Bioecological Model Of Deafness Analysis

In Mark Drolsbaugh’s book, Deaf Again, he is able to bring the reader through his life struggles and triumphs as a member of the Deaf community. There were three major themes that reoccurred throughout his life. These themes consist of communication barriers, a negative image on deafness, and limitations on social experiences. An example of communication barriers starts in the beginning with his birth. From the beginning, he talked about how his parents struggled to communicate with the doctors when the epidural was not administered properly or when the anesthesia machine was not working. This communication barrier caused his mother to go through a natural birth and almost lose her life because she could not tell the doctors that something was wrong. Under the circumstances that Drolsbaugh’s grandparents did whatever they could to preserve his hearing this left him with feelings that deafness is bad. This notion fostered a negative self-image. Due to Drolsbaugh’s loss of hearing he had a hard time making meaningful social connections. This affected him greatly in his dating life. As he talked about in the book he dated a girl who was hearing but could sign for three years until they broke up. He said how he tried to hold onto that relationship because he knew that there are not many girls that he knew at the time that could sign and be able to communicate with him fully. This affected him socially with friends as well.

In the same way that no two individuals are alike, nor are any two families with deaf or hard of hearing members. Due to the various ways that hearing loss can occur, the occurrence of hearing loss in any one family can vary. There are families with deaf parents and hearing children. There are families with deaf parents and deaf children. There are families who have never encountered a deaf or hearing impaired person that suddenly have a child who is deaf or hard of hearing. Hearing impairment affects different families in different ways. Many believe that families where both parents and the children are deaf or hard of hearing have an advantage, because the parents are already a part of the deaf culture and thus their children are born into the community. Meanwhile, hearing parents who birth a deaf or hearing impaired child have to adjust to a new way of relating to and communicating with not only their child, but also with those involved in the rearing of that child. Fortunately for these parents, organizations like the Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing exist to provide these families with resources, funds, and education to help them tread on unfamiliar territory. These kinds of organizations connect all families who have members with the disability, and no matter the family dynamic, there are resources for them to take advantage of, including legal aid. As seen in the short clip from the Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, early childhood, around the time of

The Deaf community contains the basic characteristics of any particular ethnic group, despite the attempts from hearing people to destroy their culture through medical interventions. This community contains members who share a feeling of community. They value recognition by others and self-recognition (Lane). They feel strongly identified in their group, as they create a family environment, which provides support for each of its members. Moreover, the Deaf community has a set of norms for behavior. In decision-making processes, they try to agree on the course of action to take through consensus and not just by individual initiatives. Allegiance to their culture is also another distinct value that characterizes the members of this community. People with hearing impairments have the “highest rate of endogamous marriages of any

This Is What It Is like to Be Deaf from Birth is a story about Cristina Hartman, explaining her personal experiences with a profound hearing loss (becoming deaf). Throughout Cristina’s experiences she explains, that being born deaf is quite normal; in other ways, it's not. She talked about things she did that were “normal” such as playing sports, playing with kids in the neighborhood, joining a sorority in college, and talking back to her parents. But with experiencing “normal” things she had to experience situations that were not normal, such as having to learn ASL, becoming a part of the schools deaf program, and identifying herself into a culture other than her parents. Early in her childhood, Cristina got a cochlear implant. The implant

Mark Drolsbaugh’s Deaf Again book gives a detailed account of his experience with becoming deaf in both a hearing and deaf world. It includes the awkwardness and un-comfortability he felt in hearing environments, within is personal family dynamic and in deaf safe havens where he learned to adjust, and grow for the betterment of him learning ASL and in general, becoming emerged within Deaf culture. Drolsbaugh starts the book off by introducing how life for deaf people, even when giving birth, can be a struggle (due to society not being well informed on how to effectively communicate and treat Deaf individuals). Drolsbaugh’s mother, Sherry, wasn’t properly given epidural while giving birth to him, and as she made noises to best express that something was wrong, the nurse brushed it off. Once Mark was born, and Sherry got up the needle wasn’t in her back but on the bed. Looking at how communication issues can lead to negative results, throughout the rest of the book Drolsbaugh sheds light on this phenomenon, specifically focusing on the educational environment and the interactions between and among hearing and deaf communities.

American Annals of the Deaf is an educational journal that is committed to providing educational experiences of high quality as well as related services for the deaf. This journal has been around for over 150 years, and over time they have been dedicated to making sure that children and adults who are deaf or hard of hearing are receiving quality assistance for their disability (NEED CITATION). In July 1996, they published a scholarly article in response to a survey Catherine Gillespie and Sandra Twardosz conducted about the literacy environment and different practices that children are receiving in a residential school for the deaf.

My overall position is that Cece’s partial deafness does affect her ability to develop relationships with her family and friends. My first claim is that Cece doesn’t have good friends and finding friends is what the stories about. My second claim is that Cece can’t make friends as well because she is deaf, and can’t hear them well. My third claim is that Cece’s ability to make friends is cut short by her deafness. These are my reasons for believing that Cece’s partial deafness does affect her ability to sustain her relationships with family and friends.

My perspective on hearing loss as a disability or difference that is always on my mind and I never thought to be deaf or hard of hearing as a disability. One day, in the classroom at the University, a professor was discussing the list of disabilities. My interpreter asked me a personal question, “do you think you're deaf as a disability?” honestly I have paused and made me pondering for a few seconds. “Yes, I am deaf, and I don’t think myself as a person with a disability just because of hearing loss. However,

Ryan noticed that although other scholars had interviewed deaf survivors, there were several others who had not received the opportunity to share their recollections on video. The author writes, “The experiences of deaf people, who are often overlooked and underserved because of communication barriers, have been difficult for most historians to include. But the fact that people with physical and cognitive disabilities were selected for forced sterilization, marriage prohibition, and ultimately extermination was all too logical an outcome of Nazi racial theories and widely held eugenics beliefs” (Ryan, 2005, p. 44). Schuman and Ryan visited Canada, eight European countries, and cities in the United States to attend deaf community conventions in a search for witnesses. Ultimately, the researchers made some contacts through their affiliation with Gallaudet University, which is the only liberal arts college for deaf people in the world. Because Schuman is a CODA (child of deaf adults), his association with other CODAs allowed them to discover a group of deaf Jewish survivors in Budapest, Hungary. Schuman and Ryan then interviewed a dozen survivors over the duration of five days.

Kleinman’s questions are more applicable to deaf people in general who are more in favor of and interested in improving their hearing through hearing aids, cochlear implant, and/or speech therapy. Therefore, they would be more likely to answer his questions even though they do contain the term sickness as these people are more to likely view deafness as a disability compared to people who strictly identify themselves as a part of Deaf culture. Also, Kleinman’s questions can be especially applicable for hearing parents with deaf children who want to raise them as hearing children. According to the ninety percent rule, ninety-percent of deaf children have hearing parents and ninety-percent of hearing children have deaf parents (Sparrow 141). Since hearing parents want to raise their children in the hearing culture, it is ideal for them to be able to utilize Kleinman’s eight questions as a means of providing a way for their deaf children to improve their hearing through hearing aids, cochlear implants, and/or speech

There is no time better than now to be Deaf because of American Sign Language (ASL) being viewed as a respectable foreign language, the access to interpreters, and increased opportunities for hearing people with deaf children.

In the journal Science, Technology, & Human Values, Laura Mauldin (2014) , a sociologist at the University of Connecticut, writes about how deafness is much more easily treatable and therefore attitudes around being deaf are changing. She talks about how parents parent deaf children differently, and how now there is a much more modern attitude towards deafness. She also touches on how criticism of the deaf community has arisen due to their

The deaf community does not see their hearing impairment as a disability but as a culture which includes a history of discrimination, racial prejudice, and segregation. According to an online transcript,“Through Deaf Eyes” (Weta and Florentine films/Hott productions Inc., 2007) there are thirty-five million Americans that are hard of hearing. Out of the thirty-five million an estimated 300,000 people are completely deaf. There are ninety percent of deaf people who have hearing parents (Halpern, C., 1996). Also, most deaf parents have hearing children. With this being the exemplification, deaf people communicate on a more intimate and significant level with hearing people all their lives. “Deaf people can be found in every ethnic group,

There are approximately 35 million people with a range of hearing loss in the United States (Hamill & Stein, 2001). Roughly half a million deaf people don’t consider their deafness as a disability or medical disorder. They view their deafness from a cultural perspective. They consider themselves a pride in being deaf. Deaf culture has its own social norms, views, values and historical figures and more on identity formation (Hamill & Stein, 2001).

Medical professionals all over the world have paved the road for further research and technological advances in the hearing impaired spectrum. Implantations, such as the cochlear implant (CI), have given patients with profound sensorineural hearing loss newfound hope for habilitation and rehabilitation services. However, “there exists a small subset of deaf individuals who will not benefit from the CI due to (1) a small or absent cochlea, (2) a small or absent auditory nerve, or (3) injury or scarring of the inner ear or auditory nerve secondary to meningitis, trauma, or tumor” as stated by Kaplan et al. (2015). A treatment option for those who did not meet the candidacy qualifications for a cochlear implant needed to be implemented.