I think it’s… more complicated than that? The issue of audio quality is present; right now, there’s no implant that can cause a Deaf person to hear things without significant distortion. It makes sense to me that some Deaf people would want a shot at communicating face-to-face with a broader spectrum of people, and others would feel that the lack of sound quality wasn’t worth an invasive, expensive surgery which is only sporadically covered by insurance. The factors of choice involved are what make doing implant surgeries on babies a bit problematic.
It’s relevant that non-disabled people rate the probable quality of life of the disabled as significantly lower than do the disabled people themselves.
You can find audio samples online that attempt to represent what speech and music sound like through a cochlear implant. It ain’t pretty.
But it’s much more than that. Here’s my understanding, based on some ASL classes and reading on the subject. If there is a Deaf person reading this, I hope you’ll correct any errors or exaggerations I’ve made:
Deaf culture is a linguistic minority group as well as a disability minority group. People involved in Deaf culture strongly value their language — sign language. There’s a solid reason for this: Many years ago, most schools for the deaf had policies of suppressing the use of sign language and instead forced deaf kids to learn as much oral language, lip-reading, and so forth, as they could. This was called “oralism”. And it turns out that oralism inhibits and slows language acquisition to the point that kids don’t become competent in any language during the critical early years when the human brain is capable of primary language acquisition.
As a result, deaf people taught through exclusive oralism have lower reading comprehension and even IQ than deaf people taught through sign language. In contrast, those who learn sign language early are subsequently able to learn to read and write at the same level as hearing people. Sign language (e.g. ASL) turns out to work as well as spoken language in developing the brain’s general language ability.
Basically, oralism causes learning disability: it literally makes people stupider. And so, failing to teach sign language to a deaf kid is basically considered a form of child abuse.
So, as a consequence, there is a very negative reaction to the idea of taking deaf kids away from the Deaf (i.e. sign-language) linguistic community; doing so is historically associated with child abuse; with ruining that child’s development; depriving him or her of a primary language, linguistic ability, and a language community in which he or she can fully participate. So, to some, cochlear implants are seen as threatening to take a person out of first-class status in a small community (Deaf culture) and instead giving them second-class status in a larger community (hearing culture).
Basically, oralism causes learning disability: it literally makes people stupider. And so, failing to teach sign language to a deaf kid is basically considered a form of child abuse.
I wonder how much that remains true with cochlear implants; I would expect that cochlear implants + oralism (lip reading, etc.) > sign language > oralism alone.
… though I’m not even sure of the last bit; from Wikipedia:
Research along those lines continued, however, and studies have helped validate the assertion that children benefit developmentally, educationally and socially from modern oralist teaching methodologies like the Auditory-Oral method.Geers and Moog (1989) found that of a test sample of 100 profoundly hearing-impaired 16- and 17-year olds enrolled in oral and mainstream programs, 88% were proficient and highly intelligible with their spoken language, and could read at much higher grade levels than the national average for deaf children.
Do you have any sources for Oralism being worse than sign language, and not merely less popular among the deaf? (the latter is evidence, but weaker than serious research)
I think it’s… more complicated than that? The issue of audio quality is present; right now, there’s no implant that can cause a Deaf person to hear things without significant distortion. It makes sense to me that some Deaf people would want a shot at communicating face-to-face with a broader spectrum of people, and others would feel that the lack of sound quality wasn’t worth an invasive, expensive surgery which is only sporadically covered by insurance. The factors of choice involved are what make doing implant surgeries on babies a bit problematic.
It’s relevant that non-disabled people rate the probable quality of life of the disabled as significantly lower than do the disabled people themselves.
You can find audio samples online that attempt to represent what speech and music sound like through a cochlear implant. It ain’t pretty.
But it’s much more than that. Here’s my understanding, based on some ASL classes and reading on the subject. If there is a Deaf person reading this, I hope you’ll correct any errors or exaggerations I’ve made:
Deaf culture is a linguistic minority group as well as a disability minority group. People involved in Deaf culture strongly value their language — sign language. There’s a solid reason for this: Many years ago, most schools for the deaf had policies of suppressing the use of sign language and instead forced deaf kids to learn as much oral language, lip-reading, and so forth, as they could. This was called “oralism”. And it turns out that oralism inhibits and slows language acquisition to the point that kids don’t become competent in any language during the critical early years when the human brain is capable of primary language acquisition.
As a result, deaf people taught through exclusive oralism have lower reading comprehension and even IQ than deaf people taught through sign language. In contrast, those who learn sign language early are subsequently able to learn to read and write at the same level as hearing people. Sign language (e.g. ASL) turns out to work as well as spoken language in developing the brain’s general language ability.
Basically, oralism causes learning disability: it literally makes people stupider. And so, failing to teach sign language to a deaf kid is basically considered a form of child abuse.
So, as a consequence, there is a very negative reaction to the idea of taking deaf kids away from the Deaf (i.e. sign-language) linguistic community; doing so is historically associated with child abuse; with ruining that child’s development; depriving him or her of a primary language, linguistic ability, and a language community in which he or she can fully participate. So, to some, cochlear implants are seen as threatening to take a person out of first-class status in a small community (Deaf culture) and instead giving them second-class status in a larger community (hearing culture).
I wonder how much that remains true with cochlear implants; I would expect that cochlear implants + oralism (lip reading, etc.) > sign language > oralism alone.
… though I’m not even sure of the last bit; from Wikipedia:
Do you have any sources for Oralism being worse than sign language, and not merely less popular among the deaf? (the latter is evidence, but weaker than serious research)