How can something I thought was so right turn out to be so wrong? How did my helping people end up hurting them? How do I turn my back on a pedagogy to which I so strongly ascribed and fervently defended when I learn it was oppressive and seriously flawed? What do I do when the crowning achievement of my life becomes tarnished? When the pride of my career becomes an embarrassment? When the gem on the hill no longer shines?
Dusty Christensen’s report of decades of abuse at Clarke School for the Deaf shook me. The graphic accounts of abuse revealed to him by brave alumni seared images into my mind. The knowledge that such atrocities were happening at the school where I taught — at the time when I taught — horrified me. How could I have been so blind?
I don’t have to think about whether abuse, of any kind, is deserved or acceptable. It’s not. What seems to have been overlooked by many Gazette readers is that the alumni interviewed for the featured story revealed another kind of abuse they experienced at Clarke: the violation of their human rights to develop their native language, American Sign Language, or ASL.
The first inkling I had that perhaps my staunch defense of oral/aural education of Deaf people might need to be rethought was about 10 years after I’d left Clarke, when I received a frantic phone call out of the blue from a Clarke alumnus, asking me to come to his recently deceased mother’s house located only two blocks from mine.
The living room was filled with some of my former students. More jarring to me than the blasting sound of a fire alarm, a sound those in the house couldn’t identify, was the sight of them communicating using sign language.
After the hubbub of the alarm, sirens and cadre of firefighters had ceased, my students, who were now young adults, and I simultaneously broke into laughter.
It was a delightful reunion for me. But why the sign language? I wondered.
I didn’t know ASL, so everyone accommodated me by speaking. I had stepped into their world for the first time. I could feel in my bones that this was something major for me. Although I was no longer teaching, and I rarely encountered anyone who was Deaf, every student I’d taught, everything I’d learned in graduate school, and even Clarke School itself were still part of me. What I didn’t hold in my brain, I carried in my heart.
I didn’t have the opportunity to directly ask my former students why they had ditched speech for sign language and how this shift had changed their lives, so I chose to start educating myself. I generally know what I don’t know, and it was time for me to broaden my horizons through knowledge. I hoped this would lead to understanding.
It has been my experience that knowledge leads to understanding, which leads to acceptance, which leads to respect.
Through my quest for information, I learned that Alexander Graham Bell, a figure closely associated with Clarke, was a eugenicist. Selective breeding was not something I’d thought about, but I didn’t agree with Bell’s thinking. I asked myself: Are Deaf people inferior to people who can hear? Is any human inferior to any other human? Do I feel superior to anyone for any reason? The answer is “no.”
Is Deafness a disability? No. Do all Deaf people wish they could hear? No. Are many Deaf people proud to be Deaf, and do many whole-heartedly embrace Deaf culture? Absolutely “yes.” That’s what my reading told me. It was up to me to learn about Deaf culture, to learn about a tidal wave of change that I hadn’t even known was happening.
Everything about oralism had made sense to me. I was proud of myself, proud of the Clarke School, and proud of the students who learned to speak. I knew more about teaching speech to Deaf children than I knew about anything else. But I’m not Deaf, so I don’t have a right to proclaim what’s good for people who are. I cannot, nor do I want to, ignore the convictions of those for whom ASL is their native language.
I don’t know what I’d want if I were to have a Deaf or hard-of-hearing child. I used to know, but I don’t know now. Would I still explain the merits of providing an oralist education to children who can’t hear, as I’ve done hundreds of times? Maybe. But now I know there’s much more to be told, much more that our society should know about Deafhood. Yesterday I didn’t know that word; now I do. I’m learning and evolving.
I disdain close-mindedness. It hurts our society, and it hurts people. I’m not as knowledgeable as I want to be, but I’m committed to being respectful. Always.
Susan Adelson is a Northampton native, holds a master’s degree from Smith College in Education of the Deaf (M.E.D.), and taught at Clarke School for the Deaf and the Utah State Schools for the Deaf and Blind (U.S.D.B.)