Through Deaf Eyes

major funding for through deaf eyes is provided by this program has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities expanding America's understanding for more than 30 years of who we were who we are and who we will be the Annenberg foundation [Music] the National Endowment for the Arts the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you thank you I would drive you down on the freeway oh it was beautiful day all the birds were flying and all the birds were thinking you're the guy behind angry oh oh by the way I have a Mercedes 580 oh I wish and dump thank you very much with that car automatic Widow oh hey you what are you yeah when you talk to people who can hear and you asked them what do you think it would be like to be a deaf person them all if they're thinking yes well I couldn't with us can't can't can't can't can't they would start listing all the things they can't do and I don't think like God deaf people don't think like that we think about what we can do we sign we make movies we do stage performances we can write books but we make ourselves understood say the word airplane [Music] airplane [Music] let's take a quiz ready true or false all deaf people use sign language sign language is universal deaf people live in a silent world having a deaf child is a tragedy all deaf people would like to be cured and the answers are all going to be false [Music] there was a little girl a neighbor girl that came over and played with me and we use gesture with each other one time I went over to visit her and I saw her using her lips to communicate with her mother they weren't using their hands at all and so I ran home and I asked my mother what was happening why aren't they using their hands my mother said they're hearing and I said oh whoa what are we she said daddy and I are deaf you're deaf your brothers are deaf and I said is everyone death is that little girl the only hearing girl in the world she said no everyone else is like them and I said oh now I get it deafness is almost always one generation thick over 90% of all deaf people have parents who can hear and most deaf parents have children who can hear so deaf people interact on a meaningful and intimate level with hearing people all their lives yet most Americans have very little understanding of what it means to be deaf I was doing an interview once with CNN and a woman and I were getting ready getting our makeup ready and I mean it was live in front of millions of people I was ready to be interviewed everybody was in their positions and with 3 seconds before the light was to come on the camera the interviewer needed my attention and she said Marlee my dog is deaf like you and the next day I know the light is on the camera and there I am live and I'm thinking in the back of my head does she want to throw me a bone does she want me to identify with her dog I had no idea what the significance of that was people need to realize that we're normal don't just look at my ear don't look at it as a physical handicap we're normal really yes we do have some accommodations to be made to survive in a society where it's dominated by hearing people but at the same time if you were to come into the room and it would be full of deaf people then you would need the accommodation to 35 million Americans are hard-of-hearing to some degree of these an estimated 300,000 people are profoundly deaf deaf people can be found in every ethnic group every region every economic class some deafness is hereditary some is caused by illness or accident to be deaf is to be part of a tiny minority in a hearing world but it is far from the uniform and tragic experience that most hearing people imagine being what part of me something I have to deal with but nothing keep me from being happy it doesn't make me either happy or sad it's just like being a man instead of a women or being torn dead of jerks maybe a person can't see it is that normal maybe it is and maybe a person walks with a bit of a limp perhaps that's not but to one person and not to another what about left-handedness is that abnormal or is that normal we have two children we have Bradford here who's probably the only kid in town who can talk on the phone and play basketball at the same time he is our only hearing child he has to sign all the time because there's no one else in the family who is hearing our daughters 11 she's deaf we have just the two and we don't want anymore we have a boy and a girl and that's enough for us I guess we're the all-american family just the four of us it's a nice number today it's entirely possible for a deaf family to call itself an all-american family but that isn't how the story begins for centuries hearing people saw deafness as a horrendous misfortune when a Protestant revival swept through nineteenth-century America fervent Christians labored to bring the gospel to unbelievers but one group of souls seemed locked away forever from the Word of God most of the deaf people in America in the early 1800s lived in rural areas they were separated from each other they were isolated most had very little communication with the people around them deaf people had a limited understanding of what they could do of their own possibilities and people with deaf children really had no idea what their children could achieve very few Americans believed that deaf people could be educated at all until 1817 when a Connecticut clergyman named Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet discovered his mission in life to bring the gospel to people who could not hear in hartford he opened the first permanent school for deaf children in America with just seven students and a head teacher from France who is now a legend in the deaf community Lauren Clare was a teacher at the Paris institution for the Deaf and he was of an extremely well educated sharp witty man who was very very deaf and had been very very deaf since infancy one of the things that Claire brought to the United States was French sign language Norrell Claire taught using his hands he communicated with sign to Gallaudet the language was a revelation he called it highly poetical to Claire and to many deaf people signing was natural and practical Claire discovered that there were already some signs in use by some of his students Claire took his native French sign language and he blended it with a little bit of the signs that he saw students using here in the United States the result was an American sign language that spread west south as new schools for deaf children opened New York Pennsylvania Virginia Ohio Kentucky Tennessee Indiana Illinois in 1864 Abraham Lincoln signed a law founding the first college in the world for deaf students eventually it would be called Gallaudet University and all these schools used sign the deaf person is mute simply because he cannot hear hasn't been taught to speak a contradiction in terms a most illogical contradiction the deep mute speech sharpens may be impacted in April 1871 a bright young Scottish immigrant Alexander Graham Bell began teaching deaf children in Boston like Gallaudet he had a passion and a mission to bring language to deaf people nature inflicted upon the deaf child with one flaw one little flaw in perfect hearing but we deny him speech by not teaching him to speak society in general views Alexander Graham Bell as an American hero as the inventor of the telephone he was famous wealthy and influential his wife was deaf his own mother was deaf he was always associating with a deaf community he was a teacher of deaf children at a day school in Boston he was very familiar with the deaf world Alexander Graham Bell is a very important figure in Deaf folklore he offers an antagonist perspective because he's like the boogeyman and even though he's a great man in his own right he did put forth the idea that a life without signing would be a better life Bell thought that signing prevented deaf people from learning to speak so he was against deaf people using sign their natural language [Music] Bell believed that sign language marked him as different and kept them in the lower classes he believed that earlier in the 1800s sign language hadn't been their only recourse but now there's a better choice the technology to teach them to speak and lip-read the oral method Bell thought over a hundred years ago that if every deaf child received the right type of education and the use of the right technology those children could learn to use spoken language oral schools for deaf children opened in the late 1860's they did not teach sign and in fact outlawed its use instead they began speech training teaching deaf children to generate sounds to mimic the mouth shapes and breathing patterns of speech and if children knew what speech looked like the oralists thought they could learn to read lips this was an idea that divided educators of deaf children and it still does today here's one man's take on lip reading from audism by deaf filmmaker renee visco [Music] oh do you let me that's a very dangerous question well sorry this no no no no no no no I Monday here's look it's been hectic and we've had a lot of time to prepare but it's a take home but I mean we had all this homework and quizzes and stuff so I just lucked out I can understand people who stick directly to me in good life without too much background noise and a lot of what I do in speaking is arranging these circumstances that doesn't happen I don't hear things I can be tired of it can be taken without knowing but the other people are saying speaking lip-reading and participation in normal conversation was from the beginning the great goal of the oralist method in 1880 the method was endorsed by an important International Conference of educators in Milan Italy oralism was beginning to win schools for deaf children all over the United States started one by one changing deciding that their particular school was not going to use sign language in the classroom anymore they changed their hiring practices the teachers were forbidden to sign and the children were forbidden to sign after the Milan Congress the percentage of deaf teachers went way down because they couldn't teach speech those schools that were strong supporters of deaf teachers move them to the vocational programs to avoid the parents objections to them you those were the dark ages for deaf education in America they'll subscribe to two popular American movements that greatly bolster the oralist cause one was nativism the belief that the current flood of immigrants was threatening the American Way of life [Music] many people were immigrating to this country from Eastern Europe and southern Europe and this made a number of Americans very nervous ethnic groups often set up their own schools here they published newspapers in their native languages the deaf community too had their own newspapers their own schools and their own churches and used a separate language so people began to think of deaf people as an ethnic group a group that should be assimilated into the general population Bell was famous for going to school boards and state legislatures and arguing that American sign language was in fact a language borrowed from France sign language was not supportive of American society Bell was also a prominent leader in another movement that was newly popular in America eugenics the idea that planned breeding can improve the human race a defective race of human beings will be a great calamity Bell wrote we must examine the causes that lead to the intermarriage of the deaf with the object of applying a remedy he was an early eugenicist he was quite concerned that if the Deaf married other deaf individuals there would be an expansion of the deaf community he did not see this as a desirable thing he wanted to try to eliminate deaf organizations if he could find other ways to socialize deaf people among hearing people rather than deaf people I think that Alexander Graham Bell's greatest crime was keeping deaf people apart from each other it wasn't so much that he thought speech was important worse than that was that he didn't want deaf people to marry each other he didn't want them to be near each other he wanted them to be apart [Music] but deaf children had to be educated and the only practical way was in all deaf schools for the most part residential schools here deaf children played together shared stories invented games passed on unique customs and basic values even at oral schools students would teach each other signing on the slide it was all part of what would in time become deaf culture the schools for the Deaf really were the first place where deaf people came together and they shared their language they shared their culture they shared their stories about growing up at times they had to grow up quickly children were often dropped off at boarding schools without understanding what was happening many arrived without even knowing their own names from the age of four on up they might be away from their families for months at a time the first day at school my mother said Oh Bernard now you're in school and I want you to be a good boy work hard learn all you can and I said yes I understand but what she said goodbye and she gave me a hug and she turned around and left and I thought why and suddenly the superintendent took me by the hand and pulled me down the hallway well years later I spoke with my mom and said why did you leave me like that why didn't you sit and explain that this school was a boarding school and that I would stay there Monday through Friday why didn't you explain all that you just left and my mother said I know I just couldn't bring myself to say that and then I understood it was hard for her too when I went into the School for the Deaf I was about five and I was so thrilled to get mail a letter from my mom my favorite holiday was Christmas I always looked forward to the Christmas holiday my mother would write on a card only two more sleeps and you will be home it was counting the days for me to see how many days I would have to sleep at school before I was sleeping at home in the bunk bed with my brother so it helped me have a sense of counting down to the time when I would be going on the students always had each other it was like a big family and we learned a lot from each other maybe some things we learned were wrong and we may have had the wrong information sometimes but we were a family and some of us had no communication at home so we could share with each other advise each other help each other one tradition was a special sign that students invented for each other a sign they might keep for life their name sign [Music] when I got to the campus to the Alabama School for the Deaf I didn't have a name sign yet and after thinking about it for a while and this is pretty typical of deaf people they look to see what your character is how you behave a personality trait and then they give you a name sign that sort of ties into that particular trait that's unique to you well after time went by my friend said I got it I know the way you swivel your hips when you walk and so we're gonna give you this name sign so it went from my elbow down to my hip I didn't know I had that little bit of a swivel with my hip I thought I walked just like everybody else but that name sign was given and it stuck ever since students might sign to each other but not in class for most of the 20th century the vast majority of deaf teaching was based almost exclusively on spoken language [Music] you weren't allowed to use sign during class if you used sign during class you would be punished they would make you put on white mitts and they would have strings attached to them so you wouldn't be able to use your hands through I don't know take a parent at home and keep on talking it's just really that its purpose is to create a face piece when I went down to the basement and plain-clothed that electrostatic attraction me when I compared to kick whoo so this is curtain me you had me waving hands downtown [Music] many people don't realize that when children learn speech it's all repetition speech training over and over again think of all the time I spent on it when it could have learned other things be educated in other things I spent so much time learning how to talk how to say milk cat dog hours holding my face pushing my mouth making things go back and forth trying to make the right movements this is an M awful they've always been what's referred to as oral failures the technology of the day was limited and and those children may have had more difficulty developing spoken language over a period of a few months our class has been able to learn approximately 50 nouns now their skills are being advanced by writing and saying from memory write it even the adults today who talk about oral failures they are thinking about their own experiences going to the speech teacher or being at an oral School for the Deaf and not being successful and are really struggling to communicate right finish it you're finished you forgot okay sit down man I can say that I was considered a successful oral person for many years I was mainstreamed in a public school I was able to use my speech with my family and my friends I had a lot of speech training are you tearing aids and was trained out of Tory but in my mid-20s when I went to graduate school I was in graduate school I realized how hard I was working just trying to liberate it would just completely wear me out my oral abilities were limited I learned vocabulary in English but I couldn't speak it my parents were relying on my speech so I couldn't show them my intelligence you ask me these Pink's are you so I could demonstrate how successful I was there's an older person I understand that speaking throw in one way and that if I speak the other person hears me they assume that I don't need any sort of interpreting or any any kind of sign or anything like that there's they assume that I can hear them that's the problem with speaking it's a two-way communication that's why I don't I don't want people to assume that I can't hear them I can't it's much easier just to turn off my voice comfortable I've been hungry for information about that I've always wanted to be connected to people to humanity the matter by the table even with death and I'm very fortunate that higher the communication self to do so relatively comfortably I know that my speech is not exactly enormous but it's very unjust they interpret that cottony through situations in communicating with hearing people it's common for deaf people to talk about two worlds one hearing and one deaf at times these worlds seem to be two different planets and so a special notion has evolved in the deaf community a separate planet of sight without sound we have this planet which we call earth we spell it EA R th so it relates to the ear to speaking and hearing there's this other planet e ye th and that relates to the eye in the visual so there are two worlds I grew up on earth now I'm on this other planet e ye th a world where all these possibilities are open to me and now an attempt to reach the deaf planet destination is by deaf filmmaker Arthur lune [Music] but back in the early 20th century America was on the planet Earth not on the imaginary planet of eyath on earth discrimination against deaf people was so much a fact of life that by 1880 they had founded an organization to protect themselves the National Association of the Deaf in 1960 u.s. civil service flatly stated that it would no longer allow deaf people to work for the government so the NAD and its president prepared for battle George w veditz was the seventh president of the NAD he was loud forceful clear and not ashamed he got up and spoke out the fire Yvette it's launched aggressive grassroots campaign against the civil service decision letters poured in to elected officials after two years of protest Theodore Roosevelt repealed the guidelines deaf people had won the right to work for their country the deaf themselves fought shoulder to shoulder a proud veteran throat George W veditz was one of the most well known presidents of the National Association of the Deaf he was a beautiful writer a beautiful signer really a genius in every sense of the word george veditz knew four languages he raised chickens wrote poetry and worked as a printer teacher and newspaper editor he won horticultural awards for his dahlias at the Colorado State Fair and once earned a draw with the World Chess Champion in an exhibition match in 1910 he started yet another project making movies [Music] starting around 1910 the NAD produced films in an effort to preserve sign language shooting footage of signing masters they raised funds and then produced a variety of films that showed these masters telling deaf people stories [Music] before the invention of film when sign language was shown he was static a drawing that couldn't show the movement the deaf community finally had a way to show what real sign language looked like the NAD films were like all the other films from their era silent deaf actors were made for the medium they could play hearing characters or deaf ones [Music] silent film showed deaf characters as being dummies objects of humor but at least the deaf person could watch the film and understand it that was lost after 1929 a new era in motion pictures with the premiere of a jazz singers darling Al Jolson comes to the screen the transition from silent movies to talkies was a disaster for deaf people [Music] the talkies didn't change one thing deaf characters were still stereotypes Johnny Belinda won an Academy Award in 1948 the character Belinda is seen as this poor innocent weak woman her deafness makes her even more vulnerable the fact that this dummy character blossoms by using sign language was enough the deaf community was excited and proud of the film even though the the stereotype itself was was who was terrible Belinda searched ever searching for happiness and understanding but ready to fight with primitive fury I was concerned that my friends would see that character and think that all deaf people were like that Hollywood films weren't made for deaf people but they had been creating their own diversions for years deaf communities had theatrical societies literary circles masquerade balls organized debates sports teams and travel groups the deaf culture that had taken root in the schools for deaf children cropped up all across the country and deaf clubs for adults people came together to sign to help each other and quite simply to have a good time my parents were deaf my parents had many deaf friends they had an active schedule we went to the Deaf clubs went to deaf people's homes it was a natural community for me as a kid growing up [Music] like a kid who grew up in a immigrant family where many of the friends spoke a different language instead of speaking Italian our family spoke sign I love you I love George Washington I love my country too I love the flag the dear old flag of red and white and blue [Music] in Akron Ohio for example they had a football and baseball team that consistently trounced hearing teams deaf people were intensely proud of that accomplishment proud that their team could defeat a hearing one in broader society the status of deaf people frequently seemed inferior but here they could level that distance be seen as equal to anybody else Gallaudet had one of the first college teams in the Washington DC area and legend has it that in the 1890s deaf players made an innovation that would change the sport of football the team would get together and they would sign to each other and they realized somebody that they were playing against on a hearing football team knew sign language and could read their plays and so instead of just standing around discussing their strategy they stood together in a huddle deaf athletes were anyone's equal on the gridiron or the baseball field but this equality did not apply in the wider world most hearing people regarded deafness as a problem pure and simple and the general inclination was almost always fix it if you read and study the history of deaf America you'll find that some parents will try anything to quote cure their deaf child different ways for their deaf son to get to hearing back again most come on one doc who worked for every pain fight they would try to rub pain bring the deaf boy in the carpet pain would take off and do oops open the boy we'll get him back again a surprising number of American parents turned to aviation for a cure in his early career the pilot Charles Lindbergh charged $50 for what he called death flights but more often parents put their hopes in medicine strapped and put earplugs rubber caps in my years and then it was attached to hmm remote control or something increase and if medicine did not work maybe baseball mm-hmm maybe if Ferb can meet paper route the Bambino maybe a throne and get a feeling again the pain comes out heard me I shook hands I was thinking all right look hands with the baby but I never got my hearing back I was tough my aunt took me to this revival [Music] then they called me and took me up there and I stood there in front of the preacher and he touched my ear and just sort of shook and he started praying and shouting and shaking me I was so embarrassed I didn't know what the hell he was trying to do I had no idea and after a while he gave up later I learned that was my fault because he said I didn't have enough faith so that's why you're speaking to a deaf man today I'm a pop person who happens to be deaf I don't want to change it I don't want to wake up and suddenly say oh my god I can hear that's not my dream it's not my dream I've been raised deaf I'm used to the way I am I don't want to change it why would I ever want to change it because I'm used to it I'm happy Oh doctor came to us King said our baby might be able to hear my whispers oh for crying out loud we have two children who are tough I'm going to protect my child home even in the first decades of the 20th century deaf people wanted to focus on what they could do not what they couldn't in residential schools they were taught manual trades shoemaking woodworking printing frequently with great success when they encountered a problem they often came up with their own solution few companies would sell life insurance to deaf people so deaf businessmen founded their own company to do exactly that and when deaf people felt excluded from church services they held their own neither hear nor speak comes to the Evangelical Church of the deaf each Sunday to worship together the congregation through sign language brings new beauty and majesty to age-old Church rituals I was born hearing and then later I became deaf I started going to a hearing church to worship but I was missing so much when I found out about a deaf church I thought I'd try that and I saw the choir signing music and the drum and I felt so inspired the preacher was good and I could get worship here with deaf people it was a great change in my life most of the people who are deaf in the u.s. today are more typically like this church here average or poor working-class people and economic things are tough and by the end of the month it's tough here but at the same time this church can make a difference after church it kind of feels like a club good relationships close I can talk with all different kinds of people tell them how I feel my emotions get them out it's like a family good relationships a lot of love and sharing understanding openness from everyone but deaf society was like American society and that wasn't always good in 1925 after an african-american couple tried to attend the NAD convention the deaf organization explicitly banned black people from joining the ban was in place for 40 years [Music] in the south deaf schools like all schools were segregated for decades [Music] at the Black deaf school our black deaf culture flourished we had basketball games we had our dances we had black teachers moving then to the white deaf school we all used sign language but the signs that we're being used were very different the white deaf students would finger spell and then add some signs as a black deaf person they would look at my signing and say that doesn't look like what they did it's white deaf students and so I found myself humiliated I thought I was inferior and that somehow our signs were inferior to the worth signs that they were using and so I tried to put away my signs and instead adopt the signs that were used by that with the white students playground but deaf students black and white had many school experiences in common for one thing many had gone through the audiogram a test that measures the ability to detect sound air well and now an irreverent introduction to the audiogram listen by deaf filmmaker can be Kaplan I have one done every single year so if it doesn't make sense my audiogram reads at 90 and the left ear which is my good ear which means that if I ever have children god help him because I am and that means if I get an important phone call from the president she missed that one hands away and I'm not dead and speech and I wanna you know talk with you those Goods and weed a lot of people find it annoying especially when I'm eating and my jaw is moving a lot Nicholas one time to have a conversation with you and my jaw moves in it or when you are getting hot and heavy with someone and that's tough to go off again most people think when they look at somebody if they're winning hearing it in one of you not in the other they can heal and the hearing it that they're not wearing which is not always the case I've got a lot of people just immediately thought coffee to my idea at that point I immediately danced around and then immediately think oh my god what a freak and then with a mess the audiologist get your headphone project and the way he or she go that having you repeat the same left of words you've repeated all your life baseball hotdogs rainbow [Music] audiograms and hearing aids are relatively recent steps in the long parade of deaf technology predecessors included the ear trumpet the ear dome the vacu phone but deaf people were unable to use one piece of technology Alexander Graham Bell's invention the telephone years of its existence make girls come if you're sick go from your birthday can't go to look I remembered myself when I was when I was a young boy I was in college and my father had the heart surgery and I couldn't come notice at them many many stories of deaf people that didn't go to the person hacks no no Patti hope you can come on teach at the ends and I'm gonna be different varietals I'm also missing than they are to have attained and but I don't want to oppose already to use the phone and expert a so my mother or father motive my mother because my father uncomfortable calling for me I'm sorry to talk about a toy can because I can't explain me to my mother or my sister or product team a phone call and x-ray take me deaf people needed something that seemed like a contradiction in terms a deaf telephone in 1964 a California scientist took a shot at inventing that very thing Robert White Brecht was himself deaf a brilliant physicist he'd worked on the Manhattan Project he lived by himself in a house crammed with spare electrical white brick developed a way to make telephone communication visible using a modem and a teletypewriter it's okay it's it's on the keyboard we're doing a sound those sounds were transmitted through the telephone that's another learn another member to fight back to Bennet would with partners James Marsters and Andrew Sachs he tested the system at first all they got was gibberish then in May 1964 the teletypewriter printed out in clear English the first deaf telephone conversation in history it worked and deaf people began to build their own phone network one household at a time a person who type it so when I said each user needed to find a phone a modem and a teletypewriter this was not easy the teletype writers weighed about 200 pounds and most were owned by telephone companies which wouldn't give equipment away even broken down equipment but deaf people found their own locating office machinery and warehouse sales and scavenging teletype writers from scrap yards put them in [Music] between two communities correct and because we could communicate with deaf people who didn't have similar communication methods by 1982 the number of TT wise had grown from white Brett's initial two to 180,000 [Music] the tty was a giant step for deaf people but it was just the first one over the next 25 years they would be closed captioning for TV relay calls pagers and video phones technology was working for the deaf world when we decided to build here on the beach for our retirement house we decided that we wanted to have a house that was open and clear accessible and deaf friendly what makes it a deaf house it has to have a lot of open spaces it has to let people see each other every time somebody rings the doorbell the lights flash throughout the house technology has really had a strong influence on us now we can watch TV and see things that are captioned it's easier to sit down in our living room and watch TV then get in your car and drive to your local group where they had an old 60 millimeter projector to see a film now we will just turn on the TV and the captions are there the caption films are there it is great but it takes away from the fellowship New England does manufacture a variety of valuable products from inexpensive raw materials the making of tiny microphones to be used in hearing aids for deaf people is one of Camden's newest enterprise in the second half of the 20th century technology changed life for deaf people in that same era sign language made a stunning comeback the change began in 1955 when a young professor named William Stokoe came to teach at Gallaudet Stokke was a hearing man but his subject for research would be sign language a method of communication about which Stokey himself knew almost nothing we thought who the hell are you you don't know deaf people you didn't grow up with us you come from another University and you decide that you know all about sign language in fact very few people knew all about sign language hearing people considered it a set of gestures that conveyed only the simplest ideas many deaf people used it but they've been taught to believe that sign was a pale imitation of the spoken word I grew up oral until about seventh grade when I did see other deaf people signing I thought they were apes monkeys what's that funny behavior what are they doing why don't they just talk at Gallaudet Stokie observed sign language in the hands of masters [Music] he saw that students and deaf faculty we're not simply putting English words into signs there was nothing broken or inadequate about sign he wrote on the contrary it was a complete language of its own bill Stokke did something that shook people up he offered the idea that it was possible to have language in sign even deaf people themselves were pretty upset when Stokie had suggested that sign was a language they had really bought that idea that ASL was not a language William Stokoe was not the typical professor he wrote a motorcycle played bagpipes in the Gallaudet campus and stubbornly persisted in his research though he received little encouragement in 1960 when he presented his early findings on sign language structure he was criticized by the hearing faculty for taking sign too seriously and by the Deaf faculty for openly discussing a topic that many deaf people kept to themselves any of our deaf friends recall the embarrassment of signing in public they'd sign low or smaller if they went to a restaurant or to any other public place during our lives my wife and I were brainwashed we were made to believe that signing was a shameful thing in 1965 the team of William Stokoe Dorothy casterline and Carl Cronenberg published a dictionary of American Sign Language their dictionary was not alphabetical but visual arranging words by the signs hand shape location and movement we were perceived as the lunatic fringe Stokey wrote and we enjoyed that but their work showed beyond a doubt that ASL is a true language with its own structure and its own rules a language that uses the entire body and accommodates nuanced metaphor and even mistakes what's called a slip of the tongue and spoken language is in sign a slip of the hand the linguistic study of ASL that emerged in the 1960s and 70s helped the deaf community the Deaf education community realized that signing has an important place in the classroom deaf people use different kinds of ASL depending on the circumstances and people have their styles it depends on where you come from people from southern states have their own dialect and that dialect is different from the north the west or the eastern states and there are different signs in different regions and each region will have its own popular lingo as well people always considered my mother an aural success she spoke well and could write English fluently my father's speech and writing was not so good he was called an oral failure so they were quite different linguistically and we saw my father as a failure and my mother as a success growing up I thought of my father is not very smart and my mother is quite intelligent later I went to college and studied ASL grammar and structure when I went home and saw how my father signed I was astounded he signed beautiful ASL with grammatical features and structure exactly what I had learned in college my mother on the other hand had less of those features her ASL was so-so my father's ASL was outstanding his English was not great my mother's was better but all my life I'd thought of my father as a language less person the dumb one after learning about ASL I saw him completely differently people have recognized that our family had a unique style of sign language because we were so close to one another and they identified it as a soup alla family accent if you will [Music] I noticed there are some signs that black deaf people use that white deaf people would not use that black deaf people show more expression and physically get more into it like when they sign girl you see that with the head nod and a body language to reflect that and that's just a black way of communicating as opposed to hell while white person might say it just girl whereas a black person would say yeah girl I mean they really show that black way of signing and that comes through very clearly watching a person tell a story in American Sign Language is like watching a movie you can see this particular hand movement indicating a person walking a particular path and you can create dialogue by the way people use body shifts I gaze and head shifts special effects to you can actually do slow-motion so you see a lot of tech in ASL storytelling and film that are strikingly very similar and now a story of life and death in film and ASL vital signs by deaf filmmaker Wayne Betts your heart is having problems what only one week left to live the world stops making sense he sees the doctor talking to him and then he turns and sees the interpreter signing and then he gets up and walks out [Music] outside he sits down and wonders how am I going to tell my wife [Music] looking out over the rail of a bridge to the river below he turns around sits on the rail and he thinks I just let myself go [Music] falling for me [Music] sinking sinking blacking out suddenly he wakes up he looks over at his wife and she starts to wake up she says hey honey what's wrong with you I'm fine she gets up hurt and angry and she storms out he lies down but feels his heart his heart [Music] I've got it tell my wife but she's gone he rushes to the window and looks down he can see her taking off in her car he jumps into his car turns gets on the highway [Music] finally he sees her car but it's empty where is she he jumps out starts walking there she is my wife but my heart it hurts she gets farther and farther away he tries to catch up but he falls to his knees [Music] to the ground [Music] for decades deaf clubs had their own drama groups but they always played to an entirely deaf audience in the 1960s as sign language itself gained respect a startling new company began to perform in sign for the general public the National Theatre of the Deaf to be really dead I don't know it's not an easy question what would you miss most probably music I was born during the time of the Great Depression so many people were out of work my father and so many of his friends would sit and talk and complain expressed their frustrations in terms of looking for jobs and not being able to find any and discrimination against the Deaf these are dreams fantasies wishes and pressing memories I started to feel afraid for my own future Bernard's fears finding himself on stage what would become of me what would my life be like NTD was established in 1967 we had no idea what it would mean to us as deaf people and mean to hearing people in general no idea until we opened in New York and I read the reviews and they were all so positive at NTD we performed a lot of different kinds of theater from children's drama to Shakespeare but we created a new play my third eye by experimenting with our own stories to introduce the hearing audience to ASL we would sign three blind mice and we would invite people to learn how to sign it but that was too fast people weren't able to do that the whole play was built on our own dreams and memories and imagination it was easy for deaf people to follow because it was part of the Deaf world NTD introduced thousands of hearing people to deaf culture to the fact that deaf people had for decades shared language performance and even poetry which can be created in sign language or written first in English and then interpreted through sign I'd like to do a poem for you that I think is really evocative so very visual and the name of the poem is flowers and moonlight on the spring water evening river spring flowers moonlight stars by the late 1960s deaf people could claim a recognised language a renowned theater company and their own Technical College the National Technical Institute for the Deaf opened in Rochester in 1968 other colleges too began offering courses in Deaf culture and American Sign Language a while back I was teaching ASL and I noticed a sharp increase in hearing students coming in I was curious I said why do you want to learn sign language and they said oh I saw children of a lesser God children of a lesser God help me teach me love has a language all its own marlee matlin I was doing the stage production of children lessor guide in Chicago smaller role my agent called to ask me one question she said would you be willing to be nude and I had to think of a good answer I said I'm an actor go ahead as I said on the teletypewriter two minutes later she called back and she said you got it well first she was beautiful she had a good figure very attractive and she swam in the nude and boy people woke up and they realize that she's deaf but she does everything else I was really excited about the movie because it was the first time deaf people had had a star children of a lesser God was a seminal film for many reasons a deaf person had a leading role and use sign language throughout the whole film it also shows relationship of deaf people not just being in isolation by themselves but interacting with a community and a variety of different ways of use of sign language it was an important success for deaf actors but it had problems as well the some of the editing cut off signs and that was important because most of the films of children that were shown around the United States in 1986-87 didn't have captions when I got the Oscar it was great obviously it was great and I got a review from a few movie critics who said one would say that she was great she won the Oscar congratulations Marlee Matlin did great but it was a sympathy vote because essentially she's just a deaf actress playing a deaf role when I went back to the Oscars to present the Oscar for Best Actor by nominating the following actors for Best Performance in a leading role you have honoured each one magnificently the nominees for Best Actor you know most in picture ah I spoke the names of the actors the right person got up and got the award so I must have said something right many people had hoped that she would be a pioneer from our community that she would sign at the awards and that would impress the audience just a few days later there was a magazine and that magazine that said offensive and I was like what now I got used to hearing people making comments about me but now I was getting it from deaf people because I chose to speak and we all look to her for validation but when she spoke our hopes were dashed I wasn't thinking I'm standing in front of hearing people and I'm deaf and I'm Marlee Matlin and don't forget it I don't even think of it that way I was just a normal human being who was giving an award Marlee Matlin's decision to speak at the Oscars was controversial within the deaf community but in the wider hearing world her award was a symbol of the changing times for decades minorities in the US had been demanding greater rights deaf people now joined the struggle we rode on the wave of the civil rights movement to make some changes we had the right to education we had the right to interpreters we had the right to captioning and we need to be thankful to the civil rights movement the most significant civil rights struggle in deaf history began small with a group of young Gallaudet alumni who shared a dream a deaf president for Gallaudet there were very very few people who could envision having a deaf president of Gallaudet during the summer of 1987 when we knew the president was leaving we felt it would be a good idea to start talking about a deaf president to get the word out we looked at other universities such as historically black colleges their presidents were black and we thought well you know they're already doing it why can't we have a deaf president at Gallaudet some people said how could a deaf president be a good recruiter for students how could they do fundraising if they were deaf how would a deaf person be able to communicate well and so in a way they were asking questions about our own value and our own ability to get along in the world the crucial moment arrived in march 1988 the board of trustees had chosen three finalists one hearing to deaf but on March 6 the board made its choice the new president was dr. Elizabeth Sims ur the only hearing candidate as the news spread a protest began [Music] what everybody was mad we were ready to get arrested then Gary Olsen who was the former executive director of the NAD stood up and got everybody's attention and he said we're standing here in the middle of the street in the middle of the cold and we don't know what to do the board is over there at the Mayflower Hotel drinking their fancy wine eating delicious food and laughing at us talk about inciting a group of people then we just all started to move we didn't even know where the hotel was we had no idea where we were going we just came out of the front gate and started marching and the police kept coming up and saying you can't March you don't have a permit but we just kept on walking [Music] that was just mind-boggling to the board because we as a group showed up wanting an answer why did you pick dr. Zins er you say that the woman's answer is the best qualified I don't know what Gunther can do that King and person cannot do fine well exactly what I want you to try to give her a change let her talk to you a lot of student leaders started emerging when the protests began and they immediately went and hot-wired some school buses hearing people were shocked to learn that deaf people knew how to hotwire but they took all the buses blocked all the exits and flattened the tires what followed was the most celebrated event in deaf history for seven days the Deaf president now movement held rallies and press conferences took over the campus TV station and shut down classes the protesters controlled the campus even the vice president found himself locked out the board refused to change their minds but agreed to a public meeting with the students in the gym on Monday as soon as the Chairman James Spillman started talking dr. Harvey Goodstein cut her off and he said the board has not agreed to our demands there's no point in listening let's go and then the fire alarms went off there are a lot of lights it was noisy but for deaf people you know there was no noise it was just some flashing lights time to get out of the building and Spillman you could see Spillman waving her hand trying to get people's attention and they just ignored her and left and then she said how can you understand me with all this noise the world jumped into the wagon with us really that's what hit me the most I could see students faces you could see it in their eyes they just started to light up this is something we can do students were realizing wow the press the press actually showed up and listened to us and that's when I said oh this is for real what are you and other students going to do if the board does not change its mind and MS Ensor does become the president we will stay with our demands we will not give up we will not concede we do not feel at this point that we can compromise we have been conceding so many things for so many years that we feel that this time it's their turn to compromise and make the concessions they are not going to give in what will you do well at this point in time I am serving as president I came into Washington today not having anticipated taking on my response but when the newly appointed president came to Washington she could not set foot on the Gallaudet campus the protesters simply refused to budge are the students prepared to continue blocking the entrance we give up our soul in order to get I remember being interviewed by a reporter from Jerusalem and he wanted to know what was happening why we were doing this and I just said I'm doing this for my parents they have suffered they have been discriminated against and oppressed we tend to view the majority as being the oppressor in that they really don't want us to succeed but during that week during the protest ABC News took a poll and they asked people if they supported the protest they found 93 % of the population supported us 93 percent I have never seen 93 percent in a poll like that before this is where the American Postal Workers Union spans support came from all over groups across the country sent money and help three times please assign us three times [Music] [Applause] everywhere students shut down deaf schools even politicians chimed in Jessie Jackson and the Vice President George Bush sent letters of support we felt a real connection to the civil rights fight we even borrowed the banner we have a dream that came from the civil rights marches we were so proud to be able to carry that in Washington today some 2,500 jubilant Gallaudet students and their supporters rallied on Capitol Hill after forcing the resignation of the newly named president at the School for the Deaf Elizabeth and Xander resigned last night after being named at the post Sunday students shut the school down all week with their protest today they vowed to press for other demands today I submitted my resignation from the chairmanship of the Board of Trustees of Gallaudet University and from the board unconditional surrender after a nine-hour meeting the trustees accepted all the student demands DPN changed American politics people who were supposedly unable to handle responsibility had organized a powerful protest taken over a college and one two years later Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act a law that made it illegal to discriminate against people with disabilities it's interesting when I talk to my kids about what happened they were so surprised there was a hearing president and I'm like yes there was a hearing president all of the future presidents of Gallaudet will be deaf I would guess they'll all be deaf in different ways no one person will be tough and his or her way and another person will be deaf in his or her way and that's fine so I I work to encourage people to understand that there's not one way to be tough deafness in a sense is a pliable state a way of being that can be changed or shaped like a marshmallow and now that's my marshmallow by debt filmmaker Tracy solloway this is a standard story and this is my story but for 1964 my grandmother includes my mother to take me to see a doctor Anna you're blocking your sister's view Anna's not responding maybe something's wrong with her I've completed the physical examination on your daughter fortunately your daughter has difficulties with communication and show sign of cognitive impairment basically she's mentally there's nothing wrong with your daughter's behavior out of t anything walk with the child she will be fine ma'am go home there's nothing wrong with their daughter diagnosis show than their daughter is death Danny I'm started auditory and fish problems that may take years affected okay say the word airplane airplane say the word cowboy cowboy when I was 12 years old I had my first lumber party I tried to hide the fact of my deafness okay girls it's time to go to sleep I wanted to admit every death but I was afraid to show my proof stop it as I said I didn't yet know how to be death good morning boys and girl let begin with the aplenty Amelia did I want to have death time did I want to speak or Sun imagine by the way think [Music] by the way dad [Music] I develop my connections with people who know sign language that is my stuff inside and my marshmallow my friend today the parents of deaf children face some forbidding and agonizing questions how should we teach our deaf children to communicate what kind of school should they have should we put our faith in technology Juliet failed the hearing screening in the hospital they said she wasn't hearing up to 112 decibel levels which means you could not hear a jet engine if you were standing right next to it and and that's when the audiologist gave us a binder about cochlear implants they took some food outside they took some food since the mid 1980s a powerful medical technology has become increasingly popular the cochlear implant bypasses part of the ear and sends electrical impulses directly to the auditory nerve part of the devices internal surgically embedded within the year the implant is permanent and the procedure destroys any residual hearing in the affected ear I just couldn't believe we could actually do this what seemed so invasive but you might be able to see there's a there's a there's like what's essentially a magnet kind of globs on like the refrigerator magnets and this is just a microphone and then she's wearing a box at her spotty level which is a processor mag then I turn in and I you send anything you don't know you mow it the first payment man map when I heard San for the birthday they put in an ETSU and because I had experience with me you know I sort of try to appear nice there's something appearing hit San people thank invented an automatic way to learn spoken language however the emergent appear shallot at pickup internment sang to the brain that the cotton brain cannot replicate the cochlear implant Oh me as about that tradition channel and it's not enough to really power Norma hearin it means that that child has to look hard to learn but the sound mean before she had her cochlear implant we all decided we would try to learn how to sign because it just gave her access to concepts I mean even before the implant went in she could ask she had I don't know maybe ten signs at that point water milk you know her bear that she heard there and but and and now with the implant the signing I feel has been kind of a bridge between the words she's hearing and the words we've signing and she knows this sound milk means milk and and she's been picking up her first words that she said have been her signing words I remember when I was growing up because I was so they disconnected from my parents and the fact that they enjoyed music and hearing everything that was very tough for me I can remember my mom trying to introduce me to other deaf people and I did meet one girl who had the same background as I she though had a cochlear implant and she was very successful for her and I thought well whatever it is I want what she has I was just looking for a way that I could get hooked back into their world and feel a part of it like I belong there somehow what is today what's today Thanksgiving right Thursday Thanksgiving right are you an Indian dressed up like an Indian what are those feathers mm-hmm right now what's the blue thing on your pecks [Music] that helps you hear better I used it a lot use it when I was in bed I was asleep and I would have it on it didn't feel like it could connect totally 100% with a hearing world but at least I was a little closer that way in those early years I was placed in a deaf program and that was within a hearing elementary school so it's a mainstream setting and then I started to recognize that I was different from everyone else I started to begin to think you know what makes me different from them and it was this box and this a wire that was attached to my head and so I quit wearing it took it off in about 10th grade I decided that I needed a better social life so I started checking things out I was very assertive in my research I came upon the Florida School for the Deaf made the switch to that school one I went back to wearing the implant again and I began wearing it all the time so it's kind of unusual just the opposite of what you would think because my parents were very concerned that once I went to the School for the Deaf that I would stop wearing it entirely I wouldn't speak any longer I wouldn't wear the implant but the opposite is what happened and it's because I had confidence in myself everybody there was just like I was everybody else had a problem with their hearing so it was okay it gave me the opportunity to wear my implant and feel like I fit in and really take advantage of everything that it had to offer an implant often means a kind of balancing act balancing a deaf life with the arrival of sound and even balancing the sound itself and now adjusting to life with two cochlear implants equilibrium by deaf filmmaker Adrian majority [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] good morning [Music] parents of deaf children face another daunting choice what kind of school is right for my child it's a crucial question most deaf children today are mainstreamed but there are still schools exclusively for deaf students these deaf schools vary widely in their approach to the environments at - schools can seem like two different planets [Music] at the Maryland School for the Deaf every class is taught in sign language we teach kids how to read and write count learn about science history government computers career and technology and so forth we want our students to receive information directly from their teachers meaning no interpreters are involved all of our teachers sign which is the angle of X when you're done with that you can clean up the equipment did you all read it already okay let's have your paper I want to change my paper that last paragraph of yours do you mind expanding on it I was born hearing and at 14 months got a severe illness and lost my hearing then but my parents didn't know quite what to do with me as a deaf child so they looked for information about schools Danny was the first deaf person that either one of us have ever met the first thing I thought was I wanted him to talk but as we became more and more educated and deafness I'm trying to figure how can somebody who can't hear learn without having some type of visual language first thing we did was call the deaf school language is developed from the ages of 0 to 5 regardless of whether it's a sign language or Italian or English we realized that sign language was something that could be adopted by a very young person very quickly as a first language that was my most important things to have him have a language if you walk through this campus the only thing that you say that's different is this is quiet in a public school is loud the same conversations go on the same things happened in every aspect of this school as any other school Daniel's first language is ASL and our second language is signing the issues are the same I've talked about sex with him we've talked about you know all kinds of different things and I feel like we're not missing anything we've both immersed ourselves into the Deaf culture we've we've both have deaf friends that we see and we communicate with I'm in both worlds I'm in the hearing world I'm in the Deaf world I mean I'm lucky because my parents can sign some of these other kids have no opportunity to communicate with their parents they can only write back and forth and the parents only have minimal signs like I love you and that's it so definitely I want to thank my parents for everything they've done for me if Dana wants to get a cochlear implant when he's 25 years old he's free to do that if he wanted to put a hearing aid on and we tried hearing aids when he was younger but that's a different story you can always take that out a cochlear implant is such a permanent thing would I like him to hear music would I like him to hear the rain would I like him to hear the leaves rustling in the ground he has no idea what that sounds like so he's not missing any of it but yes I would like that to happen I mean that that would be something that would be wonderful I think for any deaf person to hear but but a miracle to one day Daniel I'll turn around and Daniel is hearing that that would not be who he is as a person I Arakaki my wife was that man was jogging the other day when I came to your classroom we talked about the Clarke School in Northampton Massachusetts has always been a strictly oral school my 51st state is funny Irish hey easy this island is very small and it should about 285 miles off northwest of Hawaii Coast sign is never used in the classroom it used to be that you were dealing strictly with vision and very limited auditory input today what you're dealing with is almost exclusively auditory input either through high quality hearing aids or through cochlear implantation which takes a child or has the potential to take a child who is profoundly even totally deaf by any acoustic standard and to give that child the opportunity to become hard of hearing I'm deaf and my sister in death and I have two hearing parents that who that are very helpful and they'll take care of me and they'll repeat when I don't understand things and my sister too and I'll help my sister and we both understand how it is to be deaf they need to be two of those we're overwhelmed we found out it first of all about Patrick's hearing loss it's something that we suspected and it wasn't confirmed until he was nine months old we took a leap we trusted the people here at Clark and we put him into the preschool and within a year he had pretty much stopped signing except at home because they don't sign here and he was speaking and implant had helped me a lot I can keep up with people funny talk and I can talk on the phone and I can understand the music like to the lyrics more often don't assume the technology will fix your child because it won't my children are both very high-functioning oral deaf children young adults but they are deaf they are still deaf they will always be deaf today enrollment at many deaf schools is on the decline 85% of deaf children spend their entire education in regular public schools in mainstream programs deaf children in those classrooms use hearing aids cochlear implants or sign language interpreters to follow lectures and discussions I was in a mainstream program I was surrounded by hearing people I never was segregated into a deaf classroom my friends in general I would say treated me pretty good with the exception of the cochlear implant which was really obvious then the remarks started to come they called me a freak they said I was strange they'd say what's that is it really part of your body it's like a foreign object often because deafness is a low incidence disability they may be the only child in the classroom or maybe in their grade or in their school and so they can stand out in that way and and so if we don't do some things to help them be successful in the mainstream they may struggle and then have other effects down the road when we're raised orally and solitaires and then at some point in our lives when we're 12 we were 18 when were 25 when we're 40 we realized that there's a whole group of people like us who used sign language we had it's just like wow and so I call that met deaf wow it's like a common experience you grow up you're thinking were the only one and then you find out you're not you're not alone and your likes will to meet other people who have your common experience and you just want to be with them become friends or in the language hang out your home I'm not normal and I'd like to remain that way I like being different but of course as I was growing up I always wanted to be normal so I think I learned how to sort of make my way through that fine line of being normal and being Who I am in terms of a disability and I'll view myself as having a disability whatsoever I function like any hearing person can my deafness does not deprive me of anything I can do anything I want except maybe sing back in my Gallaudet days I was a student at the University and I was walking down the hallway in the dorms one day and I felt the vibration there was something going on [Music] and there was a guy playing a guitar earphones connected right to the guitar [Music] and I was just like wow you know I'm a drummer and I said well where are your drums and he said well I don't have them with me so I told him to use the chair and use a ruler for his sticks and I said show me what you have [Music] Beethoven's nightmare is a really unique band consisting of three deaf musicians each of us have our own instruments we have a drummer we have a bass guitar and we have a rhythm guitar and one person tries to sing the way I play I depend on a lot of vibrations so we play really really loud enough for us to hear and feel it you know you go to regular rock concerts and they are loud and it made me wonder how do they stand it because it's really too loud for the regular hearing person they're going to become deaf themselves but for us we already are so it's perfect as deaf people we have a rhythm inside our bodies and we're famous for being storytellers it's a huge important part of Deaf culture [Music] if you can see a beautiful storyteller telling a story in ASL it's just fantastic and to pair it with that beat the creativity that it elicits is wonderful it can really be paired with any story you want ASL is a beautiful language and we don't want to lose the language we're always going to have some fear in my opinion I think that's part of being a cultural group being embedded within a larger society people who are different from us we're constantly living in some fear in the back of our minds that we will lose what we have I know there are people who think with genetics with technology with changes that are happening in the future that deafness will disappear I don't believe it I think there always will be deafness and there always will be a need for people who are not deaf to understand deaf people what's wrong with being deaf I'm deaf I'm fine I function fine I Drive I have a family I've made a baby I make people laugh I travel what the hell is going on I have to here that has nothing to do with it it's all about knowledge it's about the heart it's about abilities about doing something you want and getting what you want out of life and not because you had a cochlear implant and everything is going to be great no excuse me ladies and gentlemen no knowledge is the most powerful vehicle to success not hearing not speaking reading yes reading and taking in all that book knowledge and being able to use it that's the power of the universe the force knowledge not hearing so thank you very much the end roll credits [Music] to further explore the history of deaf life in America visit pbs.org major funding for through deaf eyes is provided by this program has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities expanding America's understanding for more than 30 years of who we were who we are and who we will be the Annenberg foundation the National Endowment for the Arts the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you thank you [Music]

Channel: Gallaudet University Press

Views: 431,951

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Id: PL5d8kyZUQk

Length: 117min 11sec (7031 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 08 2020