Being Deaf Research Paper

Sound and Fury centers two families who faced a challenging decision on whether to get a cochlear implant for their deaf child. Peter and his wife Nina are both deaf and gave birth to three deaf children. Neither Peter’s brother Chris nor wife Mari are deaf but one of their twin boys was born deaf. Peter and Nina are proud of being part of the Deaf community therefore they’re not as open to the idea of cochlear implants. On the contrary Mari and Chris, although having deaf in their families, are not involved in the Deaf culture and have a more positive outlook on cochlear implants.

Sara Nović’s novel True Biz is, at its core, a depiction of the struggle between the Deaf community and its hearing counterpart. Much of the book is spent describing how hearing people who fail to understand the Deaf community have mainstreamed their deaf children through the use of ASL deprivation and the use of cochlear implants. Nović feels pride about the Deaf community and wants to teach us about it so that we in the hearing world can better help to prevent its destruction. Unfortunately, in doing this, Nović has painted a one-sided picture regarding the use of cochlear implants by failing to include examples of successful ones, her depiction of Austin's family struggle around the issue, and most importantly, by glorifying the destruction of the bionics lab.

On October 25th in the year 2000, a film was release that tackled the difficult topic, that at the time, broke family ties and rattled an entire culture from a single procedure. In Josh Aronson’s film, “Sound and Fury”, the topic of cochlear implants was fought about between an extended family, who both had Deaf children. The families thought very differently about the cochlear implant procedure and this lead to many arguments and even splitting of the families for some time. The cochlear implant procedure threatens Deaf culture and was considered very offensive to the Deaf community. Throughout the documentary, these topics were debated back and forth, about whether the benefits outweighed the risks.

Deaf children with Deaf parents usually develop a strong sense of self and know who they are. While many Deaf children with hearing parents grow up and have resentment for their parents and professionals. They usually they feel as if they weren’t exposed into the deaf world enough. Both parents face considerable challenges in raising their children. They face their children being “educated below their capacity, employed below their capability and viewed negatively in the hearing world because they are deaf” (28).

One might argue that Heather was nearly ten years old when she first received her implant, and she managed to learn how to listen and talk, which is true. However, she received very intense training and help from her hearing grandparents, also she had proven herself to be very intelligent and hard-working, and finally Heather was simply lucky. Some deaf adults who grew up without hearing any sounds might make the choice to receive the implant and then they reported that they were not able to understand the sounds or struggles with decoding speech, and the Deaf community would often refer to these bad experiences as evidence to fight against the cochlear implants. Yet they do not mention the fact that those adults with the bad experiences were too old to learn how to speak or listen, especially without prior experiences to sounds, and their brains were no longer in the learning stages as an infant first born and aware of the world around him or her. Also, getting an implant does not prevent a child from learning ASL as well, they may not be welcome in the Deaf community, but there are more programs available for him or her to meet other oral, deaf children who may also know ASL and rejected from the community.

He has surrounded himself with many friends who are deaf and hearing and love the

“Even the free exercise of religion,” according to Zimmerman, “may be limited if practices associated with that free exercise would cause significant harm to the child” (311). This quote shows an effective way to broaden the audience’s horizons, in order to convince them that in every way, the court is wanting to protect the child’s best interest. Zimmerman also uses an argument of procedure in order to convince the parents of children that are Deaf to give their children cochlear implants: “Because cochlear implants are still a relatively new technology there is, as of yet, no good measure of the unemployment rate among cochlear implant recipients; however, due to the increased communications skills gained via cochlear implants, it is reasonable to expect that the unemployment rate of cochlear implant recipients is lower than that of the larger deaf population” (Zimmerman 319-320). With the use of the unemployment rate, which is a recurring problem throughout the American population, Zimmerman could convince the audience to want their children to have cochlear

This case study suggests when the child gains their self-confidence, the other children are more likely to accept them. Therefore, if the patient is comfortable with the implant and is not self-conscious about it, then the other children will not be as bothered by it. The deaf culture is a set of social beliefs, values, history, behaviors, and shared institutions of communities that are influenced by deafness. The main use of communication for the deaf is American Sign Language. The deaf culture is against cochlear implants because they believe that if every deaf person gets a cochlear implant then their culture as a whole will be gone.

For a Deaf Son is a documentary about Thomas Thranchin, who was born deaf to hearing family. His father, a filmmaker, produced this documentary to offer an intimate look at how parents of a deaf child make decisions. The documentary is compiled together with interviews from audiologist, families of children with hearing loss, other expert in the field, as well as home videos of Thomas. Thomas was discovered to be profoundly deaf at the age of one and could only hear high frequency sound. This meant that with hearing aids on him, he could acquire speech and language with therapy.

Everybody faces challenges and uncertainties and a daily basis. Fortunately, for hearing people their troubles can be trivial. For those who are in the Deaf and hard of hearing culture, however, challenges and uncertainties are not relatively trivial. Over the past several years, the Deaf community has been enterprising for culture awareness. Historically, the media have played an important role in the portrayal of deaf individuals.

Cochlear implants, their benefits and drawbacks are certainly a hot topic between the deaf community and the hearing world. The decision to undergo this procedure should be done with education and information regarding all benefits and implications form all sides. The two communities need to stop worrying about their personal positions on the topic and consider the effect their negative or positive behaviors is having on those who are making the life changing decision to go through with the procedure or not. The fact of the matter is that no matter what side supporters take, it is going to affect others and it is up to both sides of the argument to at least be informed and

But yet again if the deaf community wasn’t going through this hard ship maybe today we wouldn’t have a deaf culture these events have been very important in the way that they have shaped deaf community’s beliefs.it is sad that small children were taken away from their families and society and had to be isolated in the past just because we couldn’t really understand deafness in the way we do today which we still have long way to go. But I think also the history between hearing and deaf people has been a learning experience for both sides and we are learning about each other which has shaped both sides mentality on the

They believe that once your born deaf you should stay deaf because that’s the way it should be. Getting a cochlear implant doesn’t detracted from being a part of the deaf culture when the person is taught his or her original culture. Hearing people think that not giving the implant to their child is child abuse. It is not child abuse it’s a personal choices, if the deaf community were not supposed to be deaf deafness would be nonexistent. There are two sides to that don’t understand one another’s reasoning for cochlear implants.

Deafness. The term is used to describe people who are unable to hear. Deafness is a social and cultural phenomenon that exists in every country and culture in the world, and has existed for a long time. People in the deaf communities all share a common perception; thus, creating a distinctive cultural, linguistic, and social community. Their language is the main feature of deaf culture that separates and distinguishes them from hearing people all throughout history.

In like manner, A third study was done by Donoghue, and Gerard M. (pg. 466) the study was conducted on children who were born deaf or who lost their hearing in the first 3 years of life. Only children who were aged less than 7 years at the time of implantation were entered in the study. All 40 children met the study criteria and were followed for 5 years. Each child