Are CIs improving public attitudes towards deaf people?
We fail to see how the implant boom is improving public attitudes towards deaf people or ASL or the Deaf community at all. Indeed, we see signs of a backlash. It s so ironic at a time when more and more hearing high-school and college students are enrolling in ASL classes, and a number of scholars and laypeople are showing increased interest in and appreciation of Deaf issues, there s a redoubled movement to close down the schools for the deaf, reroute all deaf children into mainstream public-school programs, and to “fix the problem” with implants. When oral/aural and sign-language programs are competing for governmental funding, which one is going to get it? What s the real motivation of those who oppose childhood implants? Do Deaf people oppose CIs because they need to recruit deaf children to keep the signing community viable? Opponents of the Deaf community like to accuse Deaf people of wanting to keep deaf children deaf to maintain a population base for the purpose of perpetuating
