Through Deaf Eyes (2007) - full transcript

I was driving down on the freeway,
oh it was a beautiful day.

All the birds were flying and
all the birds were singing

and all the birds dropping,

"Hey you,"

"I got you."

All of a sudden I look through
the rear view mirror,

the guy behind me was so angry,

"Hey you, what are you deaf, huh?"

Well, that makes me angry,

of course I'm deaf and
proud. So I step on the gas.

Oh, by the way I have
a Mercedes 500 ACL.



I'm rich and deaf,
thank you very much.

Finally I caught up with that car.

Automatic window.

"Hey you, what are
you hearing, huh?"

Yeah.

When you talk to
people who can hear

and you ask them, "what do
you think it would be like

to be a deaf person?"

Then all of their thinking is,
"well, I couldn't do this.

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 that.

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.

♪ It's just a deaf thing ♪

♪ It's just a deaf thing ♪

There was a little
girl, a neighbour girl

that came over a
Nd played with me.

And we used 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, well what are we?

She said, "Daddy and I are deaf.

You're deaf, your
brothers are deaf."

And I said, is everyone deaf?

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 ninety percent 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 the woman and I were getting
ready, getting our make-up ready.

And I mean this is live in
front of millions of people.

And I was ready to be interviewed.

And everybody was
in their positions.

And with three 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 thing 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
identify with her dog?

I had no idea what the
significance of that was.

People need to realise
that we're normal.

Don't just look at my ear.

Don't look at it is 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 too.

Thirty-five million Americans

are hard of hearing
to so me 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 deaf is, well,
it's part of me.

It's something I have to deal with

but it doesn't keep
me from being happy.

It doesn't make me
either happy or sad.

It's just like being a
man instead of a woman

or being tall instead of short.

Maybe a person can't see
and is that normal?

Maybe it is.

And maybe a person walks
with a bit of a limp.

Perhaps that's normal 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 daughter's eleven.

She's deaf.

We have just the two, and
we don't want any more.

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 19th-century America,

fervent Christians laboured 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

of 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.

Laurent Clerc was a teacher

at the Paris Institution
for the Deaf.

And he was 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 Clerc
brought to the United States

was French sign language.

Laurent Clerc taught
using his hands:

he communicated with sign.

To Gallaudet, the language
was a revelation.

He called it "highly poetical."

To Clerc, and to many deaf people,

signing was natural,
and practical.

Clerc discovered that there
were already some signs in use

by some of his students.

Clerc 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 and 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.

My dear sir, the organs of speech

are in no way
effected by deafness.

The deaf person is mute simply
because he cannot hear,

and hasn't been taught to speak.

A contradiction in terms sir,

a most illogical contradiction,

the deaf mute's speech
organs may be intact...

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 but one flaw.

One little flaw,
imperfect 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 the 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 boogie man.

And even though he's a great
man in his own right,

but 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.

Bell believed that sign language
marked them as different

and kept them in
the lower classes.

He believed that
earlier in the 1800s

sign language had 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

who received the right
type of education

and the use of the
right technology,

that those children could
learn to use spoken language.

Oral schools for deaf children
opened in the late 1860s.

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.

Oh, do you lip read?

That's a very dangerous question

because if you say, "yes"
they, "blah-blah-blah."

Whoa, wait, wait a minute.

No, you have to go slower,

then...

No, no, no, no, no.
Just talk normally.

It was a bit hectic. We didn't really
have a lot of time to prepare.

But it's a take home.

I mean we had all this
homework and quizzes and stuff

so I just lucked out.

- Did you take a look at it?
- I have it with me.

I can understand people

who speak directly
to me in good light.

And without too much
background noise.

And a lot of what I do in speaking

is arranging these circumstances.

And if that doesn't happen,
I don't hear things.

I can be part of the conversation

without knowing what 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 any more.

They changed their
hiring practises.

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

moved them to the
vocational programs

to avoid the parents'
objections to them.

Those were the dark ages

for deaf education in America.

Bell subscribed to two
popular American movements

that greatly bolstered
the oralist cause.

One was Nativism...

the belief that the current
flood of immigrants

was threatening the
American way of life.

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.

And 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 would
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 organisations if he could,

find other ways to
socialise 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.

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 sly.

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 mum

and I 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 in to the
school for the deaf

I was about five

and I was so thrilled to get mail.

A letter from my mum.

My favourite 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 home.

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.

When I got to the campus of the
Alabama school for the deaf

I didn't have a name sign yet.

And after thinking
about it for awhile

and this is pretty
typical of deaf people,

they look to see what
you're 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 going to
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 of a hip,

I thought I walked
like everyone else

but that name sign was given
and it's 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.

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.

The rules in Clarke School

as well as downtown Northampton,

we had to keep our
hands down and talk.

We had to keep on
talking and lipread.

If we waved our hands,

the teachers were afraid

that if we used our
hands, we would lose

the quality of our speech.

So when I went downtown

there was a policeman
in plainclothes.

I did not know that
he was watching me.

When I went back to Clarke School

the teachers told me,

"Rodney, you were
waving hands downtown."

And warned me not to
go downtown again.

And many people don't realize

that when children learn
speech it's all repetition and

speech training over
and over again.

Think of all the
time I spent on it

when I 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.

There have always been what's
referred to as oral failures.

The technology of
the day was limited

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.

- Bike.
- 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

or really struggling
to communicate.

Right. Finish it.

You're not finished.

You forgot.

That's right, sit down, Lynn.

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.

I used hearing aids and
was trained auditorally,

but in my mid-twenties when
I went to graduate school

or I was in graduate school,

I realized how hard I was
working just trying to lipread.

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 asked me to speak
so I can demonstrate

how successful I was as
an oral deaf person.

But understand that
speaking is only 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 kind of sign or
anything like that.

They assume that I can hear them.

And 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 hear them because I can't.

It's much easier just
to turn off my voice.

I have always had my feet

firmly in both the hearing
world and the deaf world.

I've always been very
comfortable in both worlds.

I've always been hungry for
information about both worlds.

I've always wanted to be connected
to people, to humanity.

It didn't matter whether
they were hearing or deaf

and I'm very fortunate that I
had the communication skills

to do so relatively, comfortably.

I know that my speech
is not exactly normal.

But it's very understandable.

That's gotten me
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 E-A-R-T-H

so it relates to the ear,
to speaking and hearing.

There's this other
planet E-Y-E-T-H.

And that relates to the
eye and the visual.

So there are two worlds.

I grew up on Earth.

Now, I'm on this other
planet, E-Y-E-T-H,

a world where all these
possibilities are open to me.

But back in the
early 20th century,

America was on the planet Earth,

not on the imaginary
planet of Eyeth.

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 1906, the U.S. Civil
Service flatly stated

that it would no longer
allow deaf people

to work for the government.

So the N.A.D., and its
president, prepared for battle.

George W. Veditz was the sev
enth president of the NAD.

He was loud, forceful,
clear and not ashamed.

He got up and spoke out.

The fiery Veditz launched an
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 Veditz wrote.

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.

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.

Before the invention of film,

when sign language was
shown, it was static.

A drawing 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.

Silent films showed deaf
characters as being dummies,

objects of humor.

But at least a deaf person

could watch the film
and understand it.

That was lost after 1929.

Now a gala event ushers in a
new era in motion pictures.

With the premiere of “The Jazz
Singer,” starring Al Jolson,

sound comes to the screen.

The transition from
silent movies to talkies

was a disaster for deaf people.

- Another party?
- And what a party.

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 stereotype
itself was terrible.

Belinda, searching, ever searching

for happiness and understanding,

but ready to fight
with primitive fury.

I was concerned that my friends
woul d see that character

and think that all deaf
people were, 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

in 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.

We went to deaf people's homes.

It was a natural community
for me as a kid growing up.

It was like a kid who grew
up in an 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.