You know, on a theoretical level, I “understand” audism. I can see how the social structures have hearing down as the default in so many ways, above and beyond just the obvious ones. I can see how the state of being deaf is medicalized and so on.
But on an emotional level, when I see examples of it, it just flabbergasts me. I mean, come on, we’re talking thinking, capable, rational people, right?
So…how do you explain this comment I found on Amazon:
The book is just filled with so much information regarding the deaf-world.
I have been working with the deaf for over 20 years and had no idea the nuonces of the ASL language.
I recently started talking sign language over again just to catch up.
You will begin to really understand how little the hearing understand about the deaf world.
How? How?? HOW??!!! How on god’s green earth do you “work with” deaf people for over 20 years and little or no knowledge of sign language??
Words just fail me. This is what we have educating our children? Oh. My. God.
(Apropos of which, Der Sankt, I note yet another hearie who can’t spell or write her way out of a paper bag…)
BEG,
There are really ignorant people out there, needless to say. What’s more important is that the commentator actually realizes how much he/she didn’t know before. That’s a step forward - a baby step.
moxie_mocha
right..mostly morons, cuz they are cheaper, not necessarily the most quailifed to work with deaf children..
just too many problems with infrastructure…
BEG,
I am just curious what book review was that?
I find these quotes, “The book is just filled with so much information regarding the deaf-world” and “you will begin to really understand how little the hearing understand about the deaf world” amusing like they could actually know-it-all just by simply reading a book? Oh pleassseeeee!
Men have been living with and marrying women for millennia, and they still haven’t got a clue most of them. White people and black people, same — plenty of white people still think that black people put crisco in their hair. o_O And we’ve shared a planet for hundreds of thousands of years.
I think that the “I’ve worked for deaf people for twenty years” types themselves sometimes are the worst people to talk, since they often got involved out of a sense of condescending chivalry. I think most hearing people probably don’t bother thinking about deafness, really — I think we mostly think it’s a shame “they” can’t enjoy music and sign language is cool. That’s about it.
Lots of people who supposedly get involved with others out of “altruistic” motives are also smug, ignorant, and incredibly arrogant. (Hell, I can name you at least a dozen Catholic priests like this, who talk a good game about their “many years of experience” in pre-Cana marriage counseling, but who don’t even know how birth control works and who advise battered women to stop angering their husbands so much.)
Beware self-proclaimed sefless people.
You SHOULD be astonished. Getting numb to these things is how they’re allowed to continue. After TWENTY YEARS of working with deaf people, you should know sign language really well. Maybe she means in a non-educational setting, or just happens to see some deaf people every week or so ….. hopefully not in education. Geez.
Maybe she works with oral deaf children.
hey.. completely OT, but are you signing up for the blogging against disability day on 1st May?
keth
xx
Mishkazena,
That’s what I was thinking. I’ve known a few people who have been working that long, and all of the sudden, it came to them like a light bulb. They were like… “Oh. Only if I had known this…”
BEG,
What is the title of the book that you were talking about? I would like to see that before I make any more judgments.
moxie_mocha
I wondered that too, but usually people who work with oral children (in my experience anyway) eschew sign language entirely. If they are changing their mind or approach, it’s not usually along with saying in effect, I used to know some of this and am brushing up.
It’s one of the reviews to Harlan Lane’s A Journey into the Deaf-World. I copied over all but the last sentence (which was a recommendation to go out and read the book), so there’s not much more context to be had.