Monolingual concerns

The history of Deaf education in New Zealand has heavily influenced attitudes by the Deaf community towards Oralism and technology advances like cochlear implants which would seek to 'fix' the Deaf person.

A speech therapy lesson:
trying to learn when you can hear neither
the example, nor your own attempt.

For almost 100 years, Deaf education focused solely on teaching deaf children speech and lip-reading, which could be a hugely frustrating and fruitless task if they didn't posses any residual hearing. Real education was sacrificed in pursuit of learning speech, and as a result they often experienced worse educational outcomes than hearing peers. Putting children in situations in which they're expected to learn using a sense they don't possess, and then judging poor outcomes as failure on their part, seems extraordinarily cruel. It is also widely accepted that in any child, repeated experiences of failure have a negative effect on self-esteem and self-efficacy, i.e. the child's belief about their capacity to succeed.

While pure Oralism has not been the recommended approach for Deaf education in New Zealand since the 1970's, the belief that allowing a deaf child to learn sign language will damage their English acquisition and assimilation with hearing peers prevails amongst much of the medical community. Keep in mind that this belief was at the cutting edge in the 1880's, and dismisses numerous examples of evidence during the past 133 years which strongly suggest to the contrary. This belief is often passed onto parents by the 'professionals' when their child is identified as deaf, and when we consider that around 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents, it is likely that most of those parents haven't had exposure to the Deaf community and are unaware of alternative options than those presented by medical specialists.

The introduction of cochlear implants (CIs) added a new dimension to an already complex debate. On the surface there are compelling examples of CI 'success stories', but looking deeper they are not always the miracle 'cure' they're often portrayed to be. As well as the health risks associated with CI surgery (including bacterial meningitis), implantation is only the beginning of a long and challenging journey. First the CI must be individually programmed, and then begins Auditory Verbal Therapy (AVT), a process to make sense of the sound they're perceiving, which can be a long, unpleasant and sometimes fruitless journey, for both the child and their family (who must take on the primary teaching role). Being aware that CI outcomes differ substantially between individuals according to a range of factors, not all of which can't be predicted, shouldn't we be strengthening chances for success by arming people with multiple tools to succeed?

Rudimentary consideration of sign language considers it a tool for those who don't experience the expected success with CIs; comprehensive consideration strongly suggests that there are numerous benefits to using sign language regardless of CI outcomes.