In 1987 Melody James and Steve Parton's 22-month-old daughter Caitlin almost died. She recovered from her illness -- but suffered a profound hearing loss.
The family's life turned upside down. Suddenly the couple had to raise a deaf child. Among their many challenges was finding the most effective way to help Caitlin communicate with the world.
The League for the Hard of Hearing (now called the Center for Hearing and Communication) helped. They educated the Partons, mentored them -- and identified Caitlin as a candidate for a cutting-edge technology called a cochlear implant.
In that operation, a string of tiny electrodes is placed in the ear. Electrical messages stimulate nerves to the brain -- something the inner ear's damaged hair cells cannot do. Caitlin would be the youngest child to have a cochlear implant. There were no studies to examine, no other families to talk to.
To their surprise, the Partons ran into a buzzsaw of controversy. A segment of the deaf community adamantly opposed cochlear implants for children and teenagers. They called it "brain surgery." They decried it as a technique to "fix" deafness -- a condition hearing people viewed as an illness or pathology. The faction argued that deafness is not a disability or infirmity; rather, they argued, the deaf culture is vibrant. They said that for adults to force an operation on a child was ethically unjustifiable.
But, says James, "We're artists. We believe in books, reading, access to information. We wanted to give that world to her. People who grow up with ASL (American Sign Language) as their primary language read at a third or fourth grade level. Reading poorly limits your opportunities in life."
ASL, James says, is "beautiful. But it doesn't compute to spoken or written English. The syntaxes are different. It's hard to learn both simultaneously."
And, she notes, "it's unrealistic to think that everyone in the world signs. If you rely primarily on signing, you're limited in the number of people you can communicate with."
Some deaf people said that parents who wanted a cochlear implant for a youngster were no different than black parents choosing an operation to make their child white.
James disagrees. A more appropriate analogy, she says, is of people who prohibited black children from learning to read.
(more....)
Woog's World / "The Parton family speaks up" - NewsTimes
The family's life turned upside down. Suddenly the couple had to raise a deaf child. Among their many challenges was finding the most effective way to help Caitlin communicate with the world.
The League for the Hard of Hearing (now called the Center for Hearing and Communication) helped. They educated the Partons, mentored them -- and identified Caitlin as a candidate for a cutting-edge technology called a cochlear implant.
In that operation, a string of tiny electrodes is placed in the ear. Electrical messages stimulate nerves to the brain -- something the inner ear's damaged hair cells cannot do. Caitlin would be the youngest child to have a cochlear implant. There were no studies to examine, no other families to talk to.
To their surprise, the Partons ran into a buzzsaw of controversy. A segment of the deaf community adamantly opposed cochlear implants for children and teenagers. They called it "brain surgery." They decried it as a technique to "fix" deafness -- a condition hearing people viewed as an illness or pathology. The faction argued that deafness is not a disability or infirmity; rather, they argued, the deaf culture is vibrant. They said that for adults to force an operation on a child was ethically unjustifiable.
But, says James, "We're artists. We believe in books, reading, access to information. We wanted to give that world to her. People who grow up with ASL (American Sign Language) as their primary language read at a third or fourth grade level. Reading poorly limits your opportunities in life."
ASL, James says, is "beautiful. But it doesn't compute to spoken or written English. The syntaxes are different. It's hard to learn both simultaneously."
And, she notes, "it's unrealistic to think that everyone in the world signs. If you rely primarily on signing, you're limited in the number of people you can communicate with."
Some deaf people said that parents who wanted a cochlear implant for a youngster were no different than black parents choosing an operation to make their child white.
James disagrees. A more appropriate analogy, she says, is of people who prohibited black children from learning to read.
(more....)
Woog's World / "The Parton family speaks up" - NewsTimes
