Quantcast
Channel: Callum Fox - Journalist » Cochlear Implant
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 6

My Abraham Lincoln Moment

0
0

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States of America, had an odd habit. He would write scathing letters to those who upset him in some way. He’d take the time and energy to pour his emotions into such letters. But he wouldn’t send them. He kept them locked in the drawer of his desk, never to be seen again.

Really, I should keep this letter of mine locked away in the darkest recesses of my desk, never to see the light of day again. But I feel I should at least share my thoughts on this topic, for better or for worse.

First of all, I know cochlear implants are much more widely accepted by the vast majority of the deaf community nowadays, and that’s fantastic. I’ve met some brilliant people in my time at Walk The Divide.  And this article is not aimed at them.

It’s targeted at those who still view CIs in a negative light.

A small anecdote for you. My Mam went to Tunisia on holiday with a friend last year and met a couple, a deaf lady and her husband. The couple asked Mam to take a photo for them. In the process of taking a photo, she noticed that the couple signed.

Recalling old lessons in British Sign Language (BSL), she struck up a conversation with the couple and exchanged pleasantries. Mam then mentioned me and my situation during the chat and inevitably, the words ‘cochlear implant’ rang out in the air. The conversation, as Mam recalls, turned awkward.

The husband, previously acting as interpreter/conversationalist, then spoke about his experiences as a teacher of deaf children. He cited his time with deaf children who hadn’t adapted to cochlear implants and displayed a negative attitude in general to cochlear implants. Needless to say, the conversation abruptly ended and the two parties went their separate ways.

It’s not something I enjoy hearing about from relatives who have met various deaf people themselves and this sort of thing does occasionally crop up. But personally, I’ve never had to deal with anybody like that.

So imagine my surprise at receiving a comment on Walk The Divide on this topic. I won’t lie, it wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience.

The comment came from a Mr G McKay, who responded to a previous comment made by a former teacher of mine at Northern Counties School For The Deaf. While well written and raising some very good points, I found it rather disturbing (If you’d like to read the original comment in full, click here).

Again, this was an uncomfortable reminder that there are still people out there who don’t agree with cochlear implants.

I wrote a spur-of-the-moment response to Mr McKay at the time, but now that a week has passed I feel compelled to expand on that initial reply with a more comprehensive reply.

So here goes.

“For me, the most successful upbringing that can be provided is one with capable communication and an actual language.”

This. This is absolutely spot on. Which is why his insistence on the importance of being bilingual later on in his comment is baffling. While BSL is an excellent language for many deaf people, it’s somewhat of a crutch for those with cochlear implants.

I’ll explain why. I believe that if an individual goes through a CI operation, then he/she is committing to using the CI to its full potential. Otherwise, it’s an incredible waste.

In order to maximise the benefits of a CI, audiologists are adamant that a person needs to immerse himself/herself in spoken language. They need to speak and hear spoken languages as much as possible in order to fully adapt to the CI.

There’s no other way around it. That’s why speech therapy for children is considered so essential. I personally went through it for four years as a child. It helps you to develop your speech and builds up your vocabulary. It also assists you in overcoming blocks, like I had with the letter S which I just couldn’t produce at one point in my childhood.

So when you try to learn two languages at once, it divides your attention. It reduces the amount of time you can devote to adapting to a CI. In my experience, and although I can’t prove this, it holds you back by the simple reason that you just don’t devote as much energy to making the CI work.

I tried it. It didn’t work for me. I signed from the age of two, nearly three years before being implanted, right up until the age of nine or ten.

In my experience, you develop a reliance on BSL rather than spoken English. It becomes a crutch, and  while that’s not a problem for the majority of deaf people, it is if you’re a CI user like me.

And then you have children who become young adults who may not as developed in their spoken English as they could be.

Because they’ve learnt BSL at the same time and inadvertently, that’s become their native language. They haven’t utilised the cochlear implant to its full potential.

I know, because I’ve seen the result of that. You only have one mother tongue after all.

“How about the highly intelligent young man I know who has entered an application to study law at Cambridge after getting top grades in his exams. He isn’t implanted, doesn’t use spoke English and has been a sign language user all his life, at home and at school.

“Point is, for every implanted ‘success story’ in career and academia, there is an equivalent success story from what you call the ‘signing deaf community’.”

And isn’t that the problem? The idea of success stories are that they’re relatively rare. That’s why academics feel the need to highlight them as ‘success stories’.

The majority of deaf people struggle some parts of life. That’s inevitable. I won’t deny that I struggle in certain areas of life. But the same can be said of the success stories from the deaf signing community.

All deaf people have problems. There’s no right or wrong way of going about solving them. Implants are one such solution. And it’s not for everyone, I realise that. But to denigrate people for choosing that method is counter-productive.

“Hand on heart, how many implanted people are actually good at speech and hearing?”

This is an absolutely ludicrous comment. Absolutely ludicrous. What on earth gives Mr McKay the right to make such an absurd generalisation of what is a sizeable demographic based on his own personal bias?

I don’t thank him for this ridiculously generalised assumption of my abilities, and I’m sure other CI users wouldn’t either.

I’m not sure what it is about this comment that has annoyed me so much, maybe it ties in with my beliefs regarding cochlear implants. Maybe it’s something else entirely.

Maybe it’s this assumption that the deaf community is a haven for all deaf people around the world.

That’s a fallacy. That’s just as much of a fallacy as the argument that cochlear implants are a ‘magic cure’.

I’ve personally met a handful of deaf people in my life. The ones I met ostracised my parents (who are hearing). There’s certainly a stand-offish attitude amongst some members of the signing community.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many who I’ve met online who are wonderful people. But they weren’t there in my childhood.

The problem is accessibility. I live in the North East, and there’s very few deaf people up here. There simply isn’t the deaf community I hear about in County Durham.

But that’s not the fault of deaf people, or the deaf community. Everyone is different after all. We all have different circumstances.

Implants are neither right nor wrong. Simply a means to an end.

My parents choose what they thought was best for me, and I’ve not regretted them making that decision. No matter what academics say, every child’s circumstances are different. And it’s a tough decision.

I’m a ‘success story’. Well, so what? That doesn’t matter to me. I did my absolute best to cope with life and I’ve got to where I am by virtue of that hard work I put in early in life.

And the young man applying for Cambridge as cited by Mr McKay? I’m sure he got on with life and made the most of what he’s been given.

And I heartily applaud him for that, there’s nothing better than seeing people overcome their circumstances and defying the expectations placed upon them.

I don’t like to think of my particular case as ‘the implant worked for me, I’m one of the lucky ones’. I made the implant work for me. Years upon years of hard work has got me to where I am today.

We’re all different, and it’s not as clear-cut as “sign language will help you to succeed in life”. It’s a tool. As are implants. We use the appropriate tools we feel will help us in life.

It’s how we use them that defines us.

*This article originally appeared on Walk The Divide.*



Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 6

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images