Assignment 5b Reaction to Essays

The first essay that I read was Rhianon's. ( http://rhianonlarson.blogspot.com/2009/04/5a-train-go-sorry.html ) One of the things that she had in her writing that I didn't pick up on was that 90% of deaf children come from hearing families. That is a really important point to make especially with these sets of stories because one of the recurring themes is that these children are really isolated and that the school provides a place where they can live in their own culture. Unlike other social movements, the social movement for deaf culture is wrought with difficulty because not only are deaf people isolated from the mainstream hearing culture, but they're isolated from their own families as well.


The next essay that I read was Alfredo's essay. ( http://fredoxl2820.blogspot.com/2009/04/assignment-5a-train-go-sorry.html ) He wrote as one of his facts that the deaf are not any different from anyone else. I think that that is both true and untrue. Deaf people have their own culture and community, so there is a sense of identifying as a deaf person, but the thing that broadened my horizons and what I think Alfredo was getting at is that deaf people are not disabled. They're very abled and if they use ASL and read and write English, they are already fluent in TWO languages. I know that prior to reading this book, that I never thought of deaf people as having this rich culture of their own. I thought of them as people who were just isolated from regular life by a debilitating disability. I was terribly wrong.


Finally, the last essay that I read was Frank's essay. ( http://humanities7fxd.blogspot.com/2009/04/5a-train-go-sorry-essay.html ) One of the things that I learned is that spinal menengitis is one of the leading reasons people become deaf. It seems that would be particularly isolating or difficult for someone because he or she would have to totally adjust to have the world look at them differently.