1989 - Seeing Voices (26 page)

This was not accomplished without great resistance. Schlesinger tells us that when she advocated the reintroduction of signed languages in education, she received warnings and threatening letters, and that when her book
Sound and Sign
appeared in 1972, it caused controversy and tended to be ‘wrapped in a plain brown wrapper as if unacceptable.’ And even now the conflict still rages unresolved, and though signed language is now used in schools,
it is virtually always signed English and not Sign that is used
.

Stokoe had said from the first that the deaf should be bilingual (and bicultural), should acquire the language of the dominant culture, but also and equally their own language, Sign.
161

161. But there has not yet been in the United States any official attempt to provide deaf children with a bilingual education—there have only been small pilot experiments (like that reported by Michael Strong in Strong, 1988). And yet, in contrast, as Robert Johnson observes, there has been a widespread and successful use of bilingual education in Venezuela, where this is a national policy and increasing numbers of deaf adults are being recruited as aides and teachers (Johnson, personal communication). Venezuelan schools have daycare centers where deaf children and infants are sent as early as they are diagnosed, to be exposed to deaf signing adults until they are old enough to go to nursery and grade schools, where they are instructed bilingually. A similar system has been set up in Uruguay. Both of these South American programs have already achieved notable success and hold out great promise for the future—they are, unfortunately, as yet virtually unknown to American and European educators (but see Johnson, Liddell, and Erting, 1989). The only other countries with bilingual programs for the deaf are Sweden and Denmark—where the native sign languages are officially recognized as ‘mother tongues’ of the deaf. All of these show very clearly that one can learn to read perfectly well without speaking and that ‘total communication’ is not a necessary intermediate between oral education and bilingual education.

But since Sign is still not used in schools, or in any institutions (except religious ones), it is still largely restricted, as seventy years ago, to a colloquial and demotic use. This is even the case at Gallaudet itself—indeed, it has been the university’s official policy since 1982 that all signing and interpretation in class be conducted in signed English—and this constituted an important contributing reason for the revolt.

The personal and the political are always combined, and here both are combined with the linguistic too. Barbara Kannapell brings this out when she traces the influence of Stokoe, of the new consciousness, on herself and how she became aware of herself as a deaf person with a special linguistic identity—‘my language is me’—and moved from this to seeing Sign as central to the communal identity of the deaf (‘To reject ASL is to reject the deaf person [for] ASL is a personal creation of deaf persons as a group it is the only thing we have that belongs to deaf people completely’). Moved by these personal and social considerations, Kannapell founded Deaf Pride, an organization dedicated to deaf consciousness-raising, in 1972.

Deaf depreciation, deaf deference, deaf passivity, and even deaf shame were all too common before the early 1970’s; one sees this, very clearly, in the 1970 novel by Joanne Greenberg,
In This
Sign—and it took Stokoe’s dictionary, and the legitimation of Sign by linguists, to allow the beginnings of a movement in the opposite direction, a movement toward deaf identity and deaf pride.

This was essential, but, of course, not the only factor in the deaf movement since 1960: there were many other factors of equal force, and all flowed together to produce the revolution of 1988. There was the mood of the sixties, with its special feeling for the poor, the disabled, the minorities—the civil rights movement, the political activism, the varied ‘pride’ and ‘liberation’ movements; all this was afoot at the same time that Sign was slowly, and against much resistance, being legitimated scientifically, and while the deaf were slowly collecting a sense of self-esteem and hope, and fighting against the negative images and feelings that had dogged them for a century. There was an increasing tolerance, generally, for cultural diversity, an increasing sense that peoples could be profoundly different, yet all be valuable and equal to one another; an increasing sense, specifically, that the deaf
were
a ‘people,’ and not merely a number of isolated, abnormal, disabled individuals; a movement from the medical or pathological view to an anthropological, sociological, or ethnic view.
162

162. The sociolinguist James Woodward is especially concerned with this (see Woodward, 1982). This increasing sense of cultural diversity, rather than a single fixed ‘norm,’ with ‘deviance’ to either side, goes back to a generous tradition of a century or more earlier; in particular to the viewpoint of Laurent Clerc (and this is another, even more fundamental reason why the students invoked his name, and felt that
his
was the spirit that guided the revolt).

Clerc’s teachings, until his death, had the effect of widening the nineteenth century view of ‘human nature,’ of introducing a relativistic and egalitarian sense of great natural range, not just a dichotomy of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal.’ We speak of our nineteenth-century forebears as rigid, moralistic, repressive, censorious, but the tone of Clerc’s voice, and of those who listened to him, conveyed quite the opposite impression: that this was an age very hospitable to ‘the natural’—to the whole variety and range of natural proclivities—and not disposed (or at least less disposed than our own) to make moralizing or clinical judgments on what was ‘normal’ and what was ‘abnormal.’

This sense of the range of nature is apparent again and again in Clerc’s brief
Autobiography
(which is excerpted in Lane, 1984a). ‘Every creature, every work of God, is admirably made. What we find fault in its kind turns to our advantage without our knowing it.’ Or, again, ‘We can only thank God for the rich diversity of his creation, and hope that in the future world the reason for it will be explained.’

Clerc’s concept of ‘God,’ ‘creation,’ ‘nature,’—humble, appreciative, mild, unresentful—is perhaps rooted in his sense of himself, and other deaf people, as different but nonetheless complete beings. It is in great contrast to the half-terrible, half-Promethean fury of Alexander Graham Bell, who constantly sees deafness as a swindle and a privation and a tragedy, and is constantly concerned with ‘normalizing’ the deaf, ‘correcting’ God’s blunders, and, in general, ‘improving on’ nature. Clerc argues for cultural richness, tolerance, diversity. Bell argues for technology, for genetic engineering, hearing aids, telephones. The two types are wholly opposite but both, clearly, have their parts to play in the world.

Going along with this depathologizing was an increase in portrayals of deaf people in every medium, from documentaries to plays and novels—a portrayal increasingly sympathetic and imaginative. Changing social attitudes, and changing self-image, were both reflected in, and affected by, these: the image ceased to be that of the diffident and pathetic Mr. Singer in
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
and became the audacious heroine of
Children of a Lesser God;
Sign was introduced on television, in such programs as ‘Sesame Street,’ and started to become a popular elective at some schools. The entire country became
more
aware of the previously invisible and inaudible deaf; and they too became more aware of themselves, of their increasing visibility and power in society. Deaf people, and those who studied them, started to look back into the past—to discover (or create) a deaf history, a deaf mythology, a deaf heritage.
163

163. A massive, illustrated
Deaf Heritage: A Narrative History of Deaf America
by Jack R. Gannon was published in 1981. Harlan Lane’s books, from 1976 onwards, not only presented the history of the deaf in stirring, dramatic terms, but were themselves ‘political’ events, serving to give the deaf an intense (perhaps partly mythical) sense of their own past and an urge to regain the best of the past in the future. Thus they not only recorded history, they helped to make it as well (just as Lane himself was not just a recorder, but an active participant, in the 1988 revolt).

Thus, within twenty years of Stokoe’s paper, new awareness, new motives, new forces, of all sorts were combining a new movement was afoot, a confrontation was in the making. The 1970’s saw the rise not only of Deaf Pride but of Deaf Power. Leaders arose among the previously passive deaf. A new vocabulary arose, with such words as ‘self-determination’ and ‘paternalism’ in it. The deaf, who had previously accepted characterizations of themselves as ‘disabled’ and ‘dependent’—for this is how they had been regarded by the hearing—now started to think of themselves as powerful, as an autonomous community.
164

164. So, at least, the matter seemed to outside observers—the deaf revolting against the label of ‘disabled.’ Those within the deaf community were inclined to put it differently, to assert that they had never seen themselves as disabled. Padden and Humphries are emphatic on this point:

’Disabled’ is a label that historically has not belonged to Deaf people. It suggests political self-representations and goals unfamiliar to the group. When Deaf people discuss their deafness, they use terms deeply related to their language, their past, and their community. Their enduring concerns have been the preservation of their language, policies for educating deaf children, and maintenance of their social and political organizations. The modern language of ‘access’ and ‘civil rights,’ as unfamiliar as it is to Deaf people, has been used by Deaf leaders because the public understands these concerns more readily than ones specific to the Deaf community (Padden and Humphries, 1988, p.44).

Sooner or later, it was clear, there would have to be a revolt, a striking political assertion of self-determination and independence, and a once-and-for-all repudiation of paternalism.

The accusation that the Gallaudet authorities were ‘deaf in the mind’ implies no malevolence, but rather a misdirected paternalism, which, deaf people feel, is anything but benign—based as it is on pity and condescension, and on an implicit view of them as ‘incompetent,’ if not diseased. Special objection has been made to some of the doctors involved in Gallaudet’s affairs, who, it is felt, tend to see the deaf merely as having diseased ears and not as whole people adapted to another sensory mode. In general, it is felt this offensive benevolence hinges on a value judgment by the hearing, their saying: ‘We know what is best for you. Let
us
handle things,’ whether this is in response to the choice of language (allowing, or not allowing, Sign), or in judging capacities for education or jobs. It is still sometimes felt, or again felt—after the more spacious opportunities offered in the mid-nineteenth century—that deaf people should be printers, or work in the post office, do ‘humble’ jobs and not aspire to higher education. The deaf, in other words, felt they were being dictated to, that they were being treated as children. Bob Johnson told me a typical story:

It’s been my impression, after having been here for several years, that the Gallaudet faculty and staff treat students as pets. One student, for example, went to the Outreach office; they had announced there would be an opportunity to practice interviewing for jobs. The idea was to sign up for a genuine interview and learn how to do it. So he went and put his name on a list. The next day a woman from the Outreach office called and told him she had set up the interview, had found an interpreter, had set up the time, had arranged for a car to take him…and she couldn’t understand why he got mad at her. He told her, ‘The reason I was doing this was so that I could learn how to call the person, and learn how to get the car, and learn how to get the interpreter, and you’re doing it for me. That’s not what I want here.’ That’s the meat of the issue.

Far from being childlike or incompetent, as they were ‘supposed’ to be (and so often they supposed themselves to be), the students at Gallaudet showed high competence in managing the March revolt. This impressed me especially when I wandered into the communications room, the nerve-center of Gallaudet during the strike, with its central office filled with TTY-equipped telephones.
165

165. It should not be thought that even the most avid signer is against other modes of communication when necessary. Life for deaf people has been altered immensely by various technical devices in the past twenty years, such as closed captioned TV, and teletypewriters (TTY; now TDD, or telecommunication devices for the deaf)—devices that would have delighted Alexander Graham Bell (who had originally invented the telephone, partly, as an aid for the deaf). The 1988 strike at Gallaudet could hardly have got going without such devices, which the students exploited brilliantly.

And yet TTYs have a negative side, too. Before they were widely available, fifteen years ago, deaf people went to great lengths to meet each other—they would constantly visit each other’s homes, and would go regularly to their local deaf club. These were the only chances to talk with other deaf people; this constant visiting or meeting at clubs formed vital links which bound the deaf community into a close physical whole. Now, with TTYs (in Japan, faxes are used), there is much less actual visiting among the deaf; deaf clubs are starting to be deserted and empty; and a new, worrying tenuity has set in. It may be that TTYs (and closed captions or signed programs on television) give deaf people the sense of being together in an electronic village—but an electronic village is not like a real one, and the downfall of visiting and going to clubs is not readily reversed.