When going through their Facebook feed, the average person finds happy videos or funny sayings that their friends have found on the Internet. Yet one of the most common of the “happy” videos I have seen lately are of people hearing for the first time. If you google “hearing for the first time,” you get over 6,840,000 results. To many, seeing these videos for the first time would seem like a wonderful thing to behold. Yet after being an American Sign Language (ASL) student, you learn these videos are not all that they are portrayed to be by the media. Students who learn ASL and were taught by a Deaf teacher, or those who are active within the Deaf Community have been taught about the trials that have been overcome as well as being faced by the Deaf community. You learn that there is a strong resistance within the Deaf Community to hearing devices like the cochlear implant.

Facts that are portrayed by the media and medical professionals are in many cases for their benefit, and are not always the best option for the patient involved. The purpose of the cochlear implant is to bypass damaged hair cells and help establish some degree of hearing by stimulation to the hearing (auditory) nerve directly.

Requirements for the surgery?

Cochlear implants are normally used on those who have profound hearing loss, do not have any benefits to hearing aids, and are at least 2 years old.

What can they do?

• Best-case scenario, patients can hear sounds from medium to loud range.
• Allow someone who has profound hearing loss to possibly hear the sound of their parents' voices for the first time, or again, if hearing loss happened later in life

Risks?

• (FDA.gov) lists injury to the facial nerve, meningitis, cerebrospinal fluid leakage, infection, tinnitus, reparative granuloma, and those are just a few examples. The FDA also lists 21 other side effects that someone who has a cochlear implant can have

The media's portrayal of the surgery…

• Helps a deaf person to feel “normal” in the hearing world
• “Allows them to have “independence”
• Allows them “To be able to speak and communicate”

Why this portrayal is false...

This is my biggest pet peeve about the cochlear implants. People push these implants onto those who are within the Deaf culture or the parents of a child who is Deaf by telling them that if they have the surgery, then they or their child can communicate with others and be able to speak. Which is not always guaranteed. Yet, my opinion, and that of many others who have been around the Deaf culture, is that the parents or those who decide for these children to have the surgery are in many cases lazy and or ill informed. They are taking the choice from their child by having the surgery, as well as taking away their identity to be a Deaf person and learn the culture that they were born into. Parents are told that they were giving their child the best for their future by having the surgery, but they are deceived, because those who are deaf can have a “normal” life. These children, or anyone for that matter who is Deaf, does not have to be able to hear to communicate with those around them; they do not have to be able to hear to be an independent person or to hold a “normal” life. I know many people who are deaf and they can and do everyday things just like someone who is hearing can; they just do it differently. An article came out about a study done in 2010 that showed that 75 percent of children who are Deaf can not communicate with their parents due to the parents' lack of learning sign language. Along with writing in the statistics the Anonymous writer said:

'New studies have revealed that the vast majority of parents to Deaf children do not learn to become fluent in sign language... No one can blame the parents though, given the difficulty of learning American Sign Language (ASL).'


An outraged reader responsed:

"Are you kidding me? You can't blame parents because it's tough? If a parent of a hearing person chose not to speak to their child that would be considered neglect and state social services would have the child removed from their home. If the parents only spoke 75% of the time and failed to have full conversations with their children it would be considered neglectful.
If a parent of a deaf person is UNABLE to become fluent in ASL due to a learning disability, or a disease that inhibits their ability to sign, that's excusable. Aside from that, let's not let parents off the hook for their neglect just because it's "difficult"."
-Anonymous User

Lies and or excuse like above, that have been portrayed as good, are what upset those who are involved or members of the Deaf Community. The community has a strong pride in its culture and all that has been achieved by it, yet when medical specialists push for devices like a cochlear implant, they get defensive because the main thought is that science is trying to "fix" who they are. People are not broken because they cannot hear, just like people who have dwarfism, or blonde hair, blue eyes, tall or short are all not broken, it just makes them who they are, a unique individual.

I may not be deaf myself, but being an ASL student has really opened my eyes to what all this culture has gone through to get to where they are now. Subjects like cochlear implant surgeries and videos like the “hearing for the first time" videos have become a strong interest of mine. When I first got involved in learning ASL and went into class for the first time, I learned that my teacher was Deaf, and the only way of communication in the classroom was by signing and in some cases writing. This was a very scary thought to have to wonder how I would communicate with my teacher. The one form of communication that I knew so well was being stripped from me.

As one of my ASL teachers said, “What if the roles were reversed? What if being able to hear was considered 'wrong,' and being Deaf was 'normal' or 'right?' Would you like it if someone decided when you were young or before you knew what all that was involved, to take away your hearing?” If the answer is no, then why would you promote something that is similar? So the next time that you see a “hearing for the first time” video, think about what you are seeing and what you are sharing. Are you really promoting something great and amazing or something that you do not fully understand? The problem in the matter does not come from someone deciding on their own to use a hearing device, but when the choice to use one of these devices is pressued on to someone or completely taken from them, especially when those impacted are children.