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November, 2017
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November, 2017
Recently, the newest versions of Firefox and Chrome withdrew support for the Shockwave plugin that is used for certain Serendip experiments such as
Current browsers that still support the Shockwave plugin include:
The book 'Train Go Sorry' had alot of enlightening stories that put you into the shoes of different deaf children and how difficult it was for them to handle each of their different situations. Since I had learned about deaf culture previously, I learned about how hard it was to be deaf in a strictly-hearing world, so not many of these stories were a surprise to me. But reading through some of their struggles added a first person perspective that I hadn't known before and gave it a personal touch that I enjoyed. For example, in one of the earlier chapters, it said that "sometimes when teachers say 'I don't understand you,' they mena 'I'm ignoring you until you use words" and it made me think how easily some of the teachers gave up on the deaf students and took their miscommunication
Though I have unfortunately missed the boat when it comes to posting about something that I want to discuss in class, considering the fact that class ended 20 minutes ago, I do have some general thoughts on deaf culture in light of our discussion on a deaf couple's desire to produce a deaf baby. The defense of this desire that we read for homework interestingly contrasts with a reading we did at the beginning of the semester, in which a disabled author asks us to rethink procreation. In that initial reading, we are shown that, for many, procreation is truly an act of recreation. Parents want children who are like them. This, in many cases, is an enormously impractical desire. After all, we cannot control everything about our child, nor should we want to.
After reading the article "Designing Deaf Babies", Singer's argument about how parents would never want disabled children came to my mind. I thought this was a great counter-example and even though I understand why many people would be skeptical about the idea of "designing" a disabled baby, I can see where the parents are coming from and that indicates that being deaf is in fact more than a medical condition, it is certainly a culture. I have still not completely understood how cochlear implants work and the extent to which a deaf person can hear with them, so I hope we clear that up in class. Finally, another question that I had about deaf culture is whether it is common or not for deaf people to adopt deaf children. I am curious to see where people stand on this topic.
One day this question suddenly came up to me: how do deaf people who only know sign language think to themselves? Since when I think to myself, I sometimes have a kind of "voice" in my head composed of spoken language, I wondered what the inner thoughts feel like for them.
Later, I searched online and found something interesting. According to some sources, primarily, deaf people who only know sign language think in sign language----they sign in their heads when they are thinking. This strucks me as fascinating and beautiful. I just can't imagine how vivid their thoughts would be if they are all composed of sign language----it feels like watching a silent movie and there are a lot more alive and colorful visual elements present in their minds than mine.
Regarding the debate about the ethics of selectively choosing to have deaf children, I think I would support having this choice because I feel like it’s morally better this way than the other way around; if the deaf couple wanted to have a “normal“ child, it would mean that they are ashamed of their disability and think of it negatively as all parents want the best for their children. We read earlier in the year that it’s natural that parents want their children to be like them, so how would it be any less natural that deaf parents want a deaf child?
After reading the article about designing deaf babies, I am curious other people’s opinions on the controversy and whether or not they are as awestruck as the public who was seemed to be outraged by this public statement to engineer a baby by picking a donor with a disability. Also, I understand the desire for a couple to desire a child that is similar to them because it can be scary to raise a child that is completely different from you and fearing that you won’t understand them.
I've found deaf culture bery interesting, because they have their own language, behaviors. and history. Which is really interesting, because I don't think I've ever thought of disability and culture as something that could possibly be tied together. However when reading about other disabilities it didn't seem nearly as evident that a culture existed within them as much as disability culture a whole exisiting for the individuals. This makes me wonder if deaf culture is a branch of disability culture, and it makes me wonder how/why deaf culture developed so well while other disabled individuals seem to only have the umbrella of disability culture?