as small as a world and as large as alone

8:38pm December 14, 2013

queerability:

Video is a teacher talking to a classroom of deaf students.

Teacher: I want to talk about language today. When a child is born, what is the first thing the parents hear in the hospital?

Student: “Your child failed the hearing test.”

Teacher: Right. A baby is five hours old and he’s failed something already? What about the term “hearing loss”? What does that word evoke?

Student: Hearing is the norm. Deaf is less than. Lacking.

Teacher: Are we “less than”? Do you believe being deaf has taken away or added to your life? If someone invented a pill you could take it tonight and you would wake up hearing how many of you would take it? *looks around the room* None of you. Why not?

Student: Because being deaf gives you friends anywhere you go.

Teacher: Community.

Student: And a way of seeing the world that’s different from anyone else.

Teacher: Perspective.

Student: Hearing kids don’t know who they are. We do. We’re deaf: first, last, always.

Teacher: Identity.

Student: Hearing people think they have more than us…their lives are better. We have it so “hard.” But I’d never give up being deaf to be like anyone else. Never.

Teacher: Not hearing loss. Deaf gain.

Note: Please keep this transcript when you reblog this so that blind people (blind people use screen readers) are able to know what the video was talking about.

26,934 notes