Abstract Submission: From Parental Option to Parental Obligation: Sign Language as Birthright

An international sign abstract submission presenting arguments for the moral obligation of parents to use sign with their Deaf children. Arguments from a variety of philosophical sources are considered.
From Parental Option to Parental Obligation: Sign Language as a Birthright

The World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) has affirmed that access to sign language is the birthright of children who are born Deaf. In asserting this, WFD goes somewhat further than the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The CRPD allows for the possibility of sign language use but does not mandate it as a right for infants. The CRPD states that, if sign language is the “choice” of a particular Deaf person, its use must be accepted and facilitated. While the CRPD does an admirable job of encouraging access to sign language education, interpretation, and promotion among the general public, it is not sufficient to ensure the survival of sign languages and of the Deaf community.
The CRPD sidesteps the most critical moment of decision: the decision of the parents of Deaf infants regarding linguistic choices for those Deaf children. In acknowledging the rights of disabled persons to communicative methods “of their choice,” the CRPD overlooks the fact that, in order for sign language to serve as the native language of a Deaf infant, the parents must first choose for the child to learn sign. Parents who chose to sign or who place their children in signing environments will have children who grow up as signing members of a Deaf community. The CRPD protects the rights of these people. On the other hand, parents who stress oral methodologies are less likely to have child who are signers. In the past, because oral techniques often produced poor results, many Deaf adults who matriculated from oral programs learned to sign later in life, albeit as non-native signers. Now however, with cochlear implantation seeing more and more success, graduates of these implant-based programs are often content to live primarily or exclusively in a non-signing, hearing world. In order to ensure the continuance of Deaf culture and of sign languages, we must create not an option for parents to choose sign language but an ethical obligation for parents to embrace it.
It is difficult for members of the Deaf world to elaborate this perspective to members of the hearing world. In this talk, I explain why it is so difficult for hearing people, and especially for hearing parents, to understand the arguments that Deaf people raise about why they should use sign as a primary means of communication. To do this, I examine how Deaf people often make an implicitly Kantian ethical argument: Treat others as you wish to be treated. That is, Deaf people claim that since they wish to have been taught sign, so too will other Deaf infants wish to learn sign. Unfortunately, these arguments fall flat for hearing people. For, when hearing people consider Kant’s argument, they think, “If I were Deaf, I would like to have been taught to speak and to have been given an implant to hear.”
To move past this dilemma, I consider why the Kantian argument does not persuade hearing parents. I use Wittgenstein’s analysis of thought worlds to explain how Deaf people and hearing people live in communities that do not share many values. Kantian arguments fail because they assume there is one universal human nature and thus all people would wish to be treated the same. In order to overcome the barriers that divide the Deaf/hearing thought-worlds, I propose some possible solutions using other philosophical insights. I propose three ethical arguments for the necessity of parents’ learning and promoting sign language.
1) A more sophisticated version of Kant’s Argument: Act in a way that I would wish it to become a universal rule.
2) An Aristotelian natural law argument: Sign language is natural for Deaf people.
3) A Utilitarian argument: Sign language promotes more good in the world than does oralism.

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