Liminaut wrote:ProfAllister wrote:I may have to work on my reading for comprehension
, but I thought I saw this issue discussed, but not this take on it. That Shizune may not have been born deaf, but became deaf around around age six, either through disease or accident. Everybody had been debating about the twelve years of silence and how much Jigoro was at fault for that; I didn't see any discussion of the implications of Shizune speaking to Jigoro at one time.
Point taken. It just so happens that the subject of he timing of Shizune's deafness has been discussed, just
not in this thread. You are correct, though - to my knowledge, that specific subject hasn't been discussed on these forums, to my knowledge.
That being said, I personally fall into the camp that she was, for a time, able to hear - that she became deaf some time between 4 and 6. That's also been taken into account for my other posts here.
As for all the reasons you put forth, I am aware and agree that it puts some heft behind that argument. But then we have a deaf girl who rebels against Bell's philosophies, has severe misgivings about her ability to communicate with hearing people
and yet there is absolutely no indication that she has deaf friends or acquaintances in a school that is easily 1/3 deaf? That last bit is what makes me skeptical of Bellite Jigoro.
Liminaut wrote:We can't be sure about the history, but a reasonable history is:
-- Shizune lost her hearing at 6
-- Therapists promised Jigoro that they could train Shizune to speak
-- This therapy can work, but it is hit-or-miss at best and awful to go through in the best of situations
-- Jigoro refused to learn to sign because he thought his daughter should learn to speak
-- Depressingly, this is not an uncommon phenomena of households refusing to learn sign because they think the deaf child should speak
-- In this case, the blame lies with Jigoro for not being willing to work with his child and learn sign
If we accept your premises, the logic is sound. However, the assumptions made to reach that conclusion imply a severe confirmation bias. If you want to argue that Jigoro is an ass, it's easy to make assumptions that support him being an ass. Conversely, if you want to argue that he's a misunderstood saint, it's easy to make assumptions that way, too (hence why I insist only that this is a possibility, not a certainty). So let's try to separate the facts/propositions from the assumptions:
Shizune lost her hearing in early childhood - As the premise for our discussion, it would be absurd to dispute this. Not that we couldn't present evidence that this premise is unlikely, but that's not (currently) a point of contention.
Jigoro consulted/hired therapists. - Trying to keep this to the facts here. The therapists could have made all sorts of promises. As for what sorts of therapists and what sorts of promises, that's open to speculation, but the implication seems to fall heavily on the side of "I tried anything and everything." So, even if he received promises from Bellite therapists, he'd at least have
heard the counterarguments from therapists from other schools.
Opponents of Remedial Speech Therapy for the Deaf argue that such techniques can work, but usually doesn't. - Personally, I agree with the opponents, but let's stick to the facts. The fact that AG Bell is a current and active entity implies that this approach isn't entirely discredited.
There is nothing conclusive to state whether or not Jigoro knows Sign Language - The assumption is that Jigoro doesn't know Sign Language, because he never uses it. In sticking to a "just the facts" approach, all we can say is that Jigoro displays no proficiency in sign language (and we HAVE gone on about this detail in this thread, for anyone who cares to discuss that point further).
Many households operate under the expectation that the deafie accommodate the hearing - An unfortunate reality. However, we're trying to speculate about a specific household, so the utility/applicability of this fact is marginal, at best.
There's no obvious conclusion from these facts, but it does help narrow the focus of our inquiry. The questions to answer are the following: 1) What sorts of therapists/tutors/specialists did Jigoro Hire, and how did they advise him? 2) How receptive was Jigoro to this advice? In the interests of maintaining some level of coherency, I'll defer discussion of these questions to the end of this post.
Atario wrote:The North American Deaf community reviles people for getting cochlear implants to regain their hearing, too, branding them traitors. I wouldn't put a lot of stock in it.
I can't perceive radio waves, but I communicate using them all the time…
All things being equal, I'm inclined to say anything Jigoro wants is unreasonable. And, no, a deaf person can't learn not to be deaf. However, it is completely possible for a deaf (or Deaf) person to learn to get along ok in the hearing world. I've known several who did it just fine.
Hang on a sec. She would already have been speaking for years by age six. Most likely in this scenario would be Shizune going to mommy and/or daddy one day and complaining that she can't hear (well) lately. If she had stopped speaking, it would have been by choice; "therapy" would consist of convincing her not to continue the stoppage.
Since it's relevant to this topic, I'm going to pull
something I just said the other day:
Deafness occupies a unique position among common disabilities. Unlike the others, it significantly impairs what the average individual would consider the most natural form of communication - verbal. For a "deafie" to communicate with the "hearing," one of them is normally speaking in a foreign language. This even extends to the written word. Sign Language isn't "English (or whatever other language) with your hands"; it is an entire language unto itself, with its own syntax and grammar. The ability to communicate in your native language is a luxury most people take for granted until it's gone. A result of this communication-based isolation is the development of a "deaf culture" - a phenomenon notably absent from other major disabilities (which may have shared experience and commisseration, but lack the same sense of culture and community).
An additional feature of deafness (tied into the former) that separates it from many other disabilities is that deafies are expected to accommodate the hearing, instead of the other way around. Deafies are expected to be able to read lips, even to speak, to use a pencil and paper or terrible speech-to-text and text-to-speech utilities (all in a foreign language, mind you), to watch closed-captioned TV shows and movies in a manner convenient to the hearing people around them, all while hearing people can't even remember to give the basic courtesy of looking at them while talking. For comparison, this shows all the sensitivity of telling a paraplegic to man up and use the stairs like everyone else.
The point of all this is that a significant portion of deafies consider their deafness part of their identity; part of who they are. It's why you have the sub-community of CODA (children of deaf adults) and, essentially, "honorary deafness" when a hearing person is accepted into the community. As a result, many deafies look upon cochlear implants in a very negative light - just the newest in a long line of humiliations deafies are expected to subject themselves to so that they might be "Fixed" and acceptable to the hearing populace.
As far as that applies to your comments:
The cochlear implant issue is more complex than you imply (also, that is one HELL of an false dilemma).
You can communicate using radio waves, but you'd be pretty pissed off if people expected you to communicate exclusively by radio waves, because everyone else perceives them just fine (besides, your meat-slapping "vocalisations" aren't a real language, and it's kinda vulgar to look at; certainly not something anyone should
have to learn - you should be fine with carrying around a portable HAM radio).
Refer to my previous quote about paraplegics sucking it up and using the stairs.
And that damn paraplegic is just being lazy by using a wheelchair. With enough physical therapy, he should be able to manage.
And now back to those questions stated earlier:
What sorts of therapists/tutors/specialists did Jigoro Hire, and how did they advise him? - I kind of touched on this earlier, but it bears repeating: when I read Jigoro's "twelve years" bit, I'm not hearing a man saying "Shut up. I disagree with you, and I'm better than you. Ergo, you're wrong." but rather "Do you honestly think I haven't tried that?" I see him as defeated, resigned to the idea that there's nothing he can do about her rejection of him. His only hope is that it's normal for children to reject their parents like that, and not something he, as a(n ostensibly) single father and parent to a deaf child, failed at. I'd also say it can be interpreted less as "I taught her to speak, yet she won't speak" and more "I gave her everything, yet she still rejects me." More relevant, I most definitely do not think he made a single attempt, then gave up when that didn't show the results he wanted.
So we return to the facts available to us: Jigoro is very wealthy (implicitly due to being a successful businessman), yet his profession is something relatively normal in the West, but quite unconventional (in a bad way) in the East. so we know that he has been, at the very least, subject to some significant Western influence. And whatever he does, he is demonstrably quite successful (hence the wealthy). There are perhaps other explanations for his wealth, but they would be, to say the least, highly unlikely. An important rule of business success is to find intelligent people who disagree with you, and pay attention to what they say - in other words, have an open mind and be willing to reconsider your assumptions. A successful businessman (i.e., one expected to have continued success) isn't likely to double down on a course of action that isn't working, especially when he's able to admit that he's not an expert and there are experts who tell him it's precisely the wrong course of action.
Much more to the point, there's the inconvenient fact that Shizune knows JSL, is comfortable with it, and is good at it. This of course implies that someone taught it to her. On the one hand, she could have learned it in a Bellite school, through the Secret Underground JSL Resistance (which probably doesn't have a cool name like that, but would most certainly exist); on the other, she could have been taught JSL by one of the many people Jigoro hired. If the former, we're faced with the question of why Shizune does not appear to have any deaf friends or no interest in the Deaf community at Yamaku. If the latter, we reach our second question.
How receptive was Jigoro to this advice? - It seems patently absurd that Jigoro would disregard the recommendations of one of the few tutors who actually got any sort of results. It's certainly possible that he would do so, but that displays a level of petulance so extreme that it once again becomes a wonder how Jigoro could be as successful as he is. In fact, I'd be inclined to question the legitimacy of this Jigoro's wealth.
