Loretta was my classmate at the Lexington School for the Deaf from 1967 to 1973. She was an intelligent student with an expressive face. We went our separate ways in the Fall of 1973 when I was mainstreamed into the New York City (NYC) Public School System.
What is so special about Loretta? We shared the same teacher, Mrs. Lois Holland.1 She recommended that both of us students be mainstreamed into a ‘regular’ school, that is, a school for the hearing. My parents and I agreed with Mrs. Holland’s recommendation, and I was mainstreamed there in the following year. As for Loretta, unlike my parents, her parents were Deaf, and rejected Mrs. Holland’s recommendation. Consequently, she continued to attend Lexington.
I then lost touch with Loretta and the rest of my classmates until the beginning of my matriculation at Harvard. When I visited Lexington, I was happy to see most of my old classmates. However, I did not see two of them – they left school earlier. One of them was kicked out due to her violent nature (first as a student and again as an employee) and the other dropped out because of her two pregnancies.
I saw Loretta two more times after I graduated from Harvard. The first time was in NYC when young d/Deaf adults gathered to celebrate the New Year. At the same time, I was becoming fluent in American Sign Language (ASL), due to my times at Crossroads, a bar in Boston where d/Deaf and hard of hearing adults would meet once a week. At the New Year party, I saw a few of my Lexington classmates, including Loretta. The meeting was brief. Several years later, when my wife Denise and I were residing with our two young daughters in Bethesda, Maryland, there was a city-wide Halloween event for the d/Deaf near Washington, DC – that city had probably the largest d/Deaf community in the nation. Lo and behold, I met Loretta there. We chatted, and I learned she had her own family with kids older than mine. It was a much more fun event than the one in NYC, not because we were older and wiser but also because we saw so many people whom we had known before. We exchanged our email addresses, and I first wrote to Loretta, “it was great to see you after so many years.”
When she responded to my email, I was rather saddened. Her reply was nice, but her level of English wasn’t what I expected because Mrs. Holland fought for both of us to enter a school for the hearing – she believed we could learn more elsewhere.
That’s when our parents put Loretta and me into separate paths. Since then, I have spent more time in the d/Deaf community, and I have appreciated more the linguistic and cultural differences between the d/Deaf and Hearing worlds. One major difference is the use of written/reading English, whose levels among the d/Deaf are quite below the national average. One could argue that this statistical difference might be biased against the d/Deaf and/or their educational approaches2 and that educational opportunities have improved for d/Deaf people (especially children) since the groundbreaking Gallaudet President protest in 1988. These arguments are beyond the scope of this blog, though I could add that English is a written language and ASL is a visual, but not written, language.
Let me explain my sadness over Loretta’s writing. It’s due to my awareness of differences between English and ASL. If I were still a young adult, I would say Loretta should have gone to a school for the hearing over her parents’ objections and would have better educational and professional opportunities. But now I recognize the importance of the ties that Loretta has with her own parents as well as that she has with her Deaf community, where almost all members communicate in ASL. That’s where she and her husband started their family. In short, she has developed a sense of belonging to both her community and family, an advantage that I myself could not have fully developed.
There is absolutely no right or wrong decision for either of me or Loretta on deciding whether or not we ought to go to Lexington or to transfer to a school for the hearing. It all depends on the situation in which each of us was placed. I don’t know Loretta well enough to speak for her, but, as I implied above, she has been deeply rooted in Deaf culture, starting with her Deaf parents. As for me, I was already vocally communicating with my family and wherever we went. At that time, I was the only deaf member of my family – I already had (and still have) a loving support system in my family. I felt that life was more than just Lexington School for the Deaf, representing a microcosm of Deaf culture, despite Lexington’s policy against ASL at that time.
As most of you would agree, the world is a tough place to live in. Certainly, more and more people are becoming more aware of and showing more respect towards people with disabilities, but the chances are that many more people will never have an opportunity to meet, much less emphasize with, a person with a disability such as hearing loss. As a result, I would rather be a chameleon in both d/Deaf and Hearing worlds – to be able to communicate with anyone and to be able to explore more opportunities one could have if one had lived in both worlds than in one or the other world.
In closing, I would like to point out that my goal is to obtain more professional opportunities. This has been fraught with problems because some people do not embrace my desire to succeed outside the Deaf world, but I’ll save that for a future blog.
References
1Mrs. Lois Holland at the Lexington School for the Deaf – Welcome (the-eagle-ear.com)
2Redeafined: Debunking the “Fourth Grade Reading Level” Statistic
Henry thanks for sharing can you elaborate on the kind of opportunities that you are talking about?
That’s a very good question, Yvonne. The opportunities to which you are referring include those Loretta would have gained if she had gone to a school for the hearing. She might have significantly improved her English and enhanced her ability to communicate, and she might have gone to a college with a stronger emphasis on education and even on certain types of profession (in which she could have been pursued after school). With that in mind, she could have influenced and/or impressed more people outside the d/Deaf world. But then, she would have fewer ties with the d/Deaf world in which her parents had resided for most, if not all, of their lives. She would have more troubles with those who have been deeply entrenched in the ways of living in the d/Deaf world. That’s what has happened to me, but that’s beyond the scope of this reply.
I can give you a good example, but you may have already read it — He is not Deaf – Welcome (the-eagle-ear.com).