Journal: 3-9

Change Your Mind


     While doing research on the topic of my question last week, I came across an assortment of many opinions about going from being deaf to hearing. Something I found interesting was the amount of deaf people's opinions and how they felt so strongly about the subject matter. Most of them felt angry towards the notion of going from being deaf to hearing and said that deaf people function just fine without the helps of being able to hear. They feel as though getting an implant to change being deaf is wrong and makes being deaf seem like a handicap. I also found many opinions about how hearing people thought that deaf people were being ignorant in this matter and that being able to hear would open up a variety of opportunities to those who take advantage of it.

     This past week in ethics class we finished watching the documentary about the two families affected by the defect of being deaf. It was very interesting to see how the view of the hearing family was so different from that of the family that was already deaf. The hearing family got the implant for their son to be able to hear and they said it was a great decision while the family who was deaf decided not to implant their children for fear that they would lose their deaf culture. We also watched a mini follow up documentary about how the families had be doing years after filming. As it turns out, the deaf family makes the decision to implant their children and they receive amazing results. Even the mother decided to get an implant as well.

     In my opinion I think this was a great idea. I feel like they were being very close minded and ignorant in the first documentary all because they wanted to keep their children apart of the deaf culture that they were accustomed to. I'm glad that they exploredd their options and found out what hearing can truly do to benefit a person who has been lacking the ability to hear. Now that they have done this, their children won't go through as many hardships as they did when they were younger.

     I did some research on the amount of people being implanted now. I found out the number of people being implanted is growing steadily over time. Also, I found that the people being implanted the most were under the age of six because it would benefit them the most to get the implant during their early childhood developement. It makes you wonder whether deaf people will cease to exist in the future due to the steady rise of people receiving implants.



I end today with a question: what is the statistics on blind people receiving surgery to see?

"The Deaf Community's View." Welcome to the Cochlear War Homepage. Web. 03 Apr. 2011. <http://www.cochlearwar.com/forum/deaf_view.html>.

"New Cochlear Implants in 2001 [NIDCD Health Information]." National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders [NIDCD]. Web. 03 Apr. 2011. <http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/implants.htm>.

"TerpTopics: HEARING AIDS & ALDs: Introduction to ASL and SignLanguage Interpreting." TerpTopics: WELCOME - Introduction to ASL and Sign Language Interpreting. Web. 03 Apr. 2011. <http://www.terptopics.com/HearingAids.htm>.