The Deaf Adult

For a class in school I had to read a section in our text. I was particularly interested in the comparison that a specific poem had made to the education of Deaf children to people living near a community continuously falling over a cliff. Rather than put up a fence to prevent anymore people from falling off of the cliff in the future, the people of the valley just set up an ambulance at the bottom to take proper care of them after they had fallen. The comparison to the education of Deaf children, to me, was that instead of focusing on the student’s ability to learn and making sure that the students had proper education in the first place, they prepared for how to handle the situation when the education system fails them.

The focus on education for students with hearing loss seems to circle around just a basic education, and not taking the time to consider the individual needs of each child as far as learning goes. Deaf adults are trying to reach out and let hearing parent’s know how it was for them growing up, and what they would liked to have when they were being educated.

I wasn’t very impressed with the idea of parents just tossing their deaf children into a “sea of knowledge and let him sink or swim”. I personally feel that every student, no matter what type of alternate arrangements are made, should be given the equal opportunity to achieve the same results as their peers. If a student needs more attention than that of another student, with or without the same circumstantial setbacks, they should be given enough floatation devices necessary to accomplish whatever goals they set for themselves. I definitely don’t think a hypothetical life raft should be thrown out to them, but just enough assistance to make students feel like they achieved their goals, and give them incentive to keep on pushing forward and setting new goals. In an attempt to keep up with the same line of analogies, why not allow the use of floatation devices, paired along with swimming lessons to teach these students how to do these same tasks by themselves. Who knows, eventually they may not even need the floatation devices at all.

Every person handles circumstances in their life differently from one another, and some people, hearing or deaf, need a hand or even just someone to take the time out to show them the ropes. Who would know how someone is going to handle something better that someone who is going through the same things. All they are asking for is for people to take the time and communicate with them, listen to what they are saying, and take their opinions and points of view into consideration.