Through A.G. Bell’s Eyes : The Birth of Deafhood Movement
I created this vlog.
This is my vision.
This vlog consists of several well-known video clips and powerful images composed together to make a strong point.
Update: I need someone who is able to write up a descriptive text for DeafBlind viewers. Much appreciated.
That vlog is about one specific ideology fervently supported by Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf. This ideology was adopted by thousands, no, millions families of Deaf babies learning to listen and speak, so they can be a “part” of the mainstream society.
Granted, it sounds attractive for parents who never met the Deaf person before.
This AG Bell Association is so powerful, pervasive and influential all over the world. AG Bell Association said all of the “right things” for parents to hear for over 100 years and still as of today.
Many medical advances using digital technology and genetic engineering are developing for a possible ‘cure’ of deafness, and the rise of Auditory-Verbal Therapy is popping up everywhere. At the same time, the popularity of teaching hearing babies to sign comes with wonderful benefits, but many Deaf babies do not!
It is the greatest irony of all! We need to stop this insanity!
Let us work together to give Deaf babies the opportunity to have American Sign Language. Deaf babies deserve getting the maximum language potential that is most accessible - American Sign Language, plus have skills to listen and speak too!
No more divisions/factions within ourselves.
We, the Deaf community, need to speak up for Deaf babies. We, the Deaf community, need to support families of Deaf babies too!
It is not too late, we must act now…
_______________________________
P.S. - Happy Birthday, DeafRead.com! (July 13, 2007)
July 13th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
A beautiful job.. I love it how you presented the video.. You are Deaf children’s hero…
Aidan
July 13th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Amen!
July 13th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
very well done!!. you know I love your viedos and the brilliant ideas you convey. There is one small thing I would change; yellow writing is very difficult to read; Perhaps a light blue, grey something we can still see through but not yellow… Human..
July 13th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
Right on!!! Keep on exposing the greatest irony of ‘em all! ASL for Deaf babies! Parents need to learn that Deaf is only a prejudice of the general mindset that is wrong wrong wrong.
July 13th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
short, powerful, to the point and excellent as always! thank you.
July 13th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
Excellent! BUT… Alexander did NOT invent telephone. HE stole it from Meucci… it is a fact. Once a thief, always a thief. He stole our lives!
Skrew him!
July 13th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Hello, Amy.
Secondly, the captions were too fast for me, can you slow it down by a few seconds? Much appreciated.
I am sure this video is excellent, but I have 2 concerns. The video won’t go out of its small screen settings to a full screen one thus it’s hard for me to squint at the small fonts and signing. Is there any way you can upload this on Youtube for me and other close vision fans of yours?
I’ve always admired your passion and fierce attitude, it resonates what thousands of Deaf people are thinking these days but dare not say or too lazy to do so.
Keep it up… and be legally-blind friendly.
Merci,
Christine
tactiletheworld.wordpress.com
July 13th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Deaf Bilingual Movement NOW!!
I am tired of reading many articles that hearing babies are encouraged to learn ASL but our very own Deaf babies are being denied that. Enough is Enough.
Deaf Bilingual Movement NOW!
July 13th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
These are truly powerful images and videos. But after few thoughts myself (even viewing it one more time), as a deaf person, I understand this video. But I’m not sure if hearing people will understand this.
Very little information about AG Bell. Maybe you could try expand it to explain a little more just like you did with AVT video?
Such as the fact that AG Bell did not invent telphone? Interview with certain ex-oralists who experience anxiety, frustration, etc? And explain little more why oralism without ASL can be harmful? What about the rise of ASL after 70’s?
To give more prespectives that hearing people might understand?
But I love the way you made where an old man in video, programming to brainwash an audience. I can relate to that!
Good job anyway!
July 13th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Nice job!
Enjoyed your works.
July 13th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Hi Amy. I can see your passion here in this very creative clip. I remember the song from Pink Floyd from my hearing days (before age 17). Very powerful song back then too!
Deaf children and adults who do use hearing aids and CI’s are still loved. I want to make sure that message gets through.
~ LaRonda
July 13th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Amy,
I really admire you and your efforts to bring the Deaf Community together!
Deaf Babies need American Sign Language too besides hearing Babies will be the main theme for the Protest at AG Bell AVT conference on July 27 and 28 at Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Va.
John F. Egbert
July 13th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Very nice Job! Film is giving understanding the point out.
It would be nice that all Deaf Teachers in USA to take over the rules and laws over crap hearing teachers …… why because hearing teachers have never been deaf themself as not know what talking about.
Deaf Teachers have been born that way and know more understanding what we need to teach our deaf children for better in the world. Come on let Deaf Teachers move over the top the ladder over crap hearing teachers.
Davy
July 13th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
SCREAMING FOR JOY!! I LOVE LOVE THIS VIDEO!! Amy, you are beyond fabulous!!! (Wish I had your video skills!!!)
YES- I think it’s important that a new meme like this be sent out. Screw details, information- etc. I think it’s important to FEEL. Yes, to FEEL. I’ve felt my parents’ pain for being abused by Oralism, and they cannot convey into clear ASL or English (my mom is better at that, tho…) the damage that was done to them. Enough is enough!
Onwards, Deaf human rights! We will not rest!!!!
(Am so happy we are finally focusing on the ROOT of the problem- the ideology sprouted by the agBAD- instead of fighting each other, remmy Deaf against Deaf, eh?)
This is only the beginning; countless future Deaf babies will be saved! And in turn, the Deaf community will be saved and we will finally have our RENAISSANCE!! (Maybe it’s already here, thanks to wonderful people like you, Amy, plus Paddy Ladd, Joey Baer, Ella Mae Lentz, Genie Gertz, John Egbert, Aidan Mack, Barb DiGi, Oscar the Observer, etc. etc., and Deafread!)
DE
July 13th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
“We should try ourselves to forget that they are hearing. We should try to teach them to forget that they are hearing”
Edward Nugent (2007)
July 13th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
As always, good work. Love the clips, especially Pink Floyd. Please do think about doing a vlog on AVT’s level of parental support (monetary and…) versus how we can support ASL’s parental support.
SkyBlue
July 13th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Nicely done! It was inspirational to watch and I am guilty of watching it more than once. May this lead to somewhere to ensure that deaf babies deserve the same opportunity as hearing babies when it comes to learning ASL.
July 13th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Wow, that’s awesome videotape. I get excited to see your video messages. Way to go, girl!
July 13th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Great vlog, Amy! I hope you will do more vlogs under the title of “Alexander Graham Bell”. The name per se would, for definite, catch the eye of hearing parents who do the research on AGB on the Internet. Viewers would motice the highly motivated deaf children with teachers using ASL. It is parents we
need to educate because AGB misinforms them.
July 13th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Jean Boutcher:
That’s brilliant about doing more of that so anything deaf people discuss in relation to AGB will show up in the google search by the parents.
July 13th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Great Video! A must see. Click below.
http://www.d-pan.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=36&Itemid=45
July 13th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
It is very strength rhetoric!!! I love it, it is very simple good enough to show very powerful messenge! Ayn Rand’s quote: “Man is a being with free will; therefore, each man is potentially good or evil, and it’s up to him and only him (through his reasoning mind) to decide whcih he wants to be.”
July 14th, 2007 at 1:35 am
super!
July 14th, 2007 at 1:44 am
Alexander Graham Bell, the Deaf eugenist, who promoted extermination of non-speaking deaf people.
Why was he targeting only Deaf people who signs. He did not suggest the extermination of other races.
Why are people are promoting this criminal? Bell stole the patent of the telephone invention and wants to purge the Deaf race. Those are the modus operandi of a criminal minded person.
July 14th, 2007 at 1:48 am
Beautiful! Amy does it again!
July 14th, 2007 at 2:21 am
Amy. You. Are. AWESOME.
Loved how you incorporated “The Wall” - probably only music DvD I’d consider buying.
July 14th, 2007 at 3:07 am
Superb!
July 14th, 2007 at 4:41 am
Way to go!!!! Hands in the air!!! Nice editing you did there…
July 14th, 2007 at 5:48 am
Amy,
Beautiful job that you’ve done!
*hands in air*
July 14th, 2007 at 7:57 am
A fabulous VISUAL (not sound) bite! Amy, as always, a wonderful job provoking the thoughts and hearts to connect on the Deaf children’s behalf!!!
July 14th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Awesome visual mission video clip! Right on with the Deaf Bilingual Movement NOW!!
Tired of waiting too long with the ASL taken away from the Deaf babies bilinqual rights! Amy, you go girl for inspiring us all!!! Shawn
July 14th, 2007 at 9:25 am
For Amy *hands waving* Hugs! Diane
July 14th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Amy
Do you have children? What do you teach them?
July 14th, 2007 at 10:40 am
John F. Egbert writes to Amy: “Deaf Babies need American Sign Language too besides hearing Babies will be the main theme for the Protest at AG Bell AVT conference on July 27 and 28 at Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Va.”
—————
I like your agenda. I want the public to see a poster sign (vid. infra):
“Why encourage hearing babies to learn ASL?
“Why discourage deaf babies to learn ASL?”
July 14th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Hey Amy!
I know, I know, I know…..
This is America. We have the freedom. Don’t let AG Bell control all of us!
We beat AG Bell’s energtic (spell?) because we disobeyed AG Bell’s laws. There are so many deaf families around the World and they are thriving.
AG Bell organization is a biggest losing! What a losing organization…..
There you go, girl, as always…..
White Ghost
July 14th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Amy…
As usual, you always do great videos/vlogs!
My favorite is still “The Greatest Irony” videos!!!
xo
July 14th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Amy,
Excellent and true! thumb ups!
July 14th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
[…] http://blog.deafread.com/abcohende/2007/07/13/through-ag-bells-eyes-the-birth-of-deafhood-movement/ […]
July 14th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Hi Amy,
I watched your Vlog and loved it! You really are the voice of reason. For anyone who doesn’t know I just want to be a voice of a hearing person and say I did understand Amy’s message and agree with it in my whole heart. My son’s communication has been so successful I believe because of ASL and because that just felt more natural in my heart for him to communicate visually. He learned speech also and does use that more than ASL now because he is around hearing family members so much. However, the ASL was very important for him as a child and will continue to be for him to grow and connect with the many wonderful deaf people he will meet and know in his lifetime.
Great work Amy
Angie
July 15th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
I have to enclose factual corrections about the so-called AGB’s invention theft from Meucci and AGB’s oppostion to the use of sign language.
After reading numerous credible sources from Canada and America on AGB on the so-called theft of invention credit from Meucci and his so-called opposition to the existence of deaf people and their use of sign language.
People love to demonize AGB on many fronts without knowing the real story behind AGB’s invention claims and opposition to the use of sign language among deaf people.
Meucci somewhat developed the first successful phone device, but dismissed other peoples’ urges to claim the patent on his phone invention. Meucci don’t have any $$$ to pay for the patent filing. AGB improvised the audio connector and successfully implented the so-called first public demonstration of voice conversation from room to another room. AGB repeatedly empahsized that he rather be remembered as the educator of the deaf, not an inventor of the phone in his own words. AGB’s father in law was the one bought the Bell phone company shares and made AGB multi-millionaire.
AGB and other people did experiment and attempted to develop the sound-connecting device within Meucci’s period. AGB got the first taste of so-called possibility of developing the sound-wave device during his youth years in Europe.
AGB personally NEVER opposed the use of sign language among deaf people. Bell was a fluent signer himself as many deaf people usually enjoyed having sign conversation with him than EMG. EMG was a CODA himself. Many deaf Gallaudet students wrote in their own diaries retelling how much they preferred to have conversation with Bell than EMG.
AGB’s postiton on sign language were distorted by his AGBAD supporters years later and reinforced the myths about AGB himself wanted to abolish the use of sign language.
Yes, AGB vigorously called for the speech therapy in deaf educational facilities within his personal beliefs that deaf people ought to mingle with the rest of society at large, not being clannish with their own deaf fellows at all the time. No questions about AGB’s so-called paternalistic tendencies toward deaf people on the issue of sign language in deaf classrooms and herditiary deafness.
AGB hid his research studies on the so-called herditaty deafness from Martha’s Vineyard which definitely debunked his well-known claims about the high percentages of deaf people’d breeding of more deaf children. AGB was no saint himself anyway like hiding his research studies on herdiatary deafness.
AGB often claimed that his intentions were often misunderstood as what he said about his published findings were often out of contexts and demanded for the press retributions (corrections), etc.
We ought to spend considerable time to find out more about AGB’s real postitons on the use of sign language among deaf people.
Robert L. Mason (RLM)
July 15th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
rlm - u r right there r alot of myths about AG Bell
some facts are:
1. he did not use ASL with his deaf oral mother and hearing father
2. he did not use ASL with his deaf oral wife, mabel hubbard
3. he did use ASL with some Deaf ASL users (gave an graduation address at Gallaudet i believe and his sign skills r mentioned in albert ballin’s Deaf Mute Howl
4. most damaging of AG Bell’s work:
- using his wealth to establish the Volta Bureau and promote an oral / aural ONLY education in the U.S.
5. his memories on the formation of a Deaf variety of the human race and his paper on marriages of the Deaf Mute both strongly advocated that Deaf people not marry each other
he discussed repressive means - legislation to stop Deaf marriages but thought better of it for fear it would promote illegimate children if Deaf folks met and mated without marriage due to the prohbibition
preventative means -
-establish day oral schools - so deaf folks cant socialize outside of the classroom
-disban deaf residential ASL schools
-fire Deaf teachers because they promote ASL and can not suitably teach articulation
-end Deaf publications and Deaf conferences
he was using Social Darwinism for social engineering purposes - abolish physical spaces and gathering opportunities to STOP the spread, growth, endorsement of Deaf culture, ASL, and more Deaf children
he was also the leader of a Eugenics association that did advocate for sterilization but i havent seen any direct proof that Bell himself wanted to use surgery to stop Deaf offsprings from being born
so his skill in ASL earned him the name of a “wolf in sheeps clothing” by many Deaf leaders as he came in the guise of a friend but actually tried to cause their demise as a PEOPLE, as a Language and also to the point of controlling their happiness and right to choose a life partner
barb digi has a great vlog and text post researching the current AGBell associations position on ASL
peace
patti durr
July 15th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Thank you, Amy!
You rock my boat today!
R-
July 15th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
[…] http://blog.deafread.com/abcohende/2007/07/13/through-ag-bells-eyes-the-birth-of-deafhood-movement/ […]
July 16th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Wave my hands (alot) and stand up!!!!!!
I love your video! what did you is still a powerful message to everyone!
Keeping up!
Smile,
PMRjr from Tennessee
July 16th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
How long do we have to wait for hearing people to wake up?
How do we stop them believing in strict oral education?
How many more oral deaf children are destroyed?
Read this Child Psychiatrist’s view at:
http://epeachynews.org/pds/aslresearch.pdf
Thanks for doing this Vlog! What would we do without you and Deafread?
Former Oral Student!
July 16th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
[…] <http://blog.deafread.com/abcohende/2007/07/13/through-ag-bells-eyes-the-birth-of-deafhood-moveme… […]
July 16th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Many thanks, Patricia Durr for pointing out AGB’s fallacy on his usage of ASL. How true!
Y are definitely right about AGB being the wolf in sheep’s clothing. That’s what IKJ have been for past 18 years along with his Gallaudet professorship.
Thanks again for your clarification on AGB’s ASL uses and his pretentious efforts to dissaude deaf people and supporters of manuual communication from ganging up on AGB.
Sadly, the Volta Bureau currently stands right in front of the Georgetown Preparatory School where many influential and powerful individuals send their children to that school.
I meant to conduct interiews and random pollings among the Georgetown Preparatory School students and faculty members what they really think of the Volta Bureau presence. What are their societial attitudes toward deaf people, etc?
I would be not really surprised about many students from the Georgetown Preparatory School and Georgetown University endlessly volunteer at the Volta Bureau. Who knows?
Robert L. Mason (RLM)
July 16th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Amy,
We should file a class action suit against AGBAD for causing so much grief among oral deaf children and their families, e.g. communication breakdown, isolation, loss of self-identity or maybe confusion, struggle in fitting in the hearing world and being deprived of ASL and undergoing many many countless hours of speech therapy, lipreading and AVT, giving false hopes to many parents and then they feel despair when their children finally learn ASL and stop talking.
This is a good vlog you made.
July 16th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Yes I agree with Amy. That hurt me and my second son, too. But now we are doing fine. Thanks for the movie.
July 17th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Amy,
See this link about children of Holocaust survivors filing a class action suit against Germany.
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/holocaust-families-sue-germany/20070717093009990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001
Something to ponder about this if we could do the same thing??
July 18th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
How so visual you have made on the birth of Deafhood movement! I ask what the first step may be to ensure Deaf babies deserve all the valuable resources needed. We should make this a priority to see the necessary wrap-around services and support available plus training to raise awareness for all involved with Deaf babies. Because before our eyes their developmental milestones are passing day by day, we need to generate help and healing for parents and educators, deaf and hearing alike. We would gain access to valuable resources to help parents and educators raise a Deaf child, even may put conviction in their hearts while evaluating areas they may have been off base. We can bond with situations that echo our own. We share thoughts, comments, feelings and actions especially for hearing parents who go through as they struggle to find the right answers to the countless questions they come up with raising a Deaf child.
Thanks for putting in time to open our eyes. Do include me on ur future subscriptions so I can be as ahead as the rest of you! ; ) Speaking of subscription, are any of you subscribers to the magazine, The National Geographic Society? One of its founders was AG Bell! Scientists who were interested in organizing a society for the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge came to this development. Gardiner Greene Hubbard became its first president and his son-in-law was AG Bell who eventually succeeded him. Bell’s son-in-law Gilbert Grosvenor was the first editor of National Geographic Magazine, and served for 55 years. Bell and his son-in-law, Grosvenor had the first major use of photographs to tell stories in magazines. Thanks for a great deed on this part, but to see how this man could ever have such thought of refining a human population by breed controlling to discourage hereditary deafness. I want to thank the commenter #50 as you struck me just how the Nazi envisioned. Imagine Bell of all people being an eugenicist (sp?) who also got to be known as the father of the deaf! With both his mother and wife Deaf, how could Bell want to rise a systematic extermination of us Deaf folks?!?
Again, thanks for making me feel like more energy be put towards building cooperation or even a coalition to have ASL exposed to every baby cooing in one’s arms!