Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha’s Vineyard details the history, etiology, and ethnography of deafness on Martha’s Vineyard between the seventeenth century to the death of the last inhabitant in 1952. Nora Ellen Groce, the author and principal investigator of this study, richly details the lives of both deaf and hearing inhabitants of Martha’s Vineyard by referring to the remaining documents and interviewing several current residents who at the time were in their eighties and nineties. The residents, or in Groce’s terms, “informants”, were most helpful and enlightening in that many shared stories and memories of several of the deaf inhabitants. Not only does Groce use an oral and historical approach to studying the history of deafness on Martha’s Vineyard she also includes the genetic component as well and describes certain medical anomalies such as birth trauma and the theories of Mendelian genetics. This report addresses Groce’s analysis of the medical etiology of deafness, attitudinal differences between the mainland and Martha’s Vineyard on being deaf, and the lifestyles of Martha’s Vineyard residents that coincide and contrast with the mainland inhabitants. This report will also address the improvements and .
Groce’s genetic analysis includes the use of family pedigrees and Mendelian concepts, otherwise known as the recessive gene, in tracing the etiology of deafness on the island. After tracing many family pedigrees, including the first deaf inhabitant Jonathan Lambert, Groce finds an interesting connection that plays a role in the passing of deafness from generation to generation. She theorizes that “…the genetic mutation [deafness] must have first occurred in someone who lived in the ...
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...tching” when sharing a raunchy story is also another example of “Deaf Gain”: “If there was a bunch of guys standing around the general store telling a [dirty] story and a woman walked in, they’d turn away from her and finish the story in sign language” (67). Interestingly, Groce notes in her book that, with the advanced funding of attending the first public school for the deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, “deaf Vineyarders were better educated than their hearing neighbors” (78). This observation shows how patience and acceptance towards deaf individuals within a community makes a difference in outcomes of education. Overall, the island between the seventeenth to early twentieth century carried this inclusion policy for all deaf and hearing inhabitants to follow, whereas in the mainland the majority of the population followed the policies of exclusion, unfortunately.
Although both his parents could sign, he was raised without learning how to because his doctors told his parents and grandparents that they were afraid signing would interfere with his speech and interfere with his learning and education because he would no longer try and use his speech and hearing skills. Mark talks about his struggles faced while attending different schools and just not being able to understand people because all he can do is read lips which was especially difficult when he wasn’t familiar with the movement and pattern of the person’s lips. He also talks about the schools he attended and how they affected him in different ways and how kindergarten at the Henry H. Houston School made him feel out of place because he wasn’t able to sing along or hear any of the music in class. Then, in third grade he switched schools and attended the now Plymouth Meeting Friends School and thought it was going well until another boy kicked a football at him and knocked him to the ground causing him to lose his hearing aid battery. Another school experience he didn’t enjoy was at Germantown Friends School where Mark states 95% of the time he had no clue what was going on and that when the teacher was done lecturing he would scramble around asking for the assignment and had to learn how to do it on his own. He was so ashamed of being deaf considering that’s all his grandparents wanted to believe that
Linda Bove was born November 30 1945 in Garfield, New Jersey with to two parents who were also deaf. Growing up deaf herself, she used ASL her whole life. In the beginning, she went to St. Joseph School for the Deaf in Bronx, New York. Later, in 1963 she was fortunate to graduate from Marie Katzenbach School for the Deaf in Trenton New Jersey where she was surrounded by her pears which helped place the foundation for her success. Upon completion of Marie Katzenbach School, Linda later attended Gallaudet University and received her Bachelor’s degree in library science. While attending Gallaudet she was in several plays including The Threepenny Opera and Spoon River Anthology. After graduation she attended a summer school program at the National
Mark Drolsbaugh’s Deaf Again is a biography about his life between two dimensions of the Deaf world and the Hearing world as well as the implications he faced throughout his journeys’. Mark Drolsbaugh was born from two deaf parents and was basically forced to adapt to the hearing world even though his parents are deaf. When Drolsbaugh was born he was hearing, however, by first grade his parents and teachers discovered he was losing his hearing. As time went on Mark realized the issues he faced from trying to adapt to the hearing world. Mark Drolsbaugh quotes in his biography, “Deafness is bad. I am deaf. I need to be fixed. I must be like them, no matter what, because deaf is bad.” However, no matter what his family believed that he
Alice Cogswell - The Beginning of American Deaf Education - Start ASL. (n.d.). Retrieved September 19, 2016, from https://www.start-american-sign-language.com/alice-cogswell_html
James P. Spradely, Lynn’s uncle and co-author of this book, his perspective is also important since he does not live in the house with the family. His perspective is so different from what the family did on a daily basis. Being the reader, I could see how he was needed to help edit the book so that all the things that where important got put into the book so that the reader could see what it is like to have a child that does not speak. The learning process the family went through to see that not all children are the same. To find out that in Lynn’s case her native language is...
Throughout the ITP program and the lower level ASL classes the name Gallaudet is driven into our heads. We know of the University named after him and how he was the man to bring education to the Deaf in America. What was not before mentioned is that there were two Gallaudets. The first thing I learned from this book is the importance of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and his son Edward Miner Gallaudet. I fact I had believed for some time now that E.M. Gallaudet was this extraordinary man that everyone loved and the named a university after him. It is unfortunate that this was not made clearer in the past. Now all I see is a man who took the only path that he knew how to take.
In the book named “Deaf Again”, the author has discussed the life of the young deaf boy who was very
When it became obvious to his teacher that there was a problem, the school called Marks’ maternal grandparents, who were hearing. They didn’t contact his parents because the school had no system in place to make communication possible with the deaf, so they bypassed the parents and went to the grandparents. His grandparent’s reaction to the news was shock. Their reaction to his loss of hearing was the beginning of years of feeling inferior to hearing people and like a defective human being. Visits to doctors only confirmed to Mark that deafness was a horrible thing and that he had to do whatever he could to continue in the hearing world as best he could. He was given the distinct impression that something was terribly wrong with him and that he needed to be fixed, that deafness was a really bad thing. (Drolsbaugh 12).
Padden, Carol and Humphries, Tom (1988). Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
...at sign language was a last resort if the child did not pick up lip reading and oral communication. Thomas now met someone who signed and spoke and realized that signing is a language in its own and its importance to people who could not hear the oral language. This began their quest to learn sign language and use it with Lynn despite the school and public opinion.
In the following chapters, there is an extensive amount of knowledge to learn about how Deaf culture is involved in our modern world. The pages assigned give us an outlook of how Deaf people are treated in our daily life, and how we should learn from it. Its gives a clear line between what are myths and what are facts, to those who are curious about the Deaf community or have specific questions. This book has definitely taught me new things that I could put to good use in the near future. In specific chapters, my mind really opened up to new ideas and made me think hard about questions, like “why don’t some Deaf people trust hearing people,” or “do we need another ‘Deaf president now’ revolution?” I realized many new things in the course of reading this book, and have recommended this to my family.
At this time in history, those who were deaf were tried at best to be converted into hearing people. Doctors, speech therapists, and audiologists all recommended the use of speaking and lip reading instead of sign language. Since Mark’s grandparents were hearing, they were closer to the parental position instead of his deaf parents. His grandparents provided him with the best possible education he could get, startin...
Born hearing to deaf, signing parents, Mark gradually lost his hearing. Despite the fact that his deaf parents preferred sign communication, Mark was raised and educated without the use of sign language. His parents and grandparents were concerned that sign might interfere with speech and restrict his educational achievement. Although Mark became increasingly hard-of-hearing, he worked hard to "pass" as a hearing person. This ambition, he later discovered, actually constricted his development and limited the depth of relationships with family and friends. During these long years, he just "didn?t know what (he) was missing." When he later learned ASL, chose to mix with deaf people, and learned to perceive deafness as something special, his horizons expanded. He came to value communication and relationships above the things that seemed so important to many people, such as image, income, status, skills, religious background, or race.
Education in relation to hearing disabilities has markedly about-faced since the inaugural of the American Asylum for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb founded on April 15,1817 by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (Friend 2014). It has transitioned against residential schools to provincial schools implementation of deaf education ensuing an alteration in the manner in which hearing disabilities were appraised due to an influx of deafness found in children subsequently generated by an epidemic of rubella (Friend 2014).
The first time Kingston had to speak English in kindergarten was the moment silence infiltrated her world. Simple dialogue such as “hello” or asking for directions was hell for her because people usually couldn’t hear her the first time she asked, and her voice became weaker every time she tried to repeat the question (422). No matter what, speaking English just shattered her self-esteem.