What I find interesting is when I think back on the speech therapy lessons I used to get, and when I listen to other peoples’ stories with speech therapy. It becomes clear to me that hearing people consider verbal speech of such high importance that they fail to consider a cost to benefit ratio for each child in speech therapy. Much of the time, either the speech therapy is applied so intensively that the child’s other education is short changed. Or else it is applied even when the deaf child does not need it or cannot use it.
As an example, I would say I did not need speech therapy much past third grade or so. Yet, they kept me in such classes until high school and then only because I refused to take any more and my parents were willing to back me up. Other examples include deaf children with no residual hearing who undergo hours of speech therapy which is essentially a waste of time.
I question the single minded focus on teaching children to do something they can’t use or don’t need, simply because they are deaf and mainstreamed.
I can make a similar case for lipreading. I simply do not comprehend why lipreading is considered of such importance. At best, without my hearing aids, without being able to hear a voice at all, I will catch maybe 30-40% of what is being said, and that is if I know the person pretty well, the person speaks pretty clearly, I have a good idea of the subject matter and it doesn’t change around, and there are no other people in the conversation.
That’s pretty damn limited. And yet, given the amount of sheer freaking time I spent on it, there’s very little return on it. Most people actually make use of lipreading (and body language, really) with little to no “training”, as witness the classic example of someone being able to understand a play or theater from a distant seat better with a pair of binoculars than without.
But, these abilities are considered so important by the hearing world, that they will waste enormous amounts of time on these tricks with deaf children. Wouldn’t the time be better spent making sure the quality of education was on par with hearing students? As long as there is open communication — whatever the deaf student needs — then the focus can be on learning. Not on parroting, not on being able to mimic a hearing person. A deaf person cannot mimic a hearing person.
But there is no reason the deaf child cannot learn as much as a hearing child in essential subjects: math, reading, history, arts, you name it. Don’t waste the child’s time on things that may not benefit him. Evaluate each one on a case by case basis and consider whether the time spent on speech therapy and lipreading wouldn’t be better served by giving the child an actual education.
Tossing us all in the speech therapy bin is due to this insistence on being able to perfect these tricks — regardless of the extent of individual’s ability to perform these tricks. It’s not that we can’t speak. It’s not that we can’t communicate. It’s that some of us need hearing aids. Some of us need pen and paper. Some of us need signs or ASL. That is the way to look at it.
