ASL extra credit 2 PDF

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Jonathon Dobie Drucie Ronchen ASL- 103 May 26, 2017

ASL extra credit 2 Over the course of the year, we learned a lot about the culture of deaf people and of the language but not much about societal facts of the deaf community in the scope of the United States. I have become curious about the percentage of the population that is deaf or extremely hard of hearing, how many deaf people are born to hearing parents and if that affects the rate of deaf children put up for adoption compared to hearing. I also was interested to learn about hearing people that grow up in a deaf household and how that changes their experience in both cultures. Facts that I was able to find are that about two or three in every thousand children born in the United States are born with a detectable level of hearing loss in one or both ears and that more than 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents. Two of every thousand was actually a surprisingly low number to me for the fraction of deaf people in America, I expected somewhere around 1 or 2% not .2%. Since so many deaf children are born to hearing parents, I wondered if that caused an increased percentage of the number of deaf children up for adoption, because the hearing parents do not know how to raise a deaf child. I was not able to find many statistics about the percentage of deaf children that are put up for adoption, but I did find several deaf orphanages both in the United States and other countries around the world.

That tells me that there is at least an awareness on behalf of deaf children that they will have an opportunity to be taken care of no matter what their situation is. If there is a deaf child in need of somewhere to live, there is an opportunity for them to find a family, or the minimum a place to stay where they can be with others that understand their deaf lifestyle. Next, I researched hearing children that a born to deaf parents, “CODAs”. These children are typically raised in a deaf lifestyle, attending deaf events and become part of the community by nature. These children are also hearing and attend hearing school and must learn to become part of the hearing world through their interactions with people outside of their family. They can often be torn between the two different cultures that they are growing up in. At a young age they are looked to as an interpreter for their parents and some can become to feel like a translator more than a part of either community. For those CODAs that experience a pull between two worlds, there are groups that bring them together with other people that have experienced similar struggles growing up. Not by any means do all CODAs experience a difficult time adjusting. Learning two different cultures as well as one can is an advantage to many CODAs, it makes them a more rounded person with more chances for experiences and a perspective on the world that makes them a unique thinker and an asset to have in groups. Overall, what I learned in my research is that the deaf community may not be as large as I was thinking it is, but it is every bit as strong as I was picturing. Even the ability to hear cannot separate a person with a deaf family from feeling that extremely strong connection....