A Chance Encounter with Dr. Robert Davila

My first time meeting Dr. Robert Davila just happened by chance. My girlfriend and I were just getting ready to get out of the car when I saw Dr. Davila get out of a car across from us. I introduced myself along with Mary-Beth and we started telling a little bit about ourselves from the deaf perspective. Mary-Beth told of how she attended RIT when Dr. Davila presided over NTID and I explained that us both were cuers, even though we were conversing in sign language. We continued the small chit-chat into the hotel ballroom where Dr. Davila would be giving his speech to a group of mothers as part of the Illinois Hands and Voices’ Moms Inn Night.

Before that day I had all these ideas of what Dr. Davila would be like, yet I knew that I had never met the man before so therefore I couldn’t make any assumptions about him. I’ve watched Dr. Davila on Gallaudet TV when I stayed overnight with a friend in March last year, but I didn’t know the story behind the ninth president of Gallaudet University. Through his hour-long speech I would learn so much more about the man, and come to admire the man in a way I never expected to.

Throughout his speech Dr. Davila highlighted personal anecdotes from his life, such as how he wanted to get a PhD just for the bragging rights and the opposition he faced in his nomination to be the assistant secretary in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. There were plenty of instances where the audience found themselves laughing and smiling as Dr. Davila told of his journey from the California School of the Deaf in Berkeley to his return to Gallaudet University as its ninth president. Signing and speaking at the same time of his life experiences Dr. Davila reached out to the group of mothers, who all chose different approaches for their deaf/hoh children.

Dr. Davila took me by surprise when he brought up Cued Speech and the fact that he supervised a Cued Speech elementary school program in New York. He extolled those children’s success and asked the question “Why are those kids so successful? What was the common denominator in those kids?” He then explained that the reason why those kids did so well in school was due to the fact that the program placed so much emphasis on communication in the family. He then expanded the importance of communication to all modalities, stating the need for children to connect with their parents and family.

Gallaudet University, according to Dr. Davila, has a new challenge today in recruiting deaf students. As a result of the federal mandate that all universities must provide full access to people with disabilities, more deaf students are inclined to attend other universities such as MIT. Dr. Davila confesses the recent protests hurt Gallaudet’s image, regardless of whether that negativity was invented by some reporters. Despite this recent turbulent period, America needs Gallaudet because of the great contributions the university has made to education. At this point Dr. Davila expressed his happiness in his unexpected return to Gallaudet, coming out of retirement to serve Gallaudet at a time when quality leadership was needed.

When the floor was opened to questions, one person asked what the difference was between NTID and Gallaudet in terms of the communities at each school. Dr. Davila explained that to understand that, one has to go back to when Gallaudet was pretty much the only option that most deaf people had in terms of undergraduate education. Now each school focuses on different fields of studies, NTID involving more math and sciences while Gallaudet centers around liberal arts studies. Another point to make was that the majority of students accepted to both schools come from mainstream education. Highlighting the variety of experiences Dr. Davila stated that the deaf community is a small community, but that we are becoming more tolerant of each other. According to Dr. Davila, intolerance might have played a role in the recent protests at Gallaudet, which is something that is improving as he presides over Gallaudet.

In the end Dr. Davila left a lasting positive impression on me. I found myself connecting with him on a personal level, identifying with much of what he had to share. Now I can see why he was picked out of all the others to bring Gallaudet out of the fray and reaffirm its status as the only liberal arts university in the world for the deaf and hard of hearing. Dr. Davila truly comes across as a force of unity and not a divider, a quality that is so important at this time and age of deafness.

The Deaf Crusades: Sign Language versus Oral Education - when will it ever end?

It looks like Blue Eye’s first blog left a bitter taste in Paula Rosenthal’s mouth, bitter enough for her to respond in a blog of her own. In his first blog on DeafRead Blue Eyes felt the urge to highlight his purpose of blogging, which was to “stop the deprivation of education and language for deaf children in school.” This statement seemed to rustle Paula’s feathers as she apparently placed Blue Eyes into the group of deaf adults who are “crusading ostensibly for deaf children” to learn American Sign Language as their natural language.

Paula copied her comment to Blue Eye’s blog into her own, explaining how deaf education back then is “vastly different” from now. She wrote about how each parent has the right to make their own choices and if those choices don’t seem to work out, change their approach. She admits that deaf adults “who grew up without any access to any early language of any kind (oral or sign)” has the right to be bitter about their experience. Paula makes a good point about how parents and professionals just didn’t know better at the time and this applies to both sides, oral or sign.

Before now neither the oral or sign camps could stake an outright claim to the title of having the best educational methods, after all the average reading levels of deaf adults still hovered between Third and Fourth grade levels. This low level of literacy motivated Dr. Cornett to develop Cued Speech. People still cite the low level of literacy as being true to this day, but it’s ambiguous at this point due to the advent of cochlear implants and advancements made in the field of deaf education in recent decades. We have oral adults wishing they learned sign language as a child, while on the other hand we have deaf signers who wished they had better speech intelligibility and the ability to hear better. Another issue is how we define success when it comes to deaf adults - literacy, communication, socialization?

Blue Eyes stated that there are “many many sad stories about [what] many deaf went through during school years.” I could say the opposite and say there are many positive stories about what deaf people went during through their school years. Yet, this seems to be the typical story everywhere, no matter what the cause. We have a global warming crisis, while we have a war going on over in Iraq. If one is to examine the media today, one could postulate that more negative stories are reported than positive. Does this mean that the negative stories outnumber the positive stories? Not necessarily.

I see many great benefits that both oral and “visual” education has to offer in terms of language development and literacy. Yet, as Paula stated it’s an issue of what the parents choose to do and their level of involvement in their deaf children’s development. We can’t force the parents to learn sign language or Cued Speech, nor can we force them to follow the oral approach. We just have to inform them and let them make their own decisions, and follow up on those decisions with the best therapy and support we can provide for their children.

Due to the extensive violence and pillaging the Holy Crusades brought about across Europe, resentment against Christianity increased amongst the Muslims, Jews, and other religions. Could the "Signing Crusades" be doing the same for oralists, or is that already taking place?

Is there even really a "signing crusade" to begin with?

Ref for the Deaf - A Potential Flaw in the concept?

Upon reading news announcing the concept of Ref for the Deaf, a bracelet-type signal system, I thought about how people would feel wearing those wrist-bracelets and whether it's heavy or light. Then I realized something. Would it be against the regulations to wear such a device on your arm?

As I've played various sports growing up, I'm aware of the rules when it comes to wearing accessories on the body. I even got in trouble with an overzealous ref at the beginning of a YMCA league basketball game. He told me to get off the court since I couldn't prove that my cochlear implant was a necessary device at the time. This was back in the dark ages where I had to wear that god-awful bra-like strap that held my big processor in place on my chest or back with the long cord running out of my shirt to the transmitter. We eventually got paperwork from the doctor stating it was ok to play basketball with that piece of defecation. I think it had something to do with the CI being considered a prosthetic device and not an accessory.

It would be a while before I got past that incident with that particular ref. None of the parents liked him anyways because he was an old grump who had nothing better to do than call fouls for the lightest contact and admonish the coaches for slightly stepping over their boundaries. Refs suck anyways since they're blind and can't make the right calls (except for when it goes my way). Just kidding. :-)

I wonder what refs today would do if they realized one of the players had to wear this device on their wrist. I don't see so much of an issue with light/no-contact sports such as tennis, but I can see how it could be a risk in basketball where there's a lot of defensive positioning and hands flying everywhere. Just imagine that bracelet catching someone's face and tearing some skin.

Granted I don't even know how the device will be designed, but just the idea of a player wearing a wrist bracelet has the potential to make some refs cringe about the risk of injury. Perhaps further research and development can be done on different placements, such as around the waist or on the sock or shoes.

In the end I think the Ref for the Deaf is a great idea and practical. We just need to be aware of the possible implications that it might bring into the game. After all there are plenty of overzealous human refs out there that are eager to break the hearts of vibrant and eager kids just because they have to stick to regulation.

“I’m deaf” – “I’m sorry.” Jeez, what are you sorry about?

Since the first year of college at North Carolina State, I’ve met people who would ask me where I’m from. Most of the time I would play the guessing game, asking those people “Where do you think I’m from?” I’ve heard some pretty wild guesses as to where my origin is, the wildest being Vietnam. Do I look like I’m from Vietnam? I don’t think so. After hearing their guesses I would tell them the truth and explain that I was born profoundly deaf and that I have a cochlear implant. For the most part people would express surprise, saying things such as “Woah you can’t be deaf,” “I don’t believe you, you’re (expletive) me” or “That’s cool dude!” Go figure, its college.

There are the small minority of people who would respond in such a way that would piss me off or annoy me at the least. Those people typically would make comments such as “Oh I’m sorry! I didn’t know!” One recent experience made me realize how some people can be ignorant. This time I was at work and someone asked me where I was from. I responded simply by stating that I was born deaf and explained how I had this “accent.” This person responded in a way that really irked me. I’m not good at remembering what people say verbatim, but the essence of what she said basically goes like this. “Oh I’m so sorry. Congratulations. You’re doing well.”

Daggone. Do you have to be so condescending? This was the latest incident of coming across someone who was just so ignorant about people with hearing loss. Even though I felt a certain sense of annoyance I kept my cool and just nodded when this person made those comments. The interesting thing is that she seems to be the only one who will act differently around me while everyone else treats me normally. All my co-workers and I will share funny jokes and carry on as typical hearing people do. Sometimes I will have to ask them to repeat what they said since it can be quite the loud atmosphere or I wasn’t paying enough attention, but for the most part I understand them all just fine. When I ask her a question about something she just looks at me as if I've got some kind of mental disability and she responds in a way that would make the average person feel diminished.

Perhaps ignorance is the factor in those types of interactions where people just seem to think they have to say “I’m sorry.” I’m sure there are plenty of deaf and hard of hearing adults who have experienced those apologetic reactions. Yet there may be other reasons why they say they’re sorry. For example, they may feel awkward when they learn I have a “disability” and didn’t want to make me feel bad. That seems to be a common reaction for me. Other times people may look back on their previous experience with deaf people and think “oh, he must be special therefore I should apologize.” This type of reaction is the most annoying of all. So daggone annoying I just wanna slap them silly when they do that.

In the end it all seems to be about pity and how people view deafness as a disability that limits one’s quality of life. This could not be any further from the truth. Deafness is something that is a fact of life and many people have embraced theirs, accepting it as part of their own identity. Some even use it as an advantage (especially me when it comes to arguing with my own mum, no matter how unfair that might be). Who knows, maybe those same people will end up having some type of hearing loss themselves?

Don’t give me your pity. I don’t want it. I don’t need it. Keep it for yourself. I’ve never had room for any kind of pity in my life. I'm happy with the way I am.

Why I won't teach my children ASL (or rather can't)

-- Edit -- In hindsight perhaps the title should read "Why I can't teach my children ASL" instead of "won't" ---

Recently I found myself engaged in a tepid discussion with my girlfriend on how we would raise our children to communicate with us, whether they are deaf or hearing. We both agreed on one point. We would teach them how to cue so we would be able to communicate if neither of us had our CIs on or we found ourselves in noisy environments. After all we are both native deaf cuers.

The sticky point that we came across was the issue of whether we’d teach our kids sign language. At this point I hadn’t differentiated between ASL and the manually coded English systems such as SEE1 and SEE2 since she argued that the majority of the people she came across did not use a pure form of ASL, but more of a mixed use of both. As an alumnus of RIT, she has the experience that I don’t in knowing sign language. Yet she confesses that she’s not fluent in ASL so much as she is in Signed Exact English. Because all her friends did not use ASL fluently (even though they may have believed they did) she ended up learning more of a pidgin form of sign language.

At this point I told my girlfriend I wouldn’t teach our kids how to communicate in American Sign Language or any of the MCE systems. Why not? Well frankly I am not the right person to teach them anyways. Neither is she. However I have no problems with them taking ASL classes as they get older. I want to give them that choice with the understanding that they will be exposed to other people who do communicate through sign language and it will be advantageous for them if they are fluent in both Cued Speech and ASL.

If they end up being exposed to ASL through peers, that’s even better. At least they have that experience and can draw from it. Sure I’ll teach them the basics such as the ABC’s and certain words like “no,” “yes,” and colors. I don’t think I’ll be teaching them how to sign “sh*t” or “f*ck.” I learned that from hearing kids anyways, so the longer they don’t know it, the better.

However I will not be able to give them that full experience that would be required for a child to be fluent in ASL. I am not a true ASL model. Instead I am a Cued Speech model. Because I am fluent in Cued Speech, my children will be exposed to a cued/spoken language environment in which they can absorb language both auditorally and visually. Actually let me go back to that statement I made about teaching our children to cue. We won’t teach them so much as they will absorb our cueing. Just as hearing children learn how to speak from their parents, our children will learn how to cue from us.

I have no issues with those parents who are fluent in ASL or any other MCE and want to communicate to their children in other ways besides Cued Speech. That’s their choice and I completely respect that. However I know what my choice will be, and I certainly hope everyone will respect that too.

I’m sure some people may want to leave comments about the need for my deaf children (if I have any) to be part of the “Deaf culture,” however that is an entirely another subject for discussion at another time. The issue at heart is how I will communicate with my own children and for me that’s through Cued Speech.