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Do You Hear What I See: Learning Experiences of Black Men who are Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Clark, Mavis A. |
| Copyright Year | 2002 |
| Abstract | The purpose of this study is to examine how non-hearing adult Black male learners understand their learning and schooling experiences. In order to understand their educational experiences, I am reconceptualizing the triad race, gender, and class paradigm by introducing the notion of deafness. I bring to the fore, a discussion on positionality and identity development as it relates to nonhearing adult Black male learners within the adult education context. Introduction Non-hearing adult Black male learners are uniquely positioned within the learning and schooling context because of their multiple and intersecting memberships with the Black American and Deaf communities and disabled groups which are all marginalized in this society. Non-hearing adult Black male learners are further marginalized because our society operates with an ableist, audist, and racial paradigm. Mitchell and Synder (1997) contend that an ableist paradigm maligns disabled individuals as more abnormal and are subsequently distanced from individuals who are normal or meet the dominant ideology of normal. With this view, deafness is considered a disabling condition rooted in the ableist paradigm. Deaf author Katherine A. Jankowski cements this argument as she discusses the impact of audism in our society. She contends that audism is the hearing society's systematic practice of discriminating against the natural language of Deaf Americans (Jankowski, 1997). She argues that audism can be best understood when connected to the 'isms' of our society (i.e., racism, sexism, and heterosexism). These two converging paradigms (ableism and audism) are produced and reproduced in our schools. They serve as contributing sociopolitical variables that perplex and complicate the educational process of non-hearing adult Black male learners. Contextual Background A census taken in 1852 documented that there was one Black Deaf person per 3,000 free Blacks and one per 6,500 among Black slaves that could be accounted for (Moores & Oden, 1977). The low incidence of Black Deaf people could explain why very little information existed about them and their educational history during that period. However, it is more likely that the educational experiences of both Deaf and hard-of-hearing African Americans were subsumed with hearing Black people, whose learning needs were simultaneously being oppressed, suppressed, or denied (Anderson & Grace, 1991). After the Civil War, many Black Deaf people continued to be barred from attending special schools for Deaf Americans. Gradually, thirteen states established special schools for Black Deaf people. Many of these schools were located near Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) (Gannon, 1981; Hairston & Smith, 1983; Lane, Hoffmeister & Bahan, 1996). But non-hearing adult Black male learners' learning and schooling experiences were constrained because it took place alongside blind Black students, hearing Black students, and/or deaf/blind Black students (Gannon, 1981; Hairston & Smith, 1983). It is not known how successful non-hearing adult Black male learners' learning experiences were, nor how their hearing loss was accommodated within a classroom that had a range of sensory differences. The most thorough account about the experiences of Black Deaf Americans can be found in “Black and Deaf in America, Are we that different?” authored by two Black Deaf authors, Ernest Hairston and Linwood Smith (1983). They document that Black Deaf Americans were denied equal access to the same educational experiences as White Deaf Americans, forced to attend segregated schools, and often graduated with “a second to fourth grade achievement level or less” (p. 11). Furthermore, the schools where Black Deaf people attended (along with other schools for Deaf learners) were prohibited from using sign language to educate Deaf learners. Sign language had been prohibited as a result of the Second International Congress on the Education of the Deaf in Milan, Spain, 1880 (Brill, 1987). Influential oral advocates (i.e., Alexander Graham Bell) vehemently opposed the use of manual communication and worked to have it repressed as a primary language for Deaf people (deLorenzo, 1987). The net affect nearly obliterated Deaf signers' natural language – American Sign Language. But the congress' most telling affect was the elimination of Deaf educators from the educational terrain in the United States. For nearly one hundred years, the oral method would dominate the educational process of teaching non-hearing learners (Turkington & Sussman, 1992). The heavy reliance upon the oral approach placed the education of Black Deaf people at a severe disadvantage. Many of the teachers lacked the professional training in the oral method to teach Black Deaf students. What education that did transpire was vocational in nature. Unlike their White Deaf peers and regardless of their age or mental intelligence, Black Deaf learners were placed in service vocational programs (i.e., barbering/beauty culture, dry press cleaning, shoe repairing, and printing press) in order to learn a trade or profession (Hairston & Smith, 1983). On the larger sociohistorical landscape, the education experiences of Black Deaf learners continued to be compromised due to intersecting and overlapping sociopolitical factors. First, racial inequities continued to permeate the learning and schooling process for all African American learners (Harley, 1995; McCarthy, 1990; Omi & Winant, 1994). Secondly, as schools began to incorporate sign language as a pedagogical tool of instruction for Deaf learners, so too did the debate re-emerge about its appropriateness in teaching spoken English language, literacy skills, and writing. This debate dwarfed the dismal educational conditions that non-hearing adult Black people already faced within the learning context. Third, the hearing Black American community was besieged by its own particular needs of survival and the elimination of discrimination and racism, and did not concentrate on disability issues affecting Black Deaf members. Similarly, the disability community failed to concentrate on problems affecting minorities with disabilities because they too were occupied with general disability issues, (i.e., access to health insurance, personal assistance services, etc.), (National Council on Disability, 1993). Contemporary Issues in Deafness There has been a long-standing issue of incompatibility between Deaf learners and educational institutions borne out of a difference between two conflictual communication modalities. The conflict between the two communication modalities is a manifestation of the medical or clinical paradigm, which continues to fuel our society's audist view towards deafness. The clinical paradigm assumes that hearing loss is pathological and can be cured and/or remedied. Its' guiding principle is to enable Deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals to “function like a hearing person in mainstream society” (Paul, 1998, p. 21). Contrasting with the clinical paradigm is the radical view posited by Deaf scholars and those who support the Deaf community (Davis 1995; Jankowski, 1997; Lane, 1992; Lane, Hoffmeister & Bahan, 1996). Philosophically, they argue that the clinical paradigm promotes a deficient view of Deaf people and rather seek to depathologize it by situating deafness within a sociocultural and linguistic paradigm. Thus, deafness is conceptualized as a social identity marker instead of a disability. The term Deaf is capitalized and is representative of a people within a community who share at the core an etiology, a visual language, social and behavioral norms, and advocacy for political rights for Deaf people (Scheetz, 1993). Deafness and Adult Education The field of adult education embodies an extensive discussion about learning theories and motivation and barriers to participation (Merriam & Caffarella, 1999). However, Deaf adults are atypical of the learners described in the numerous participation studies, and the barriers they face are little understood by adult learning theorists. These barriers are erected upon discovery of a hearing loss through an unintended but systematic process. The causal agents of these barriers are human, physiological, and psychological in nature. The human barriers are the Deaf and hard-of-hearing child's parents, hearing medical professionals, social services agencies and educational institutions that may view non-hearing people through the clinical paradigm (Meadow-Orlans, 1990). The physiological nature of these barriers are attributed to the age of onset of hearing loss, age when hearing loss was discovered, amount of residual hearing, nature and amount of communication in the home with parents and family, and the family's attitude toward hearing loss. The psychological nature of these barriers can be attributed to the amount of time, energy, and resources (e.g., speech therapy, personal, and mental health counseling, spiritual and religious guidance) family members spend seeking solutions to a problem they view as detrimental in a hearing society. The combined effect and impact on the non-hearing adult learners serve to delay their introduction to language (i.e., sign language or speechreading), school choice (i.e., residential schools, mainstream, oral, or self-contained education), and subsequently, learning (Meadow-Orlans, 1990; Scheetz, 1993). Adult education literature has not examined the above issues because scholars and theorists are predominantly hearing and are unfamiliar with how the educational process currently affects non-hearing adult Black male learners. Issues of sociological impact of acquiring a hearing loss, different or incompatible communication language modalities (sign vs. spoken language), mismatch of pedagogical approaches (i.e., manual communication vs. oral approach), and delayed introduction to language have not been examined with respect to the adult learning context |
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| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
