Deaf Versus Hard of Hearing
updated Nov 2001
Our Use of Labels Depends on our Previous Experience
I consider anyone who needs
hearing aids to be deaf, and anyone who can get along but has trouble
hearing to be hard of hearing. My son's teachers of the Deaf were most insistent that my child was hard of
hearing, based on the audiogram. My familial use of the terms clashed with the
teachers'. The teachers were unaware that my grandfather was deaf.
My grandfather and my father play with my music boxes in 1952.Photo by
Max or June Sauer of Max Sauer Studios, Montreal. from family album made
by June Sauer for our family.
My Grandfather used an Ear Trumpet and a Hearing
Aid in the 1950's
My grandfather, E.M. Morgan MD graduated from Queen's University. He spoke classical Greek and Latin, and was a doctor, a homeopath and a roentgenologist at the
beginning of the 20th century. He had a large general practice in
Westmount, Quebec and was president of the Medical College of Canada from 1933-36.We do not know why he was deaf at the end of his life.
He may have had one deaf ear all his life.
My father, George S. Morgan MD CM, believed the improvements in "Hi
Fi" industry during his lifetime(1900-65) meant that hearing aids
were functional. Dad bought new hearing aids for his father, and was
disappointed and angry when Grandfather preferred his ear trumpet.
Capital D is used for members of the Deaf
Culture
The Deaf consider sign language the equivalent of
English or Spanish, and request that we use "D" to respect
their culture. Otherwise deaf is used with small case
"d".
The Deaf child went to the school for the Deaf. means a child who is
a member of the Deaf culture went to a school for members of the Deaf
culture. The deaf child went to the school for the Deaf. means a child
who cannot hear went to a school for members of the Deaf culture. The
deaf child went to a school for the deaf means a child who cannot hear
went to a school for children who cannot hear.
Hearing-impaired uses a hyphen. My son is hearing-impaired covers all
the bases. I know people who think this is a nice way to say deaf and
talks, or not absolutely deaf. Personally I hate the word impaired, and
never use this expression. However it has no limitations in function and
can be used for any level from mild hearing loss to deaf.
Hearing-impaired is not used for Deaf people.
Hard of hearing is not hyphenated when used as an noun, and is
hyphenated when used as an adjective.
Not Deaf Enough: raising a child who is hard of hearing has
no hyphen.
The hard-of-hearing child was mainstreamed, and called "Stonehead"
by his friends. I am not sure whether it should be "Stonehead",
"Stone Head" or "Stone-Head".
My son is Deaf and Hard of Hearing
He refers to himself as hard
of hearing because he is in school and that is what he hears from the
teachers. The peer group does not get around to all those words...Other people use hard of hearing as
their euphemism for deaf.
Great
importance was attached to the labeling by degree of hearing loss, from mild,
through moderate, through severe, through profound. This caused additional
divisions in a group which should be unified by the challenge of deafness. An
elitism was built into " how deaf the child is." To think about the
ramifications of teaching spoken language to deaf children, it is understandable
that the challenges were perceived as greater with each step up the deafness
ladder.
In 1986,
the hearing aids were not as effective as they are today. And nobody understood
the implications of earshot for the child at home. My son's first BTE for his
deafer ear quacked for three years. I kept taking the aid in for repairs because
I could not understand how a child could learn English from hearing "quack,quack,quack."
Functionally to reach the level of deafness in his deafer ear, the hearing aid
must produce a lot of sound.
The
bureaucrats assessed the statistics of deafness, and set levels of intensive
support only under profoundly deaf children. A line was drawn on an audiogram at
70 dB. A child with a threshold over 70 dB was called deaf, and a child with a
threshold under 70 dB was called hard of hearing. The deaf children, roughly 1
in 1200 were provided with support and special schools.
At the
bottom of the group are the largest group, the children with mild hearing
losses. Many of these children have conductive losses which are considered
curable by the medical profession, hence not even a need for speech assessment.
A great deal of this thinking went into producing expectations for specific
children by the generalities of all the other children who had the same level of
hearing loss. This was a big waste of time and energy for us, and we spend our
lives fighting the results of this work.
A child
who has a hearing problem needs to have regular professional speech assessment
of his or her speech, not merely expectations based on other children with the
same degree of hearing loss.
"All
Alone"
The
exclusion of hearing plurals, tenses for hard of hearing children has made
school and social events difficult to impossible. Many hard of hearing children
go off by themselves, even my own child. I know, anecdotally, of under-serviced,
or undiagnosed kids with mild hearing losses who are alcoholics as adults
because they cannot function well enough to be just one of the gang. And I have
heard from their mothers who did everything within their power to make it
better, broken marriages, and depression, and economic depression. Often the
hard of hearing child was supervised by a doctor who did not send the child for
audiology or hearing aids.
If
a child has any question of hearing loss, the child should see an audiologist,
as soon as possible.
According
to Carol Flexer, we are now intellectually dividing the audiogram at 70 dB. A
threshold over 70 dB is deaf, and candidate for a cochlear implant, and a
threshold under 70 dB is hard of hearing. This is a good development because it
automatically removes the divisive mild, moderate, severe progression of
terribleness. Today it is trendy to be hard of hearing.
Library
of Congress
My book,
in the Library of Congress is under hearing-impaired. I asked the Library of
Congress why they used hearing-impaired as a classification instead of hard of
hearing. They told me hard of hearing was a pejorative term!
