Essay On Deaf Culture

Jay’s presentation to the class gave me a lot of insight on deaf culture. Jay speaking on his life really showed me how important family and friends are to Deaf culture. He pointed out how he grew up being around a lot of Deaf people. He also pointed out how his sister in-law didn’t grow up around many Deaf people, and how she went to mainstream hearing schools, which may have been the cause of her not having as many friends as Jay. So having a social life, and communicating is really important to the Deaf culture. Jay’s family always had friends over, and was always having get-togethers. Just because Deaf people can’t hear, it doesn’t mean they like to be bored or isolated; they like to have a lot of fun. Jay also mentioned how he travels …show more content…
For example, Jay mentioned that when he went to college Gallaudet University was really the only school with interpreters for him to choose from to get a higher education. However, nowadays there are many schools that have interpreters and welcome deaf students, which I think is great! Another thing Jay spoke about was how when he was born there was no cochlear implants. However, now parents have the option to choose if they want their kids to hear or not. I think it’s a tricky position for a parent to be in. But, I guess the decision process will be different for hearing and death parents. There was one more change that I noticed in Deaf culture that really stood out to me a lot, and that was the decline in Deaf clubs. Deaf clubs use to be really important for the deaf culture it was their only way to communicate, hang out, and talk about things that was going on in the world. However, due to all of the technology deaf clubs have declined. But, they are still some deaf clubs and meet up places for Deaf individuals. Their just more prominent in some areas. I really enjoyed Jay coming to speak to our class, I found him to be very informative and funny, and a great story teller as