Social Justice, Audism, and the D/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and Cultural Differences

Social Justice, Audism, and the d/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and Cultural 65 Differences

Timothy Reagan

Contents Introduction ...... 1480 An Introduction to the DEAF-WORLD ...... 1482 Language ...... 1483 Cultural Identity ...... 1485 Behavioral Norms and Practices ...... 1487 Endogamy ...... 1487 Cultural Artifacts ...... 1488 In-Group Historical Knowledge ...... 1488 Voluntary Social Organizations ...... 1489 Humor ...... 1489 Literary and Artistic Tradition ...... 1490 Becoming Deaf ...... 1494 The Duality of Deaf Identity ...... 1494 Epistemology and the DEAF-WORLD ...... 1495 Social Justice and the DEAF-WORLD ...... 1498 Conclusion ...... 1502 References ...... 1503

Abstract In this chapter, it will be argued that there are two fundamentally different ways in which deafness can be conceptualized: as a pathological medical condition (deafness) and as a distinctive linguistic, cultural, and social identity (Deafness). The characteristics and attributes of the Deaf cultural community (called the DEAF-WORLD in American Sign Language) will be explored: the role and place of its vernacular language (ASL), the awareness of group identity shared by its members, its distinctive behavioral norms, its endogamous marital patterns, the cultural artifacts that are most closely associated with it, its shared, insider

T. Reagan (*) The University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA e-mail: [email protected]

historical knowledge, the network of voluntary social organizations that Deaf people have created and maintain, the body of jokes and humorous stories popular in the DEAF-WORLD, and finally, the literature, theatre, poetry, and visual art that has been produced by its members and which are reflective of its core values and concerns. The case for the existence and implications of a distinctively Deaf epistemology will then be discussed, and the implications of such an ethno-epistemology for deaf education will be offered. Next, it will be suggested that these two different ways of conceptualizing deafness lead to fundamentally incompatible approaches to addressing both the needs of deaf people in general and the special needs of deaf children in particular. For many deaf children, it will be argued that access to ASL and preparation for future membership and participation in the DEAF-WORLD is the most appropriate objective for education. Such an objective is, to a significant degree, incompatible with the goals of inclusive education and requires a very different kind of education. The elements of such an education for deaf children will then be outlined.

Keywords American Sign Language (ASL) · Audism · Deaf education · Deaf epistemology · Deaf identity · d/Deafness · DEAF-WORLD · Residential schools for the deaf

Introduction

The most common way that deafness is understood is as a biomedical condition related to hearing; in essence, deafness refers to the absence of the ability to hear. It is thus a deficit condition: hearing is the normative condition for human beings, while a lack of hearing constitutes a disability. Such a view is not only common; it is also typically seen as common sense. Deaf people are basically seen as “broken” or as somehow “incomplete,” and the logical response to deafness is to attempt to do whatever can be done to provide remediation or even a cure for the unfortunate condition of deaf people. Traditionally, this has meant developing technology for hearing aids and other amplification devices, using oral methods in deaf education, encouraging the ability to lip read and speak, and most recently using cochlear implants in young children. Although the view that deafness is a pathological biomedical condition is indeed an extremely common one, it is by no means the only way in which deafness can be understood – nor, as will be argued in this chapter, is it necessarily the best or most fitting way to do so much of the time. Rather, it will be suggested that a very different perspective on both deafness and deaf people is appropriate for understanding many (though by no means all) deaf people. It will be argued here that such a deficit or pathological view of deafness is profoundly misguided and that it is grounded in ableist and linguicist biases and assumptions. It is a view widely rejected by many deaf people themselves, who see in it a denial of their identity, their language, and their culture – and indeed, of their humanity. It is thus hardly surprisingly that the 65 Social Justice, Audism, and the d/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and... 1481 hearing world and DEAF-WORLD often come into conflict, a conflict that Deaf people see as evidence of the repudiation of their worldview by the hearing world’s presumption of a “deafness as disability” perspective (Hoffmeister, 2008). The tension been these different ways of thinking about deafness is neither a minor nor a trivial one; it is fundamental to how deafness is conceived, what it means to be deaf, and how and by whom decisions should be made about deafness and deaf people educationally, medically, and socially. As Harlan Lane, Robert Hoffmeister and Benjamin Bahan note,

when hearing people think about Deaf people, they project their ...subtractive perspective onto Deaf people. The result is an inevitable collision with the values of the DEAF-WORLD, whose goal is to promote the unique heritage of Deaf language and culture. The disparity in decision-making power between the hearing world and the DEAF-WORLD renders this collision frightening for Deaf people. (1996, p. 371)

The fundamental critique of the pathological perspective on deafness is that it is grounded in a very speciﬁc type of ableism and linguicism, called audism (see Bauman, 2004; Eckert & Rowley, 2013; Stapleton, 2016). Audism has been described as:

the belief that life without hearing is futile and miserable, that hearing loss is a tragedy and the “scourage of mankind” and that deaf people should struggle to be as much like hearing people as possible. Deaf activists Heidi Reed and Hartmut Teuber ...consider audism to be “a special case of ableism.” Audists, hearing or deaf, shun Deaf culture and the use of sign language, and have what Reed and Teuber describe as “an obsession with the use of residual hearing, speech, and lip-reading by deaf people.” (Pelka, 1997, p. 33)

Such a way of viewing deafness is perhaps understandable from a normative hearing perspective, but it is simply not the way that many deaf people understand what it means to be deaf. How deafness is understood, though, is an incredibly important matter, since many fundamental decisions about deaf people – and especially deaf children – are made by hearing professionals and hearing parents. To be sure, hearing parents of deaf children have (and should have) a significant role in making such decisions, and hearing professionals in many fields do have valuable insights to offer with respect to deafness, but most have had little if any contact with Deaf people or the DEAF-WORLD, and so are ill-informed about what the options available to the child actually are. To begin by assuming that hearing is “normal” and deaf is in some sense “abnormal” is profoundly problematic. Within the DEAF-WORLD, there is no interest or concern in remediating or curing deafness, any more than one might try to cure gender or race. As Roslyn Rose, a past president of the National Association of the Deaf, and herself a Deaf child of Deaf parents with Deaf children of her own, commented, “I don’t want to be ‘fixed’. Would an Italian-American rather be a WASP? In our society everyone agrees that whites have an easier time than blacks. But do you think that a black person would undergo operations to become white?” (quoted in Dolnick, 1993, p. 38). Precisely, the same point was made by I. King Jordan, the first deaf President of 1482 T. Reagan

Gallaudet University. In an interview, Jordan was asked by the interviewer whether he wouldn’t like to have his hearing restored, to which Jordan replied, “That’s almost like asking a black person if he would rather be white ...I don’t think of myself as missing something or as incomplete ... It’s a common fallacy if you don’t know Deaf people or Deaf issues. You think it’s a limitation” (quoted in Lane, 1993a, p. 288). As alien as such a view might be to many hearing people, it is at the core of Deaf identity – and is not simply incompatible, but irreconcilable, with a pathological understanding of deafness. The alternative way of conceptualizing Deafness, which has been increasing popular both within the DEAF-WORLD and among scholars studying Deafness since the 1960s and 1970s, has been labelled the sociocultural view of Deafness. Further, the fairly simple dichotomy between the pathological and sociocultural perspectives on deafness has become more nuanced in recent years, as Richard Senghas and Leila Monoghan observe:

Recently, studies of deafness have adopted more complex sociocultural perspectives, raising issues of community identity, formation and maintenance, and language ideology. Anthro- pological researchers have approached the study of Deaf communities from at least three useful angles. The ﬁrst, focusing on the history of these communities, demonstrates that the current issues have roots in the past, including the central role of education in the creation and maintenance of communities. A second approach centers on emic perspectives, drawing on the voices of community members themselves and accounts of ethnographers. A third perspective studies linguistic issues and how particular linguistic issues involving deaf people articulate with those of their hearing societies. (2002, p. 69)

In this chapter, the case for an anthropologically, sociologically, and historically grounded conception of Deafness will be made, the existence and implications of a distinctively Deaf epistemology will be examined, and what these claims might mean for a commitment to social justice generally, and especially for the education of deaf children, will be explored.

An Introduction to the DEAF-WORLD

The Deaf cultural and linguistic community is referred to in many different ways: it is called the “Deaf community,” the “Deaf culture,”“Deafhood,” and, in American Sign Language (ASL), it is described using the sign DEAF-WORLD. As Carol Padden and Tom Humphries wrote at the beginning of their powerful book Deaf in America: Voices from a culture,

The traditional way of writing about Deaf people is to focus on the fact of their condition – that they do not hear – and to interpret all other aspects of their lives as consequences of this fact ... In contrast to the long history of writings that treat them as medical cases, or as people with “disabilities,” who “compensate” for their deafness by using sign language, we want to portray the lives they live, their art and performances, their everyday talk, their shared myths, and the lessons they teach one another. We have always felt that the attention 65 Social Justice, Audism, and the d/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and... 1483

given to the physical condition of not hearing has obscured far more interesting facets of Deaf people’s lives. (1988,p.1)

Similarly, Edward Dolnick, writing in The Atlantic, observed that:

Lately ...the Deaf community has begun to speak for itself. To the surprise and bewilder- ment of outsiders, its message is utterly contrary to the wisdom of centuries: Deaf people, far from groaning under a heavy yoke, are not handicapped at all. Deafness is not a disability. Instead, many Deaf people now proclaim, they are a subculture like any other. They are simply a linguistic minority (speaking American Sign Language) and are no more in need of a cure than are Haitians or Hispanics. (1993, p. 37)

If the DEAF-WORLD is understood in this essentially anthropological manner rather than through a medical lens, then it ought to be possible to study it precisely as one might study any other culture – and indeed, a large number of scholars have been engaged in doing just that for a half century (see Andersson, 1990, 1994; Baker, 1999; Branson & Miller, 2002; Gregory & Hartley, 1991; Harris, 1995; Hoffmeister, 2002, 2008; Holcomb, 2013; Humphries, 2004; Kyle, 1990; Ladd, 2003, 2005; Lane, 2002; Metzger, 2000; Padden & Humphries, 1988, 2005; Ramsey, 2004; Reagan, 1985, 1995, 2002); Sacks, 1989; Schein, 1989). The DEAF-WORLD is demarcated from the hearing world in a number of ways, but most importantly, it is characterized by:

• The use of its own vernacular language (ASL). • A shared awareness of group identity and membership. • Distinctive behavioral norms. • Endogamous marital patterns. • A variety of relatively distinctive cultural artifacts. • A shared, insider historical awareness. • A network of voluntary social organizations. • Shared jokes and humorous stories. • A body of literature, theatre, poetry, and visual art (see Leigh, Andrews & Harris, 2018; Holcomb, 2013)

We will now brieﬂy discuss each of these characteristics of the DEAF-WORLD.

Language

The use of ASL as one’s primary vernacular language is arguably the single most important element in membership in the DEAF-WORLD, as well as in the construction of Deaf cultural identity (Baker, 1999; Hoffmeister, 2002, 2008; Holcomb, 2013; Padden & Humphries, 1988, 2005; Ramsey, 2004; Reagan, 1985, 1995, 2002, 2012). ASL plays an important role in the construction of what could be termed the Deaf worldview – that is, the way in which Deaf people make sense of the world around them. It does this in two distinct ways: ﬁrst, through its role 1484 T. Reagan as linguistic mediator, and second, as an identifying facet of cultural identity. ASL mediates experience in a unique way, as of course do all languages. The structures and vocabulary of ASL provide the framework within which experience is organized, perceived, and understood, and this framework is inevitably distinct from the frameworks employed by other languages. For example, in ASL if one describes someone as VERY HARD-OF-HEARING, it means that she/he has substantial residual hearing, while A LITTLE HARD-OF-HEARING would suggest far less residual hearing. In other words, the concepts themselves are based on different norms than would be the case in English (in which the meanings of these two expressions would be reversed). Further, Deaf cultural identity presupposes communicative competence in ASL, and membership in the DEAF-WORLD is impossible without it. As Jerome Schein has explained, “being deaf does not in itself make one a member of the Deaf community. To understand this, one has to remember that the distinguishing feature of membership in the Deaf community is how one communicates” (1984, p. 130). It is not merely signing that is necessary, though – it is, speciﬁcally, the use of ASL. Many hearing people sign, but relatively few are competent in ASL. ASL has historically functioned as a language of group solidarity for Deaf people, serving both as a badge of in-group membership and acting as a barrier to those outside the DEAF-WORLD. Although through much of human history, sign language was not even recognized as “real” language, this has not been the case for some time. We know far more about the nature and workings of sign languages than we did nearly 60 years ago, and the now well-established research base addressing the linguistics of ASL has been summarized by Robert Hoffmeister as follows:

ASL is a language that has been misunderstood, misused, and misrepresented over the past 100 years. It is structured very differently from English. The structure of ASL is based on visual/manual properties, in contrast to the auditory/spoken properties of English. ASL is able to convey the same meanings, information, and complexities as English. The mode of expression is different, but only at the delivery level. The underlying principles of ASL ... are based on the same basic principles found in all languages. ASL is able to identify and codify agents, actions, objects, locations, subjects, verbs, aspects, tense, and modality, just as English does. ASL is therefore capable of stating all the information expressed in English and of doing this within the same conceptual frame. ASL is able to communicate the meaning of a concept, through a single sign or through a combination of signs, that may be conveyed by a word or phrase (combination of words) in English. (1990, p. 81)

In fact, as a result of the growing body of research concerned with the linguistics of sign languages (see Baker, van den Bogaerde & Crasborn, 2003; Lucas, 1995, 2006; Lucas, Bailey & Valli, 2003), a 1985 UNESCO report went so far as to assert as an operating principle that, “We must recognize the legitimacy of the sign language as a linguistic system and it should be accorded the same status as other languages” (quoted in Lane, 1992, p. 46), and the Linguistic Society of America has formally adopted a resolution affirming the status of sign languages as “full-fledged languages with all the structural characteristics and range of expression of spoken languages” and also affirming “for signed languages such as ASL all the rights and 65 Social Justice, Audism, and the d/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and... 1485 privileges attendant to any spoken language” (Linguistic Society of America, 2001). To sum up, the evidence is clear that ASL is a legitimate language comparable in all significant ways to spoken languages. Although it utilizes a different modality to that employed by spoken languages, its operation is in no way inferior to that used in spoken languages. Further, lest one think that students studying ASL are taking an “easy out” and avoiding the difficulties of learning a foreign language, recent research suggests that acquiring ASL may actually be somewhat more difficult than learning a foreign spoken (see Jacobs, 1996; McKee & McKee, 1992). Recently, as more hearing people have begun to learn ASL; complications have started to arise with respect to issues of access to ASL. The role of ASL in the construction of Deaf identity, then, is quite complex – it is clearly a necessary condition for Deaf cultural identity, but (as is demonstrated in the cases of hearing individuals who use it fluently) not a sufficient condition for group membership. Indeed, for non-group members, use of ASL can somewhat paradoxically present significant challenges to one’s credibility and status as a sympathetic outsider, and it is far from uncommon to find Deaf people who seek to “protectively withhold from hearing people information about the DEAF-WORLD’s language and culture” (Lane et al., 1996, p. 71). As one leader in the Deaf community reports,

I have asked a number of Deaf individuals how they feel about hearing people signing like a native user of ASL. The responses are mixed. Some say that it is acceptable for hearing people to use ASL like a Deaf person on one condition. The condition is that this hearing person must make sure that the Deaf person knows that s/he is not deaf. Some people resent the idea of seeing hearing people signing like a native ASL user. Those who are resentful may feel sociolinguistic territorial invasion by those hearing people. (Quoted in Schein & Stewart, 1995, p. 155)

Although there may be different attitudes in the DEAF-WORLD about hearing people learning ASL, it is important to note here that there is really no debate in the community about what might be called the “ownership” of ASL – it is clearly a possession of Deaf people. In short, the only question about which there may be some ambiguity is whether hearing people should be encouraged to learn ASL versus some other kind of “contact signing” (see Levesque, 2001).

Cultural Identity

Members of the DEAF-WORLD identify themselves as socially and culturally Deaf, maintaining a clear-cut distinction between audiological deafness and sociocultural Deafness, a phenomenon that is sometimes referred to as attitudinal Deafness (see Janesick & Moores, 1992; Reagan, 1990). Hearing children of Deaf people, who grow up with ASL as their first language, are (at least in some significant ways) potential members of the Deaf culture, at least to some extent, just as older hearing people who lose their hearing are, under normal circumstances, not part of the DEAF-WORLD – they are, rather, hearing people who can no longer hear. It is 1486 T. Reagan interesting to note here that in ASL there are a number of terms used to describe hearing status, several of which have no easy English translation. In addition to the signs HEARING, DEAF, and HARD-OF-HEARING, there are the signs HEAFIE (a pejorative and insulting sign used to denigrate a deaf person who “thinks like a hearing person”) and HEARING-BUT (used to describe a hearing person who understands and is sympathetic to the DEAF-WORLD). One powerful example of the role of cultural identity in the DEAF-WORLD, and how this identity sometimes leads to radically different perspectives on reality, is the increasing medicalization of deafness (see Lane, 1993b). The idea that deafness is basically a medical condition in need of remediation, which is at the core of the pathological view of deafness, inevitably leads to conflicts with the perceptions of members of the DEAF-WORLD. The growing popularity of cochlear implants has been seen as a threat to the very survival of the DEAF-WORLD by many Deaf people (see Aiello & Aiello, 2001, pp. 406–407; Howe, 1992, pp. 67–68; Lane, 1993a, b; Lane et al., 1996, pp. 386–407; Woodcock, 2001). In the case of young children, advocates of cochlear implants argue that “early implantation of deaf children should be considered as a way to expose them to the spoken word, enable them to learn spoken languages, and develop better speech skills” (Woodcock, 2001, p. 325). From a Deaf perspective, cochlear implants raise a number of both practical and ethical questions, grounded in the fundamental question of what constitutes “normal.” Just as Michel Foucault made clear the epistemological power of socially established norms, whether in terms of mental illness, punishment, and sexuality, so too is the challenge to the conception of “normal” and its equation with audiological norms important in understanding this topic (see, e.g., Foucault, 1975, 1976, 1984a, b, 2000, 2008, 2018). From a Deaf perspective it is clear that:

If the birth of a deaf child is a priceless gift, then there is only cause for rejoicing, as at the birth of a black child, or an Indian one. Medical intervention is inappropriate, even if a perfect “cure” were available. Invasive surgery on healthy children is morally wrong. We know that, as members of a stigmatized minority, these children’s lives will be full of challenge but, by the same token, they have a special contribution to make to their own community and the larger society. (Lane, 1993b, pp. 490–491)

In spite of the initial objections to cochlear implants in the DEAF-WORLD, more and more children are nevertheless receiving implants. There can be little doubt that cochlear implants do have certain beneﬁts in terms of increasing the access of the deaf child to certain kinds of input, but there often remain signiﬁcant problems with respect to the child’s integration into the hearing world (see Oliva, 2004). As a result of these problems, many children who have had cochlear implants nevertheless end up being integrated into the Deaf community, though that integration is often delayed. Although their entry into the Deaf community is delayed, it is nonetheless both real and powerful. As Thomas Holcomb notes,

The Deaf community plays a vital role in the lives of many deaf citizens, by providing an accessible and tolerant community of like-minded individuals which can serve as a much- needed respite for those who feel pressured to ﬁt into the hearing majority as they grow 65 Social Justice, Audism, and the d/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and... 1487

up. And, in fact, poignant stories about discovering the signing Deaf community and being welcomed into this fold are told and retold, in the manner of ﬁnding “the promised land.” This community of converts ...includes those with strong oral skills and/or those implanted with cochlear implants. Such individuals grew up in strong antisigning environments are often the most active in the Deaf community in promoting the Deaf agenda – with the goal of preventing the kind of identity crisis they experienced in future generations of deaf children. (2013, p. 290)

Behavioral Norms and Practices

There are also differences with respect to behavioral norms between the hearing world and the DEAF-WORLD. Most notable here would be differences in eye contact patterns, rules governing the permissibility of physical contact of various sorts (including touching to gain attention), the use of facial expressions, gesturing, and so on. For example, it is extremely common, even expected, for Deaf people to hug each other as a greeting. As Matthew Moore and Linda Levitan explain,

Deaf people are a bit more physical than hearing people. They have a different vocabulary of physicality. Their usage of touch differs from hearing norms. It’s acceptable practice to pat another person’s shoulder or arm (the accepted “social space”) to get attention – even if that person is a stranger .... As for the “goodbye pat,” this serves a useful function: notifying others in the group: “Goodbye, I’m leaving; I’m not slipping out on you.” This forestalls a time-wasting, futile search for someone who has slipped away .... The goodbye pat also affords the leave-taker an opportunity to exit the gathering in a friendly way. (2014, pp. 637–638)

Finally, Deaf and hearing behavior differs with respect to the directness of questions, acceptable topics of conversation, and so on. For instance, as a general rule, Deaf people are far more comfortable discussing and sharing information about money, bodily functions, and other personal matters than are hearing people. Further, if one has a criticism of someone or something, in the DEAF-WORLD it is seen as appropriate to raise the topic and explain one’s concerns about it, even in cases in which the rules of the hearing world might dictate that silence is best.

Endogamy

A common facet of cultural identity for many ethnic groups is the presence and maintenance of endogamous marital patterns, and the same is true in the case of Deaf people. Indeed, estimates of the rate of in-group marriage in the Deaf community range from 86% to over 90% – a remarkably high rate in contemporary American society (see Reagan, 1990). This high rate of in-group marriage has historically been facilitated by the role of the residential schools for the deaf, but is also tied to the common, shared language of Deaf people as well as to the power of attitudinal Deafness. 1488 T. Reagan

Cultural Artifacts

The cultural artifacts of the Deaf community are primarily technological devices designed in recent years to facilitate the ability of the deaf to function in the hearing world. The key difference between the audiologically deaf and culturally Deaf with respect to the use of such technologies is that there is reluctance on the part of many culturally Deaf people to utilize technological devices that focus primarily on hearing (such as hearing aids). For the most part, other kinds of technological innovations, such as television decoders for closed-captioned programs, doorbells, and alarms tied to lights, and so on, are widely and commonly used both within the Deaf culture and by those who are audiologically but not culturally Deaf. Cultural artifacts emphasizing membership in the DEAF-WORLD, such as jewelry, T-shirts, bumper stickers, and so on, which often involve visual images of signs (and especially the ubiquitous I-LOVE-YOU sign), are additional artifacts that are somewhat more likely to be found among culturally Deaf people, though such artifacts are also used more generally by both deaf and hearing people with an interest in deafness – sometimes even inappropriately, as Tom Willard (1993) articulated in a wonderful short essay entitled, “I’ve had enough of the I-Love-You sign, thanks.”

In-Group Historical Knowledge

Members of the Deaf community have a strong sense of the history of their community, and this awareness has been passed on transgenerationally largely through informal means in the past. However, the 1981 publication of Jack Gannon’s Deaf heritage: A narrative history of deaf America has contributed to a broader access to the historical awareness of the Deaf community, and, more recently, there have been a number of outstanding scholarly works on the history of deaf people that are also reinforcing pride in the community’s history and heritage (see, for example, Baynton, 1996; Bragg, 2001; Groce, 1985; Lane, 1984a, b, 1992; Reé, 1999;Van Cleve, 1993; Van Cleve & Crouch, 1989; Wineﬁeld, 1987). It is quite typical in various national, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic groups for members of the group to hold certain historical or mythological beliefs – beliefs about the history of the group that may be true, might only be partly true, or might not be true at all, but which are nevertheless widely believed by group members. Not surprisingly, there are a number of examples of such mythological knowledge in the DEAF-WORLD. Examples include the idea that the professional baseball player William (“Dummy”) Hoy introduced hand signals into the game, that the football huddle was ﬁrst used by Gallaudet football players to prevent opponents from seeing them discuss plays, and that the hands on the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial form the signed letters “A” and “L.” All of these beliefs might be true, though the evidence for them is by no means universally accepted – but this is simply irrelevant. The point here is that they are part of a substantial body of in-group historical knowledge that is widely held by members of the DEAF-WORLD to be true. 65 Social Justice, Audism, and the d/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and... 1489

Voluntary Social Organizations

Historically, Deaf people have supported an extensive network of social organizations which serve deaf people, and which have effectively maintained the cohesive- ness of the Deaf community and provided, to a very signiﬁcant extent, for the companionship needs of group members. As Sarah Compton has noted,

Despite the relatively small number of ASL signers in the United States, Deaf communities are highly organized with long-standing histories and traditions ... More than a dozen national organizations were founded and are directed by Deaf people, including the National Association of the Deaf, the National Black Deaf Advocates, and the National Council of Hispano Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Sports associations such as the National Softball Association of the Deaf and USA Deaf Basketball organize regional and national competi- tions for athletes. (2014, p. 277)

In recent years, just as residential schools for the deaf have been declining, so too have some of these organizations (see Padden, 2008).

Humor

Attitudinal Deafness is also a key element in understanding much of Deaf humor (see Bienvenu, 1994; Bouchauveau, 1994; Holcomb, Holcomb & Holcomb, 2011). Jokes and funny stories abound in the DEAF-WORLD, and many involve the presumed differences between deaf people and hearing people – almost inevitably, as one would expect, with the punch line focusing on hearing people’s ignorance of signing, deafness, and deaf people. Roy Holcomb, Samuel Holcomb, and Thomas Holcomb have gone so far as to write a short book, Deaf culture, our way, which is a collection of anecdotes and humorous stories from the DEAF-WORLD that has proven popular enough to go into four editions. One of my favorite stories, retold in the book, is the “Honeymoon Story”:

A young deaf couple was driving down the road in a busy convention-filled city on their wedding night, looking for a room to celebrate their first night of matrimony. After finding the last available room in the entire town, the groom swooped the bride out of the car and carried her into the room. The groom was eager to begin their first night together, but the bride insisted on a bottle of champagne to make their wedding night complete. The groom grudgingly left and drove to an all-night store to buy a chilled bottle. When he came back to the motel, he could not remember in which room his bride was waiting, and the motel office was closed for the night. After a moment of pondering, he came up with a plan. He blared the horn of his car until the light of every room at the inn was turned on. Knowing that his wife could not hear the horn, he easily located his room – it was the only one with the light out. (2011,p.4)

Much Deaf humor is humorous only in a somewhat cheerless way, however, since it points to the many problems and challenges that deaf people face in living in a world in which hearing is the norm. For instance, in a section called, “Our 1490 T. Reagan

Unique Ways,” Holcomb et al. observe such things as “when picking a restaurant, you choose the one with the best lighting ...[because] a poorly lit restaurant can make it difficult to carry on a conversation” (2011,p.25),“you start feeling sorry for yourself because no one has visited you for more than two weeks ...then you find out that your flashing doorbell light has burned out” (2011,p.51),and“you forget that the rules associated with TTYusage such as ‘GA’ for go ahead and ‘SK’ for stop keying do not apply to IM chats” (2011, p. 92).

Literary and Artistic Tradition

Since ASL is not normally written down, it obviously does not have a written literature in the way that French, German, Russian, and English, among others, do. Of course, the same might be said of the vast majority of the languages currently spoken around the world. What ASL does have is a literary tradition comparable to the oral traditions found in spoken languages (see Bahan, 1992; Jacobowitz, 1992; Low, 1992; Peters, 2000; Rutherford, 1993). Nancy Frishberg (1988) has identified three major indigenous literary genres in ASL: oratory, folklore, and performance art. Further, the advent of the movie camera made possible the compilation of the literary traditions and even the canon of ASL in a way not previously possible. ASL does, then, have a well-developed literature, albeit one not easily reducible to a written form, that is now both accessible (through the productions of the National Theatre of the Deaf and other groups) and worthy of serious study (see Christie & Wilkins, 1997; Peters, 2000; Valli, 1990). As for the visual and dramatic arts, again, the Deaf culture has been remarkably prolific, especially given the resistance to Deaf identity that has been common through most of history (see, for example, Bragg, 1996; Corrado, 1990; Lane et al., 1996, pp. 138–158). Among the artistically powerful contributions of Deaf writers and dramatists have been such theatrical productions as A Deaf Family Diary, Sign Me Alice, Tales from a Clubroom, Deafula, and My Third Eye, all of which deal with the bilingual and bicultural nature of deaf experience. Similarly, Douglas Bullard’s novel Islay, which is a full-length novel written in English with ASL glosses, is a significant contribution to the Deaf aesthetic tradition in the United States (see Peters, 2000, pp. 121–146). Finally, the “Poetry in Motion” videotape series has made available the work of a number of contemporary ASL poets, including Patrick Graybill, Clayton Valli, and Debbie Rennie. As Lane et al. have noted,

The arts ...also play a critical role in bonding the members of any culture, and the members of the DEAF-WORLD are no exception. In fact, in at least two respects, the arts have a privileged relation to Deaf culture. Deaf people are, as we have seen repeatedly, best thought of as a visual people, so it should be no surprise that there has always been a substantial number of Deaf artists, many with worldwide renown. Then, too, ASL is an unwritten language, so literature such as storytelling and humor carry much cultural information that, in cultures with written languages, would be passed down through the generations in books. (1996, pp. 138–139) 65 Social Justice, Audism, and the d/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and... 1491

The Deaf literary cannon has only recently begun to be recognized and studied, but it is already clear that novels, plays and theatrical presentations, and poetry in ASL are very powerful and of a very high quality (see Bahan, 1992; Peters, 2000). It is important to note that there is a fundamental distinction between individuals who happen to be deaf and who produce works of art (whether literary, visual, multimedia, or whatever), and those individuals who produce what is termed “Deaf Art” (see Sonnenstrahl, 2003). Several efforts have been made to articulate this difference and to provide opportunities for Deaf artists to perform and display their work. For instance, in the 1970s, in the midst of the rise of Deaf Art, Spectrum: Focus on Deaf Artists was started in Austin, Texas, and was able, under the Deaf painter Betty Miller, able to assemble some two dozen Deaf artists within a few years, leading to the establishment of the Spectrum Visual Arts Institute in 1977 (see Lane et al., 1996, p. 139). Later, the creation of the Deaf Artists of America in Rochester, New York, in 1985 made possible the presentation of more than 20 exhi- bitions prior to its closing in 1992 (Lane et al., 1996, p. 140). Perhaps the clearest articulation of the difference between Deaf Art and art created by Deaf people is that provided by the De’VIA (Deaf View/Image Art) Manifesto, which was written by eight Deaf artists at a four-day workshop prior to the Deaf Way arts festival held at Gallaudet University in May 1989 (Sonnenstrahl, 1996). The Manifesto argued that:

De’VIA represents Deaf artists and perceptions based on their Deaf experiences. It uses formal art elements with the intention of expressing innate cultural or physical Deaf experience. These experiences may include Deaf metaphors, Deaf perspectives, and Deaf insight in relationship with the environment (both the natural world and Deaf cultural environment), spiritual and everyday life ....De’VIA can be identiﬁed by formal elements such as Deaf artists’ possible tendency to use contrasting colors and values, intense colors, contrasting textures. It may also most often include a centralized focus, with exaggeration or emphasis on facial features, especially eyes, mouths, ears, and hands. (http://www.deafart. org/Deaf_Art_/deaf_art_.html)

There is also a rich tradition of stories and storytelling in ASL (see Krentz, 2000; Winston, 1999). To some extent, such storytelling parallels that found in other oral traditions, but there are also distinctive aspects of such stories in ASL. Apart from their focus on the DEAF-WORLD and Deaf people, and the history of the DEAF-WORLD (see Rutherford, 1993), such stories also include particular genres not found, for obvious reasons, in spoken language traditions. For instance, there are A-to-Z stories (also called ABC stories). Basically, as Clayton Valli, Ceil Lucas, Kristen Mulrooney, & Miako Villanueva explain,

In an A-to-Z story each sign represents one of the twenty-six handshapes in the manual alphabet, from A to Z. The stories cover a wide range of topics, including an operation, a haunted house, a romantic couple, a car race, and a basketball game. The transition from A to Z must be very smooth, as in a regular story. A-to-Z stories are not easy to translate into English since their meaning depends on the visual effect created by the alphabet handshapes. (2011, pp. 195–196) 1492 T. Reagan

There are also number stories, which are similar in format to A-to-Z stories except that they employ the numbers, using 1 to 15:

Number stories are similar in form to A-to-Z stories. Each sign includes a handshape that represents a number from 1 to 15 or higher. A clever, short, sharp, slap story, “Got it?!” starts with the sign for “hey you” made with a 1 handshape, followed by LOOK-AT-ME with the 2 handshape, TERRIBLY-LOUSY with the 3 handshape, and continues up to 11 where it ends with GOT-IT?! After several repetitions, the audience members ﬁnally understand what the narrator was trying to tell them about the hidden numbers and they nod, “Got it!” (Valli et al., 2011, p. 196)

The theatrical tradition in ASL is quite strong, in large part because of the active agenda of the National Theatre of the Deaf and of other historical theatrical groups (see Bragg, 1996; Corrado, 1990). Examples of plays that clearly focus on the DEAF-WORLD include such productions as My Third Eye (the debut production of the National Theatre of the Deaf), Sign Me Alice (a Deaf version of Shaw’s Pygmalion), and Children of a Lesser God. It is important to note here the difference between a theatrical production that is interpreted into ASL and one which is actually performed in ASL: interpreted performances are certainly of value in many ways (not the least of which is that that expose hearing people to ASL), but the nature of the performance itself is quite different from that of a truly ASL performance. Consider, for instance, Caliban’s line in The Tempest when he says, “You taught me language and my proﬁton’t is, I know how to curse.” In ASL, this would be interpreted YOU FINISH TEACH-TEACH ME LAN- GUAGE, ME BENEFIT WHAT? ME KNOW-HOW SWEAR. As Willy Conley has noted,

[This] doesn’t exactly capture the rich beauty of Shakespeare’s language, but at least it is practical enough to deliver the concept. The deaf audience member now has to ﬁgure out who said the line – was it Caliban, Prospero, or Miranda? Next, the line needs to be put into context. And then, very quickly, the audience member needs to look over to the group of characters to see what happened as a result of saying that line. Most good actors in Western theatre act on the line, so this bit of action gets ﬁnished by the time a deaf person’s eyes return to the stage. (2001, p. 59)

ASL poetry is another powerful artistic product of the DEAF-WORLD (see Low, 1992; Valli, 1990). Although difﬁcult, if not impossible, to translate adequately into a spoken language, the following translation of the beginning of the ASL poem “Windy, Bright Morning” by Clayton Valli may give some sense of what ASL poetry is capable of expressing.

Through the open window with its shade swinging, sunshine, playful, taps my sleepy eyes. [The hand, used to represent the shape, moves in a slightly irregular but not unpleasant rhythm.] (Quoted in Padden & Humphries, 1988, p. 104) 65 Social Justice, Audism, and the d/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and... 1493

Such poetry employs the structural components of ASL, as well as its visual and gestural nature, to essentially paint a picture or series of pictures in a way simply not possible in a spoken language. In addition, the use of ASL metaphors (see Taub, 2001; Wilbur, 1990;Wilcox,2000) further adds to the beauty and power of such poetry. Finally, there is visual Deaf Art. Products of visual Deaf Art can include photographs, paintings, ceramics, stained glass, and a host of other kinds of artistic production. A common theme in much Deaf Art is the punitive nature of much of deaf education historically. For instance, we might consider Susan Dupor’spaint- ing Pathology, in which a signing child is being punished. The theme of the oppression of deaf people by the hearing world includes a variety of styles, techniques, and images and transcends national boundaries. It is also a recurring theme, often focused on the denial of sign language as a language and the related denial of Deaf people as a cultural community (see Barton, 1997; Baynton, 1996). One of the most powerful images is a woodcut produced by David Bloch, a Jewish Deaf survivor of Dachau, entitled Crying Hands. Another theme in much Deaf Art is the explicit use of the hand(s), either as a central focal point of the artwork or in terms of the use of a particular sign. For instance, Dupor has used signs extensively both in paintings related to deer and other wildlife, and in a series related to hands themselves. With respect to the ﬁrst, we might consider her painting Fallen Deer, in which the signer essentially models the living deer through the use of sign. Another theme which emerges in much Deaf Art is that of the DEAF-WORLD itself. This theme can be seen, for instance, in Ann Silver’spaintingDeaf Identity Crayons: Then and Now, which contrast a medical-pathological view of deafness with a sociocultural one utilizing a box of crayons as its subject. Finally, there are in Deaf Art examples of more traditional artistic themes, albeit from a Deaf perspective. For instance, there are Nancy Rourke’spaintingofaMona Lisa signing DEAF, and Ethan Sinnott’s The Last Supper, which portrays Jesus’ last meal with his disciples from the perspective of a deaf outsider. As Sinnott explains this complex painting,

The moment during The Last Supper I have chosen to portray is Jesus’ revelation that he would come to be betrayed by one of his twelve disciples. Instead of the usual full-frontal and linear arrangement of the same scene found in Renaissance paintings, I set the scene up as if being observed by a deaf outsider in a hearing world. Jesus’ back is turned to the viewer, who cannot see his face and what he’s saying. The disciples’ violent, vehement protestations – as human nature tends to shy away from fallibility and culpability – become more mysterious, confusing even, with everyone talking over each other. Judas is not made so clear-cut; it could easily be a table full of Judases. This dramatic event, as it unfolds, is an absurd, bizarre spectacle to the deaf person who obviously cannot hear what is obviously being spoken. (http://www.deafart. org/Artworks/Deaf_Studies_VI_Artworks/deaf_studies_vi_artworks.html)

A similar painting is Mary Thornley’s Milan Italy, 1880, named in reference to the Congress of Milan which basically sought to eliminate sign language in deaf education, which is reminiscent of Goya’s Third of May, 1803, except that it is ASL itself that is being shot by a ﬁring squad (see Lane et al., 1996, p. 141). 1494 T. Reagan

Becoming Deaf

One aspect of cultural Deafness that is important to understand is that membership in the DEAF-WORLD differs from membership in most cultural groups in a key way for most (though not for all) of its members: the vast majority of deaf people become members of the DEAF-WORLD relatively late in comparison with membership in most cultures. (The exception to this generalization is found in the case of the children of Deaf parents, whose native language is ASL and who are essentially born into the DEAF-WORLD just as other children are born into their parents’ culture. This is true, incidentally, for both deaf and hearing children of DEAF parents; the hearing children of Deaf parents are commonly known as CODAs [Children of Deaf Adults]). This is the case because most deaf people have hearing parents and are introduced to the Deaf culture not by their parents but rather by peers, most often (at least historically) in the context of residential schools for the deaf. Further, membership in the Deaf culture is not really an “either/or” proposition: individual Deaf people identify as culturally Deaf in different ways, and to different extents. Perhaps the clearest example of this complexity is manifested in the case of the hard-of-hearing, for whom membership in the DEAF-WORLD is related to often conﬂicting attitudes about deafness itself. The extent to which the process of normalization of deafness to hearing norms is accepted or rejected is key here, as Stephen Nover makes clear when he notes that this process “leads many deaf children into wishing or thinking they will become hearing someday. Others prefer to be called ‘hearing impaired’ or ‘hard-of-hearing’ rather than deaf. Unfortunately, deaf and hard-of-hearing children may learn to view hearing people as superior to those who are deaf” (1993,p.16).The cultural and linguistic identity of individuals who are hard-of-hearing is, in short, both potentially and practically ambiguous (see Benson, 1981), as indeed is the identity of many other individuals who straddle multiple cultural and linguistic worlds, as do so many audiologically deaf individuals. It is this ambiguity that makes simple descriptions of cultural identity so misleading, not only in the case of the Deaf but with respect to virtually all minority cultural and linguistic groups (see also, for instance, Fordham & Ogbu, 1986; Motoyoshi, 1990; Ogbu, 1978, 1987, 1991, 2008).

The Duality of Deaf Identity

One interesting and important aspect of Deaf identity is that the individual is simultaneously required to function in and acknowledge the norms of two very different communities, the DEAF-WORLD and the hearing world. In other words, the idea that the deaf person can make a choice with respect to choosing to identify with the Deaf community or with the hearing world is in fact often something of a phantasm, since for the individual deaf person, both constructions of identity are necessary. There is a fundamental tension between identifying as a culturally Deaf person and being able to function in the broader hearing world, and to a signiﬁcant extent it is Deaf cultural identity that compensates for the challenges in trying to 65 Social Justice, Audism, and the d/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and... 1495 accommodate to the norms of the hearing world. This tension is one that often ﬁrst emerges in adolescents, as Annet de Klerk has pointed out:

For deaf adolescents, communication problems can easily lead to feelings of failure and isolation and a low self-esteem ... These feelings are likely to decrease or even disappear when deaf adolescents begin functioning within the Deaf community. It seems not unlikely that deaf teenagers will develop a double self-image – one that is based on their functioning in the Deaf community and one that is based on their contacts in hearing society ....(1998, p. 206)

Nor is it just adolescents for whom such a dual identity is a likely reality (see, for example, DeCaro & Foster, 1992; Kannapell, 1993; Kersting, 1997). In fact, such a duality of identity constructions is quite common among deaf individuals, who must in any event learn to function to two very different worlds. As Sharon Ridgeway has noted,

Identity development and the study of personality structures has been of great interest to educationalists, mental health service providers and researchers. The identiﬁcation of an emerging Deaf culture and establishing Deaf studies programmes has resulted in an increase in interest in Deaf identity issues. Identity is a complex construct and individuals are not limited to a single identity. Understanding identity constructs can be helpful in understanding identity development in others who experience deafness such as partially deaf (or partially hearing), deafened young people and may also be of use in understanding children of Deaf parentage and others who may have varying hearing status. (1998, pp. 13–14)

The relationship between the DEAF-WORLD and the hearing world is in many ways a paradoxical one. Not only do deaf people live their lives interacting with hearing people but as we have seen, the vast majority has hearing parents and will have children. At the same time, they believe (arguably very accurately) that both they and their language and culture are marginalized by the hearing world. The dilemma that this paradox creates is, as Padden and Humphries note, one between the drive for separation and the desire for inclusion: the idea of culture offers the possibility of separation and inclusion at the same time. Culture provides a frame for Deaf people to separate themselves from an undeﬁned group of those with hearing impairments, but at the same time, they are included in the world of human communities that share long histories, durable languages, and common social practices. Separation allows Deaf people to deﬁne political goals that may be distinct from other groups. Inclusion allows deaf people to work toward humanist goals that are common to other groups such as civil rights and access. In this way, the concept of culture is not merely an academic abstraction, but very much a lived concept.

Epistemology and the DEAF-WORLD

The recognition that at least some deaf people belong to a distinctive culture, characterized by all of the features that are normally associated with other cultures, is, then, really beyond debate. The DEAF-WORLD utilizes its own vernacular 1496 T. Reagan language, has a shared awareness of group identity and membership, distinctive behavioral norms, fairly endogamous marital patterns, a variety of cultural artifacts, a shared historical awareness, a network of voluntary social organizations, a distinctive worldview, literature, theatre, and poetry, a body of jokes and humorous stories, a literary canon, and visual art grounded in and devoted to the DEAF-WORLD (see Holcomb, 2013). Further, both as individuals and as community members, deaf people have been, and continue to be, subjected to discrimination, marginalization, social and educational efforts to assimilate them into the hearing world – which, from a Deaf perspective, is of course precisely what inclusive education is really all about (see Branson & Miller, 1993; Jokinen, 2016; Komesaroff, 2008; Mathews, 2017), and which also entails efforts to deny their language (Baynton, 1993, 1996; Reagan, 1989; Wineﬁeld, 1987), to impose state-sanctioned programs to sterilize or even kill them as less than fully human (Biesold, 2002; Ryan & Schuchman, 2002), and ﬁnally, as examples of an overwhelming kind of audism, comparable in many ways to racism, sexism, and so on (Bauman, 2004; Eckert & Rowley, 2013; Simms & Thumann, 2007; Stapleton, 2016). Indeed, some scholars and activists have begun to refer to Deaf people as “Sign Language Peoples”:

[There are] strong parallels between Sign Language Peoples (SLPs) and First Nation peoples ... SLPs (communities deﬁning themselves by shared membership in physical and metaphysical aspects of language, culture, epistemology, and ontology) can be considered indigenous groups in need of legal protection in respect of educational, linguistic, and cultural rights accorded to other First Nation indigenous communities. We challenge the assumption that SLPs should be primarily categorised within concepts of disability. The disability label denies the unique spatial culturolinguistic phenomenon of SLP collectivist identity by replicating traditional colonialist perspectives, and actively contributing to their ongoing oppression. Rather, SLPs are deﬁned spatially as a locus for performing, building, and reproducing a collective topography expressed through a common language and a shared culture and history. (Batterbury, Ladd, & Gulliver, 2007,p.2899)

The idea that in the DEAF-WORLD there are core differences in epistemology that would impact, among other things, teaching and learning is hardly a radical one, though it is somewhat more complex than might be supposed (see De Clerck, 2012, 2016; Moores & Paul, 2010, 2012; Paul & Moores, 2010, 2012a, b; Miller, 2010; Moores, 2010; Wang, 2010). To be sure, auditory differences between hearing and deaf children will inevitably impact learning and teaching, but the difference goes well beyond this:

Deaf epistemology constitutes the nature and extent of the knowledge that deaf individuals acquire growing up in a society that relies primarily on audition to navigate life. Deafness creates beings who are more visually oriented compared to their auditorily oriented peers. How hearing individuals interact with deaf individuals shapes how deaf individuals acquire knowledge and how they learn. Aspects of the Deaf episteme, not caused by deafness but by Deafhood, have a positive impact on how deaf individuals learn, resist audism, stay healthy, and navigate the world. (Hauser, O’Hearn, McKee, Steider, & Thew, 2010,p.486) 65 Social Justice, Audism, and the d/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and... 1497

An interesting example of how epistemological issues might impact the deaf child is with respect to what is called “DeafSpace”–an architectural concept that is based on deaf spatial awareness. DeafSpace was originally developed conceptually by Hansel Bauman, a hearing architect, as part of the DeafSpace Project in 2005 in collaboration with the ASL Deaf Studies Department at Gallaudet University. Basically, the core idea of DeafSpace is that buildings, hallways, and so on are/should be designed with ways of seeing and being in the environment that is characterized by deafness (see Bauman & Murray, 2017, p. 247). As Edwards and Harold have argued,

DeafSpace has emerged as a design paradigm rooted in an expression of Deaf cultural identity based around sign language, rather than as a response designed to compensate for, or minimise, impairment ...its principles are arguably rooted in notions of d/Deaf identity based around consensus and homogeneity, with less attention paid to the socio-political contexts which shape diverse experiences of deafness and the exclusion(s) of deaf people from the built environment. (2014, p. 1350, emphasis mine)

What is most interesting in this regard is that the nature of the Deaf epistemological framework is grounded both in the dominance of visual over auditory input and in the resistance of audism and audist perspectives on deafness. Thus, an ethno-epistemological approach to Deaf epistemology is necessarily physical and cultural and linguistic in nature. Furthermore, although it remains common to refer to Deaf epistemology, in fact what we are inevitably dealing with is Deaf epistemologies, since members of the DEAF-WORLD are also members of other groups with epistemological consequences – race, class, gender, sexual identity, and so on. Goedele De Clerck, in arguing that “Deaf epistemologies [are] a feasible alternative line of cognition and theorizing in an approach to science that is inclusive of gender, sexuality, class, race, culture, language, religion, and disability” (2012, p. 35) has identiﬁed the core questions that a Deaf epistemology would need to address:

• What is the status of (indigenous) deaf knowledge(s) versus science? • How can deaf knowers be conceptualized in science? • In what context are science and knowledge produced, and what is the value of science? • How do deaf people construct their knowledge? • Is it legitimate for deaf people to claim knowledge, and why? • How can the wisdom and knowledge(s) of deaf people, which have been marginalized, contribute to the well-being of deaf people and all people around the world? • Can deaf knowledge(s) be a source of inspiration for educational and social transformation? • How can research practice provide room for deaf knowledge and partnership? (2016, p. 35) 1498 T. Reagan

In constructing an epistemology that would address these (and other) questions, there are a number of important a priori matters that have to be raised. Deaf epistemology is concerned, in large measure, with the empowerment of deaf people and communities (De Clerck, 2012, pp. 19–20; Paul & Moores, 2012a, b), and therefore shares many of its characteristics with other ethno-epistemologies as they seek to overcome the legacies of colonialism (De Clerck, 2016, p. 37; for discussions of the concept and implications of ethno-epistemology, see Duncan (2005), García (2013), Maffie(2013), and Zambrano & Greenfield (2004)). Part of empowerment is the related struggle for equity and social justice, a struggle that is manifested in many ways and in many settings but in the case of deaf people, nowhere more clearly than in the educational domain (De Clerk, 2016, pp. 36–37; Hauser et al., 2010; pp. 29–55). In addition, a very important element in development of Deaf epistemology is the rejection of essentialism; that is, deaf people have incredibly complex, diverse, and multiple identities, and there is no single deaf experience (De Clerck, 2016, p. 36; Hauser et al., 2010). A recognition and willingness to challenge audism, whether in education, medicine, research, or public policy, is also a key element in the emergence of Deaf epistemology (De Clerck, 2016, p. 36). Finally, as is true of many other groups, there must be a sincere and full recognition of the life experiences of deaf people, a recognition that will undoubtedly prove to be difficult to accept for many well-intentioned hearing people.

Social Justice and the DEAF-WORLD

The case of the DEAF-WORLD presents a number of important challenges to many of the more common assumptions about issues of social justice. The Deaf community is unique in that its members have differential access to the society’s dominant language due not so much to social, economic, educational, or political factors, but rather to considerations directly attributable to their physiological condition (see Gregory & Hartley, 1991; Harris, 1995; Jones, 2002; Kyle, 1990; Lindgren, DeLuca & Napoli, 2008; Parasnis, 1998). As a consequence, two different kinds of rights are at issue when dealing with the DEAF-WORLD: compensatory rights, to which deaf people are entitled as a result of their audiological state, and human rights (including language rights), to which all people are entitled simply as a part of their fundamental humanity. Violations of both the human rights and the compensatory rights of deaf people are extremely common, occurring in a wide variety of contexts and settings, and taking many forms (see Burch, 2000; Branson & Miller, 1993, 1998a, b; Haualand & Allen, 2009; 2008, pp. 105–114; McKee & Manning, 2015; Skutnabb-Kangas, 2008). The need for sign language users to have mediated access to social institutions (such as legal and political institutions, healthcare and medical institutions, educational institutions, the media, and so on), and the shortage or sometimes even the lack altogether of competent sign language interpreters is one aspect of the way in which 65 Social Justice, Audism, and the d/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and... 1499 the linguistic human rights of deaf people are routinely violated. The historical lack of provision of educational services in the language of the Deaf community is an additional human rights violation. What is significant here is that different assumptions about and models of human rights can apply in addressing these violations of language rights – disability-based approaches to the rights of deaf people can be sufficient to ensure the provision of mediated access and can also provide limited justification for certain restricted sorts of official status for sign languages. Even in the educational sphere, disability-grounded approaches to language rights can provide a rationale for the use of sign language, if only as a means to teaching spoken languages. Such approaches, however, do not take into account the fundamental human rights of deaf people as human beings (as opposed to their compensatory rights as “disabled” persons), nor are they comparable to the linguistic human rights assumed for members of cultural and linguistic minority groups. This is an important point, since the current discourse of the linguistic human rights of deaf people does not adequately ensure the language rights of deaf children in educational settings (see Murray, 2015). Although well-intentioned, conceptualizing the language rights of deaf people in a compensatory manner is based on a profoundly paternalistic view of deaf people. Further, as Lawrence Siegel has argued in the case of the United States, such a view is not only unequal but is an unconstitutional understanding of both language rights and of the nature of the Deaf community:

It is my contention that the First and Fourteenth Amendments to our Constitution mandate that ... Deaf and hard of hearing children have that which virtually every other American child takes for granted – the right to exchange ideas and information in school – and that current federal law violates those constitutional rights .... Ultimately, I am arguing that the rights recognized under both the First and Fourteenth Amendments must be enlarged to include a right broader than freedom of speech – a right to access and develop communication and language. (2008, pp. xiii-xiv)

While many of the challenges to their rights apply to all deaf people, many of the most signiﬁcant are concerned speciﬁcally with educational issues. At the heart of issues of social justice for deaf children is the recognition that “without special arrangements, students who are deaf constitute an oppressed minority similar to a variety of language minority groups for whom standard education is inaccessible” (Stone, 1998, p. 171). This means that any approach to the education of deaf children must have the goal of empowering such students, or, more accurately and appropri- ately, assisting such students to empower themselves, both as individuals and as members of a larger community (see Komesaroff, 2008; Mathews, 2017; Zhenzhou Zhao, 2010). This is no easy matter:

The term “empowerment” is used to describe a process which is aimed at implementing the sense of an ability to make a difference or participate in change at the individual, group, and community levels. While leading towards this goal, empowerment should be treated care- fully in a way that does not entail paternalism nor lead to another form of social control over minorities and disadvantaged groups. (Al-Haj & Mielke, 2007,p.2) 1500 T. Reagan

As this suggests, a key component of such empowerment in deaf education is to recognize the historical power relations that have existed, and continue to exist, in the ﬁeld. As Linda Komesaroff has commented,

issues of power, control, and legitimacy are central to language practices in education ... deliberately or unwittingly, language practices are political acts that serve the interests of particular groups, often to the detriment of others. The way in which English is legitimized and perpetuated in deaf education is an example of the relationship between language and power. Hearing educators, who are members of the dominant group, have traditionally established English as the legitimate language for use in education. Doing so maintains the unequal position of deaf people in society and further disempowers them as they struggle to gain access to education. (2008, pp. 1–2)

Institutions designed to educate deaf children have for the most part been founded and managed by hearing people for the deaf. Important decisions about policy, teaching methods, curricula, and so on have been controlled by hearing people. To a consider- able extent, deaf people were not allowed to become teachers of deaf children, and there has been a decided lack of deaf professionals serving the DEAF-WORLD. There has also been an almost complete lack of voice about key issues affecting deaf people, especially in education. As Komesaroff has argued, “The system of education for deaf people has been dominated by, and suited to, the needs of most hearing educators. Control has been maintained over deaf people through ofﬁcial language policies and a system that is structured to advantage hearing teachers” (2008, p. 5). In short, in the case of the education of deaf children, the people who arguably have the best understanding of what being deaf means for everyday life, and who have developed the skills necessary for survival in the hearing world, have not been consulted at all about how deaf children should be prepared for life. Historically, large numbers of deaf children have been educated in residential schools for the deaf; most states had such a school. In recent decades, though, this has begun to change:

In the past decade or so several residential schools have been closed, others transformed into day programs, and others now serve a relatively small number of residential students on-site while providing statewide support services. Many day school programs in large cities also have been closed and students served in areas closer to home to meet least restrictive environment (LRE) and inclusion mandates. (Moores, 2009,p.3)

This decline in both the number of residential schools for the deaf and in the numbers of deaf students served by such schools is extremely important, since it has been in residential schools that deaf children “were extensively exposed to Deaf people and signed language” (Padden & Humphries, 1988, p. 5). The importance of residential schools for the deaf in the maintenance and transmission of Deaf culture cannot be overstated:

Next to coming from a Deaf family or a family with some ﬂuent sign communication skills, many view residential life as the ideal opportunity for students who are deaf to become familiar with and enculturated into the Deaf community. In the dining room ...students get 65 Social Justice, Audism, and the d/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and... 1501

direct and ﬁrsthand experience of true dinner conversation... because the language of the Deaf community, ASL, is used. In after-school activities students are on equal footing with their peer, and communication is not a barrier to social life ... The residential school provides a great opportunity for socialization and is a great environment for developing self-worth. (Gilliam & Easterbrooks, 1997,p.1)

The rise of inclusive education, whatever its beneﬁts for other groups, has constituted a major transformation in the education of deaf children, and one consequence of this transformation has been that the identiﬁcation of many of these children with the Deaf community may be weaker than that found in students attending residential schools. As a consequence, many educators concerned with the education of deaf children have been critical of inclusive education for deaf students, in some instances going so far as to discuss such programs as examples of epistemic violence. Jan Branson and Don Miller, for instance, have argued that inclusive education is, “oriented not towards the educational needs of the deaf but towards the reinforcement of the dominant ideology of equality of access to educational resources, an ideology which is in fact the foundation for the reproduction of structured inequalities” (1993, p. 21). In order to address these concerns, a very different approach to the education of deaf children is required. Such an approach would almost certainly need to include all of the following:

1. Regardless of the child’s individual linguistic background, for educational purposes, it would be assumed that his/her ﬁrst and dominant language would be ASL. This means that all classroom instruction would take place bilingually in both ASL and English, with a focus on literacy, signacy, and oracy, in that order (see DeLana, Gentry & Andrews, 2007; Gregory, 1996; Marschark, Tang & Knoors, 2014; Swanwick & Gregory, 2007). 2. All teachers working in the program would need to be fully functional in ASL, and hearing teachers would need to be fully functional in English, and would need specialized training for teaching English to non-native speakers. 3. Teaching methodologies would need to be designed with the special needs and requirements of deaf students in mind, and instructional technology would be utilized to maximize the learning of deaf students. 4. The relevant parts of the curriculum (literature, history, social studies, art, etc.) would need to be Deaf-centric and taught by deaf teachers (see Johnson, Liddell & Erting, 1989). 5. Literacy in English would be an important educational objective, but neither speech nor speechreading would be a focus of the curriculum. 6. Assessment in all curricular areas would need to be designed with the special needs and requirements of deaf students in mind. 7. The physical architecture of the classroom should be designed with DeafSpace in mind (see Edwards & Harold, 2014; Solvang, 2014), and classroom organi- zation should similarly be designed with the needs of deaf students in mind. 8. Efforts would be made to ensure that all students had frequent opportunities to interact with deaf adults, in addition to those employed in the school. 1502 T. Reagan

9. Helping students to become self-competent and empowered critical agents of change would be an important component of the curriculum. An important part of this empowerment would consist of preparing students to understand, recognize, and resist audism and ableism in appropriate ways (see Nichols, 2018, pp. 32–40). 10. Teaching students to be respectful of all adults and children, and ensure that there is no bullying in the classroom, on the playground, or anywhere else in the school environment. 11. Staff training and development would be a key element of the school’s strategic plan, and this training and development would be largely determined by the identiﬁed needs of the classroom teachers themselves.

Underlying many of these requirements for a socially just and educationally effective approach to deaf education is the recognition that, as Danielle Bouvet has argued, “While true bilingualism is linguistically harmless for ordinary children, it is linguistically necessary for deaf children. Only through bilingualism can deaf children acquire speech naturally, for it exposes them to a visual language in which they do not experience any limitations in the language acquisition process” (1990, p. 135, my emphasis).

Conclusion

Writing about children of color in early childhood education, Michelle Salazar Pérez and Cinthya Saavedra point out that discussions about such children almost always begin by focusing on problems and perceptions of the deﬁcits that such children face. If we take the liberty to making a few small changes to a key passage in their article, changing “children of color” to deaf children – a perfectly reasonable change, I would argue – the result is an extremely powerful social and educational argument:

The brilliance of [deaf children] is rarely positioned as a starting point for discussion in early childhood education studies. Even when research and pedagogy involve working with historically marginalized youth, it seems that the conversation typically begins with matters of intervention ...What if we, instead, centered the extraordinary and necessary contributions of [deaf and other] marginalized children to society? What possibilities to disrupt and transform inequities in early childhood education and beyond can occur? (2017, pp. 1–2)

In this chapter, it has been suggested that the response to this question can be found by taking into account the case for an anthropologically, sociologically, and historically grounded conception of Deafness, and what such conceptions might mean for a commitment to social justice for the education of deaf children. It has been argued that there are two fundamentally different ways in which deafness can be conceptualized: as a pathological medical condition and as a distinctive linguistic, cultural, and social identity. The characteristics and attributes of the Deaf cultural community have been explored: the role and place of its vernacular language (ASL), 65 Social Justice, Audism, and the d/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and... 1503 the awareness of group identity shared by its members, its distinctive behavioral norms, its endogamous marital patterns, the cultural artifacts that are most closely associated with it, its shared, insider historical knowledge, the network of voluntary social organizations that Deaf people have created and maintain, the body of jokes and humorous stories popular in the DEAF-WORLD, and finally, the literature, theatre, poetry, and visual art that has been produced by its members and which are reflective of its core values and concerns. The case for the existence and implications of a distinctively Deaf epistemology has also been explored, and the implications of such an ethno-epistemology for deaf education have been offered. Further, it has been suggested that access to ASL and preparation for future membership and participation in the DEAF-WORLD is the most appropriate objective for education. Such an objective is, to a significant degree, incompatible with the goals of inclusive education and requires a very different kind of education. In short, different ways of conceptualizing deafness lead to fundamentally incompatible approaches to addressing both the needs of deaf people in general and the special needs of children in deaf education in particular. ASL is in no way inferior or second-rate in comparison to a spoken language; it is different, to be sure, but every bit as complex, sophisticated, and expressive as other languages, and fully meet the needs of its users – and this is a claim that should no longer need a defense, for ASL or indeed any sign language. Further, many deaf people are members of a distinctive and well-established cultural community, the DEAF-WORLD, with its own norms, standards, expectations, beliefs, and attitudes. For many deaf children, access to ASL and preparation for future membership and participation in the DEAF-WORLD is the most reasonable and appropriate objective for education. Such an objective, however, is to a significant degree incompatible with the goals of inclusive education and requires a very different kind of education. To deny deaf children the full, complete, and appropriate education to which they are entitled is indefensible for social, political, ethical, and educational reasons – not to mention for practical and pragmatic ones. The deaf deserve to be empowered, and as Nelson Mandela once commented, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

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