Click to expand...

I feel ya' girl!
 
ASLGAL said:
Sad that this issue had deteriorated to the old Oral VS ASL argument.

I detest AGBell, Oral Only Advocation, and anything else that takes away or attempts to take away communication.

The sites posted are nothing more than henchmen for Oral only.

The Better Hearing and Speech Institute/Monthly/Whatever name says it all where they are concerned. They have all these hearing aid companies in their pockets, make sales and then tell people there is something wrong with them if they need hearing aids or hearing aids don't work for them, or people refuse to be drilled into for a CI or....(heaven forbid) choose not to wear HA's at all and use ASL.

This thread has surfaced the anger and disgust I still feel for the deaf woman in denial that a group of people were forced to go hear as she told everyone in the room what they were doing wrong and how they had to act and be in the hearing world and flippantly stating to my husband and I when she saw us signing "Oh, hope you do not need an interpreter 'cause we don't have any".

Just as with some political and other HA, audism, and so on issues I tend to let my emotions and empathy and sometimes ire creep in and so, before I say something that will get me banned... I will shut up now.
Click to expand...

I feel the same way with you. :goodpost: You have a right to vend on how you feel about your experience with audists. Remember they have deaf minds which mean they refuse to listen to our pleas or complaints when we asked for special accommodations and ASL interpreters. Geez! :roll:
 
Back
Top