A plea to the press on Clause 14 (HFAE Bill)

I know it sells papers… gets ratings… draws crowds… and there’s nothing better than a bloodfest to get the juices flowing… but this (highlights added)

“Concepts of equality and parental choice sit uneasily when the result means deliberately creating a baby with a disability…” (Moral Maze)

and this

“Unlike the couple who are currently fighting for the right to ensure they have a deaf child through IVF… ” (Daily Mail)

Is plain mis-representation.

The question is not a case of preferring a deaf embryo over a hearing one… It is simply a case of NOT aborting a fetus that is deaf, deselecting a gamete that might be deaf, or rejecting a donor who might carry a ‘deaf gene’.

Dear press… Can you not see the debate is not about Deaf people engineering-in deafness, but about those with some kind of authority based in public acceptance and submission deciding to reject human beings based solely on their ability to hear and on the disadvantages that they might inevitably ’suffer’ living in a society that has consummately failed to understand them.

Dear press… you have been sucked in… and you’re playing their game… and you’re lending them the support upon which their fragile authority continues to thrive.

For 200 years and more, Deaf people have been fighting to try and explain themselves to those same authorities who have single-mindedly refused to allow Deaf people to present their point of view without being talked-over, interpreted, re-presented or explained away.

And now, as we watch, it is happening all over again… rather than entertain a challenge to what is considered normal, healthy, whole… and perhaps discover themselves prejudiced, bigoted and less than the liberals that they would wish to be they would rather silence opposition to their control of what is considered ‘normal’ by eradicating them at their point of origin (ironically, to save them from a terrible disability)… or silencing them and not allowing them to speak.

Please don’t play their game by granting them the moral high ground… please join in forcing them to explain themselves.

Who is it really playing God?

Response to John Humphries

I’ve been spurred back to writing by yesterday’s response to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill by Tomato Lichy and Paula Garfield on Radios 2 and 4… and particularly by the responses from John Humphries who demonstrates perfectly the cross-purposes at which people are arguing.

The issue of Clause 14 is hotly debated elsewhere and I don’t want to add my voice to the mêlée… Rather, I’d like to suggest that the problem be considered on a different level… one that unfortunately gets swamped by the (very real) necessity for urgent political action, the lack of time available to opponents of a process that moves quickly and the pressure to achieve an end goal… but one that, in my view, warrants a move from the entire academic community to prevent an initiative that threatens to destroy our access to knowledges that differ from those of the temporarily approved set of ‘Truth’.

Humphries’ responses in the Radio 4 exchange with Tomato clearly demonstrate the problem. He cannot perceive of deafness being anything other than a disability… and sign language, or sign language-mediated knowledges, being anything other than a compensatory system for those who cannot hear… consequently, his perception of what might be the ‘right choice’ is limited to the one that appears ethnically inevitable.

Consequently, as Tomato (and Paula too in the exchange with Jeremy Vine) assert Deaf culture and language, the non-disablement of Deaf people, the dis-abling of hearing people in Deaf spaces and so on… it makes no impact on Humphries’ single-minded assumption that there is only one reality… his own.

I don’t want to argue epistemologies or ontologies etc. head on. It has no impact on people who are that stuck inside one knowledge system. So let’s start a different way, by embarking on a ‘make believe’.

In 2003, the British Government finally accepted the linguistic evidence that BSL is a language in its own right (note: they did not accept BSL as an official language of the UK, nor did the government in its entirely participate in the validation, only the department of work and pensions did… and only within the remit of disability provision… so there is a whole lot more work to do yet). By so doing, they accepted that BSL (and therefore other natural sign languages, that’s another debate) is fully able to mediate human linguistic and cognitive development.

Let’s dial back then to the point in time where humankind developed language. What if, at that point, instead of adopting speech, they had adopted the perfectly viable alternative: sign language. There’s evidence that some might have done, and indeed nothing within the language to stop it from happening, and there’s nothing inherent within the decision to make it any less viable or likely than the current status quo.

And it’s here that the problem lies. If we accept that this is a possible scenario (and we must given the evidence) then the ‘only-ness’ of the world in which we live is challenged. If it is entirely possible that the world might have developed based on sign language-mediated intervention, then neither spoken-language culture and society nor sign-mediated culture and society is inherently ‘better’ than the other… simply different… equally validly ‘other’… complimentary… distinctive of human creativity… maybe even prone to different creative expressions and holistic mediations of what it means to be ‘human’…

And this is what Deaf people argue. They do not merely equate their sign language with deafness. Presented not only as a language through which Deaf people find their full humanity, but as a full, other form of communication that embodies the body/world relationship far more holistically than does linear spoken language, Deaf people have suggested that their ‘other’ knowledges are a compliment to the hearing-authored world.

OK… I know there is the reality of history and the current situation to consider (but most of that is a ridiculous worry about Deaf people not being able to hear traffic and suchlike), and I know that the political situation of the Deaf community has made it less than easy to extricate emotion, argument, anger, resentment, reactionism and so on. But what would happen if instead of seeing this debate as one in which Deaf people are (mistakenly) accused of trying to deliberately disable their future children, we flipped the debate on its head and looked at the issue of Clause 14 as symbolic of ways of exploring and celebrating the variety of what we consider fully ‘human’ instead of attempting to wield a 200 year-old, paternalistic, scientifically-informed scalpel to distinguish between those considered valid and those who are not.

Not so long ago Black people were also considered inferior… and so were gay people… and so were Jews… and so were women… And yet by embracing their knowledges, knowledge itself has been transformed… How much more than could Deaf people bring to the sum of human knowledge if they were allowed to express themselves without immediate prejudice.

It is time, now, to embrace the challenge of Deaf people’s physical, cultural, perceptual, linguistic, ontological otherness.

All the eradication of Deaf people and Deaf knowledges achieves is the impoverishment of humanity as a whole.

Neglect

Oh the shame… it’s been over a month and a half since I wrote anything on here… beware, the writing up can take over your life… and if the writing doesn’t, then the guilt at not writing can.
Actually, I’m trying to get a balance on it at the moment. Jo’s revising for her exams and I keep telling her that perhaps less is more; that she might accomplish more if she actually works less, but better… I should probably take my own advice. Although I think a lot of it’s about prioritising things. In the last 6 weeks I’ve done the last bit of teaching that I’m doing this year (lost nearly a week preparing and delivering that), then went to London for an AHRC consultation on research funding (lost nearly another week preparing that), then there was Easter (lost a long weekend on that)… I mean, you’ve got to have time off but when you need a rhythm to write, breaking it every few days for ‘another’ important activity is not the best strategy in the world.

Happily, I shouldn’t have too many more interruptions now and I should be able to get on with it. This week has been better already.

To answer Donna’s questions in the comments from last time… (Hello Donna… sorry I’ve not written but I’ve found your blog now and I’ll read it and get in touch personally) Are there Deaf churches? and what about worship? There has always been quite a strong influence of Christianity in the Deaf community in the UK because right back at the time Deaf people were designated as a group in need of ‘help’, the church shouldered most of the responsibility (as they did with orphanages and the workhouse etc.) The legacy of the church hasn’t all been roses though… Paddy Ladd in his Deafhood book (2003) presents a number of stories that show that actually, in the same way that church workers tried to eradicate poverty by morally correcting the poor (remember this is Victorian times and early 20th century) they did the same with the Deaf community… training them to be ‘normal’ by threats of eternal condemnation and controlling or withholding services like interpreting until the Deaf people became compliant.

Then, as the church’s control waned, Deaf people continued to go to (often) Deaf congregations with Deaf ministers and for a period there were quite a lot. But in the 90s, a hearing guy gave a prophecy in a Deaf fellowship that Deaf people should integrate into mainstream hearing churches… Again, I don’t know who he was, or what his background was… but there are a lot of questions here too… Anyway, a lot of the churches obeyed and a lot of the Deaf churches closed (there is still at least one going, in N. Ireland). The only thing was that this left Deaf people integrated physically into the hearing church, but separate from the hearing congregation; reliant on BSL interpreters in the services, and still seeking each other out for fellowship… Now there is a mixed situation… with few Deaf-specific churches, but a lot of para-church groups running… check out http://deafchurch.co.uk/ (which I’ve only just discovered) for examples.

I think that’s about where things are at at the moment… but it leaves so many questions open that it’s hardly a conclusion…

• To what extent has the church, through things like signed songs etc. taken ownership of sign language away from Deaf people and turned it into an art form?
• How have hearing Christians appropriated it as a tool for worship when it’s actually Deaf people’s language?
• Is it better for Deaf Christians to meet with each other and have fellowship through sign or to be integrated into a hearing church?
• What is the motivation behind next year’s Spring Harvest BSL-track event?
• What impact will translations of the bible into BSL video have on a Deaf community that is used to having no written text in their first language and who will potentially be able to read it at home for the first time?
• How do you balance ideas of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual well-being and wholeness… with Deaf and hearing languages… what does Kingdom living look like here… how does ‘every tribe and tongue’ work with BSL…
• How do other countries do it? Have we exported the same attitudes as we have tended to export a church model?

At a time when the Christian church (in the UK at any rate) is recognising its largely Victorian heritage and questioning how many of its structures, traditions and attitudes are actually biblical, or merely handed down and human-authored these are important questions about the nature of Christianity and what our, and Deaf, relationships with God look like.

One particularly pertinent question is how Deaf-hearing relationships within the church (or perhaps here I should say between those who have a living relationship with Christ) differ from those outside… My guess is that a lot of the divisions that history has driven between Deaf and hearing people disappear through forgiveness and through a common relationship with Christ rather like the way that questions of politics between Québecois and English Canadians have to take second place when you know that you’re all living in the kingdom of God…

The question on worship is interesting… Deaf Christians worship the same as hearing Christians… but without singing… but this often involves signed songs… and how Deaf are they, really? When I started thinking about it, I flipped it around… I wondered how I might worship without singing? What might Spring harvest look like without music? What other forms of worship are we ignoring in favour of this one? and how much do we impose our assumptions about has to be on Deaf people making them feel like they’re missing something…

Anyway… enough hoovering the cat for this morning… I’d better get back to the Paris school in the early 19th century and see what the pupils are up to.

XX

Chapter one nearly done

It’s dragging on… but the end of chapter one is in sight. I had a meeting with my two new geography supervisors, Yvonne Whelan and Robert Mayhew on Tuesday and agreed a way forward for the PhD. I need to submit the first draft of the first chapter to them by next Friday… which is good as it’s beginning to go a bit stale… but working on it at home has been a lot more productive and it’s gradually getting there. With good health and a fair wind, things will now speed up and I will be able to advance a lot less sporadically than before.

So that’s one piece of news. Another is that I received a response from the office of the Prime Minister concerning the recent petition asking the PM to introduce the teaching of BSL in all schools. The wording of the petition was not altogether serious and, in an attempt to make it relevant to a hearing government, portrayed sign language as a more ‘funky’ alternative to spoken language to be used when there’s lots of noise about…

In the midst of this, the slightly offhand “Of course it would also make life easier for people who rely on sign language as their primary mode of non-written communication” didn’t seem to have a great deal of impact on the government despite over 5000 signatures.

However, the biggest problem with this is not that they rejected the request. After all, 5000 people out of 60 million is not a great majority. It’s the background assumptions and the tone of the response that is so hard to swallow.

So, for your pleasure, here is the response from number 10 with my response to their response inserted (note: I have tried to be as positive as possible. Faced with a goverment that is so two-faced that it turns my stomach it’s been hard, but I hope I’ve succeeded… maybe).

“We recognise the tremendous value of British Sign Language (BSL) in helping hard of hearing pupils throughout their educational careers.

OK, straight down to the nitty gritty. Come out and admit it. You still don’t really believe that BSL is a language do you? You still see it as a tool for broken hearing people. Do you want to see how this reads this through Deaf eyes? OK… try this:

“We recognise the tremendous value of Welsh and Gaelic in helping non-English pupils through their educational careers.” Patronising and insulting it’s it?

For a government that recognised BSL as a language in March 2003, you’re doing a pretty good job of misrepresenting it now. Gosh, any moment now someone will come out with the BSL-braille comparison and then we’ll be in serious trouble.

The National Curriculum, however, has been developed carefully over the years to provide young people with an entitlement to the essential knowledge and skills that will equip them for success in further education or training and in the world of work.

You know, thank you for this, it’s the first time that I actually realised that the National Curriculum was not about preparing children for life; only education and work. No wonder we’re in such a mess.

It is important that the National Curriculum should offer a broad and balanced education, but we must avoid over-prescription of what is taught and leave sufficient time and space for schools to personalise their offer to address individual needs and aptitudes.

No problem with that.

The balance we now have is the result of extensive consultation and trialling

Did your ‘extensive consultation’ involve any contact with the Deaf community. No. I didn’t think so.

but it is not fixed for all time and we will continue to monitor and review curriculum content at intervals to ensure that it still meets the needs of all young people.

Would it be useful to teach them a language that not only offers the possibility for international communication but enshrines a different way of thinking and a culture and history that is utterly unique in all of humanity and raises fundamental questions about the way that knowledge is constructed in Western society? Oh, that’s a shame, it’s the kind of thing I’d have found particularly valuable at school.

The secondary National Curriculum is currently being reviewed in order to reduce prescription still further and to create more freedom for teachers to use their professional judgement in designing subject curricula. Across the whole of our 14-19 reform agenda we are developing further opportunities for young people to exercise choice about what they study and how, with the introduction of diplomas, apprenticeships and so on. In this context, we do not feel it would be appropriate to introduce a new statutory requirement to teach British Sign Language in all schools.

Oh right, so the National ‘Curriculum’ is about to become less of a curriculum and more a loose gathering of subjects. In which case, there’s plenty of room in there for BSL, particularly as it’s actually far more immediately useful to most people in today’s society than… say… algebra. AND… you could teach it from a very early age so that it doesn’t even figure in the secondary National Curriculum. After all, you wouldn’t expect to start teaching kids to speak at the age of 11 would you? (oh, I forgot about other modern languages. Well, perhaps that’s why we’re bloody awful at those too)

It is also worth noting that the National Curriculum does not represent all the teaching that goes on in schools. Teachers are free to introduce other experiences and subjects if they wish to do so, as long as they are also meeting the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum.

Great!

The SEN and Disability Act, which was introduced in September 2002, means that more disabled children are now learning in mainstream schools, where that is what their parents want.

Hang on, we’re back to the Deaf=disabled issue again. No. That’s not what we’re arguing. BSL is a language. Deaf are a linguistic minority. Anyway, we’re not arguing about what to teach Deaf children here, we’re talking about teaching hearing children BSL.

This means that schools are developing a greater understanding of the needs of disabled people and in some schools this may well lead to teachers deciding to offer sign language to help ensure a child with a hearing impairment is fully included in school life.

Well, it’s nice to see you finally admit that 1. Deaf children are not fully included in school life, 2. This is a linguistic issue, and 3. That the problem would go away if you taught all hearing children in the school BSL. Oh. But you’ve said you’re not going to do that. (oh and PLEASE stop calling them children with a ‘hearing impairment’, unless you want them to refer to you as someone with a ’sign impairment’)

In conclusion therefore, it is right that schools should have the opportunity to teach BSL but we would not wish to specify that it must be taught to all pupils. We believe rather that this should remain a matter for schools to decide in view of their own local, and possibly more pressing, needs.”

Ah… and there’s the crux of it. Schools have more pressing needs than to try and teach their pupils about difference, equality and otherness and adequately ensure the integration of some 70,000 signing members of British Society.

Well, that’s OK. The schools are probably just following your example.