I had read his book, MindField and did not know what to expect. His writing was clear and concise, far better than the 7th grade level I was told the average Deaf person writes at. Shirley had mentioned in class that he spoke, but would I be able to understand him? Would he speak like he wrote, and if he signed would the interpreter be able to do his translation in the style he writes? I just did not know.
John Egbert walked in innocently a few minutes before he was due to go on. He sat quietly and watched his wife finish lecturing on Deaf culture. He looked at ease, not very nervous, certainly not as nervous as I would be before presenting in public. It did not take long after he began for me to understand why he appeared so comfortable, and why his book was so well written.
John Egbert described himself as the Michael Jordan of the oralist method. I am inclined to agree with that analogy. he spoke as if he was a hearing man, with proper inflections, accents, and tones. He had emotion in his voice, and he was extremely easy to understand. Charismatic and comfortable, we all watch him intently, and we were entertained.
It is rare that I pay such close attention to a person’s speech patterns. I normally notice when a person uses incorrect grammar, or pronounces something incorrectly, but never do look for it. I could not help but find myself searching for those things with John Egbert. However, I found almost none, I was so impressed with his speech that it was difficult for me to believe that he learned it all as a Deaf child. He spoke well, better than some hearing people. I could not have known he was a deaf man, if he had not told us.
Perhaps even more impressive than how he spoke was what he spoke about. John started his presentation in a style typical of a member of the Deaf community. First he introduced himself, and described where he came from. He spoke of what school he went to, and how he knows various people in the Deaf community. He told us about his family, and other people in his life, including our professor, Shirley. He then went on to tell us some stories about his childhood. Extremely entertaining, he spoke of how his deafness affected his experiences and a young man. Getting into trouble with cherry bombs and snakes, and playing practical jokes on friends and neighbors, John no doubt had a spirited and enjoyable childhood. We laughed at his stories and were captivated by his experiences in the far south. He seemed to be a very interesting man.
His childhood was not all fun however, and his stories made that clear to us. The most moving part of his presentation was when John spoke of the difficulties that he faced as a Deaf young man. Clearly emotional, his voice cracked as he paused to take a moment to reflect on the struggles he, and other deaf people experienced in their youth. “Sure I can speak here, but what about my mind?” he repeated more than once, describing how the oralist method ignores the education of the mind and only focuses on the education of the voice. He described being pulled around to the public showings, and being forced to speak in order to advertise for the oralist tradition. I could not help but envision some sort of forced entertainment, like a circus or a street performer, and it saddened me that his Deafness was turned into a spectacle, instead of embraced as a part of him. I developed a dislike for his oralist education, and the proponents of this method.
The final portion of John’s presentation had to do with this group, the Deaf Bilingual Coalition. He told us about the group, and he stressed a few times that he truly hoped that it only needed to exist for a few years. Of course, he acknowledged, it may be a tougher struggle than that. The DBC is a group dedicated to serving the Deaf and hard of hearing community to fight for the adaptation of early use of ASL.  He told us about the various obstacles he has faced, including the very ill informed hotel manager who only served to help his cause in the long run. He made impressive arguments about how hearing babies are now learning some basic ASL signs to communicate with their parents early, but how Deaf babies are still forbidden to use it. It made no sense to me, and of course that was the point.
John’s presentation lasted for about an hour, but it felt like much less. He spoke clearly, fluidly, and powerfully about issues facing the Deaf community, and he spoke of them from a very strong perspective. it was not difficult to understand his points, because he spoke in such plain English about his struggles. I often felt while I was listening to him as if I were experiencing what he had gone through. This caused me to be able to empathize, to agree, and to want to help. I was unaware of many of the issues he presented on before he spoke, and now that I am aware of them, it is even harder for me to believe that they even exist at all. why would you not want to teach Deaf children ASL? Why should surgery be forced on a child? How can a Deaf child be forced to speak? It makes no sense to me and I think that was John’s Point.

John F. Egbert

This was at the EHDI (Early Hearing Detection and Intervention) Conference, March
10, 2009 at Dallas, Texas. The transcript below is from his verbal presentation by
John F. Egbert, founder of Deaf Bilingual Coalition, being provided in answer to
requests from conference attendees, including parents and professionals.

JOHN EGBERT: Hello, everybody, my name is John Egbert, I was born and raised in
Jackson, Mississippi to hearing parents. I live in Minnesota at present. I thought this
was going to be a one-hour time slot, and I didn’t realize that I only actually have
thirty minutes, so I’m going to try to lecture as fast as I can.

I was born Deaf and I have about a 90-to-100 dB loss. I went to an oral school
called “Chinchuba,” in New Orleans. I was a “poster child,” and they took me to
downtown New Orleans every now and then. I participated in a lot of public
demonstrations showing my ability to speak. They didn’t use any of my other
classmates, just me.

Then my parents took me out of that particular oral school after the third grade
and put me in a public school. Right away I found that I could not pick up what the
teachers were saying, because in the oral school, they worked with us one-on-one,
but in the public school, it was different. And so I did alright in the public school,
because I was able to do most of my learning from books, not from the teachers
during class.

We only have 30 minutes today, so I’m going to have to leave a lot of things out, but
the main thing that I wanted to explain to you about my experience growing up oral
was that it was more of a “one way street.” I consider myself, as a Deaf parent, to be
someone who can speak well. I can talk to you, but when someone is speaking to me,
I misunderstand their speech.

After I got out of high school, I enrolled in Gallaudet. I didn’t have any deaf friends
at the time. I thought I was “a hearing person with a hearing problem.” I thought
the reason why deaf people like me don’t speak is because they don’t have the–
maybe they have a limitation. There’s a stigma. I just had the feeling that the deaf
people were different.

When I went to Gallaudet, I couldn’t believe how anybody could read fast
fingerspelling. It seemed impossible. I mean, I just couldn’t comprehend how they

could do it. Sign language–it was going to be difficult, I thought, to learn it.

I have a Deaf brother and he went to Gallaudet ahead me. He told me, “John, when
you learn sign language at Gallaudet, stay away from the oral people. Associate with
the deaf people who sign.” So I did the best I could. Every night when I went to bed
at night, I practiced fingerspelling the alphabet over and over. I carried around my
sign language book with me every day and did the best I could. By November, the
upperclassmen asked me, “Hey, what Deaf school did you go to?” At that point I
knew that I doing well. All you need, to learn sign language, is the desire to do so.
It will come to you. So I learned sign language at Gallaudet and at Christmastime I
went home and asked my mother, “Mom, why didn’t we learn sign language when
I was little?” And she said, “Well, they told me not to teach you sign language.” She
also told me that she had been told she should turn my head away whenever there
were deaf people around me using sign language, and that’s what she did. I could
hardly believe what she was telling me.

When I went back to Gallaudet after Christmas, I told my friends what my mother
had said, and my classmates told me that their parents were telling them the same
thing, that their parents were told that they shouldn’t let their children learn to sign
at first.

I entered into Deaf culture. I had a lot to learn, and I didn’t really do any research
about Deaf culture at the time.

I married a Deaf woman. I didn’t think I would ever get married because of the
reality of the situation of being with hearing people. I didn’t think a hearing wife
would feel comfortable with me. But I did marry a Deaf woman. We had two Deaf
children. When one of my Deaf children started going to school, I began to realize
certain things about the system, the school system. I said to myself: “What’s going
on?”

I would go to the PTA meetings at my children’s Deaf school and I would talk
with the teachers and other Deaf parents. I told them, “Hey, we’ve got five speech
therapists for speech classes, but no ASL teachers for signing classes! And we’ve got
70 percent of the deaf children coming from mainstreaming schools and they don’t
know sign language.” Who was teaching them to sign? The other students! The Deaf
school children were the ones teaching a new language to the mainstreamed Deaf
children who came into the Deaf school. I told the PTA group that the school should
be doing this.

After the PTA meeting the superintendent came up to me and said, “John, you’ve got
to understand something…”

Folks, I am just like you here who are listening to me. I’m still learning. Even though
I’m 61 years old right now, I’m still learning.

The superintendent came up to me and said, “John, 95 percent of the deaf children
have hearing parents. Hearing parents dominate deaf education.” And BAM! This hit
me really hard.

I couldn’t argue with that. How true it was. The parents had the right do to what
they thought was best for their children. It’s so true. But then I realized that many
of these parents were being misled.

I said to myself, “Gosh, what am I going to do?” I had to think. How could I get all
these hearing parents in my boat and have the same philosophy about what these
children need, because I am a real Deaf person. I know what it takes to be a real Deaf
person, because I’ve got two Deaf children. And so, I began to get more involved
and do something about it. Much later I wrote a book, a novel, called MindField.
It’s about terrorist group from Iran that got a hold of a highly contagious virus
from Russia, and they released it in the U.S. hoping to kill people, but the virus had
already mutated during the 25 years of the Cold War. It didn’t kill anyone and
suddenly there were 3,000,000 hearing people who became deaf in two months
from meningitis and the government didn’t know what to do. You can read the book,
MindField if you want to know more about it. (Laughter)

And so there I was, confronted with the situation. Something was going on as it
related to the Deaf education system and its philosophy—what people thought was
best for the Deaf child. I realized that a Deaf child should have two languages: The
Deaf child’s language needs to be visual, and the child should be bilingual, meaning,
be fluent in ASL and English.

But there was a big organization saying: “No sign language! Oral English only.”

Well, we all, Deaf and hearing people, do use English, but Deaf people need a visual
language to be able to learn how to learn.

The education I got first when I grew up was focused on the mouth and the ear, not
my mind. They didn’t educate my mind. I had to figure that out on my own and
learn how to become self-educated.

My son has three Deaf children. The oldest one is six years old. I remember back
when I was six years old how gullible I was. Every time someone talked to me, I just
smiled. I was just like a happy dog–a puppy, really!

And now just last week in Austin, Texas, I went up to my granddaughter, who is six

years old, and I said something silly. You know how sometimes grandparents can be
silly. And my granddaughter told me, “Ha ha, you’re being silly.” Then I realized that
I didn’t the kind of cognitive development that she has when I was six years old.

So from age zero to eight, educators and parents should be focusing on Deaf
children’s minds. It can’t be done by focusing on the mouth or the ear. You’ve got
to “feed” the mind, educate it. Let me put it this way, hearing people and Deaf
people, you and me, our brains are like bionic computers. We do everything by
calculation, like picking things up, walking, reaching for something. Everything you
do involves calculation.

Our brains, as human beings, function like computers. But to continue the analogy,
the difference between you as a hearing person and me as a Deaf person, is that you
are like a PC computer and I’m like a Mac computer. Our brains are no different at
the genetic, or “hardware” level, but our mental “software” is different. Why is this,
you might ask. Deaf people receive input that fits their “eye software.” Hearing
people have “software” for their ears and get their data that way.

And you hearing people can get data from your eyes, but you don’t know how to use
it in the same way, see? So I’m a “Mac” and you’re a “PC”.

Let me expand on the illustration a little bit. Suppose that I’m a hearing parent. I can
hear, and when my Deaf baby is born, my baby’s a “Mac.” But I’m a “PC” and I’m also
a “PC programmer” (parent). I don’t know how to program a “Mac” (my Deaf baby).

So what am I going to do? An organization may come in and say: “We know what to
do.”–Oh, do they?

“Yeah,” they say. “We offer options. We will bypass the visual method and go for the
auditory method.”

But we need to realize that a Deaf baby needs to be programmed by a parent
who knows how to “program” a Deaf child’s “computer.” But there’s this gigantic
organization which has people who say: “We can do this method, this PC method.”
But the question should actually be: Can we do the bilingual method?

Now there are hearing babies all over the country who are learning sign language!
Hearing parents are teaching their hearing babies at the age of 4 months to 18
and 24 months visual sign language. Why? To stimulate their child’s cognitive,
developmental skills—their mental “network.”

Using baby signs, a hearing child’s brain is developing and is acquiring language by
visual methods, then the child is ready to speak at the age of 18 or 24 months. It’s

easy to do this. Also, those babies who use baby signs have fewer tantrums. They
experience better bonding with their mothers. The key is a greater emphasis on
visual communication.

Do you know why there are families all over the country who have problems?

The answer is just one word: Communication.

So now we have hearing parents teaching sign language to their hearing babies to
help improve communication.

At first, I couldn’t believe what I was being told about hearing babies being taught
sign language as early as 4 months of age. And that was only two years ago when I
found this out. I did a Google search to learn more about baby signs. There was an
incredible amount of information on the Internet about baby signs! I didn’t realize
at the time that signs could be used with hearing babies and that signing could be so
important for their cognitive development at that very early age.

Why can’t deaf babies learn sign language too?

If you want to teach deaf babies speech, fine, but between 0 to about 18 or 24
months, they can’t speak, because their vocal muscles are not yet fully developed.

Should we nurture Deaf children’s minds using a visual method? The gigantic
organization says: NO! And their slogan is: “Advocating Independence Through
Listening and Talking.” That really bothers me.

“Why don’t we,” I asked them, “educate the Deaf baby’s mind using visual methods?”
They said, NO!

What are they going to do for Deaf babies who are between the ages of 6 months
and 24 months? We can program the Deaf baby’s mind to be ready to learn speech if
that’s what the parents want.

Back in 1880, in Milan, Italy, hearing educators of the Deaf decided to take sign
language away from Deaf children and they adopted oral-aural only methods of
teaching Deaf children.

Before 1880, there were Deaf people who were proofreaders and editors for
newspapers. There were many Deaf people who had a good command of the English
language. I was recently visiting the Deaf school in Minnesota and they have a
history museum there that I visited. I looked at a book from 1875 which contained
the minutes of a student body government meeting. My God, they had better

English. They had excellent English skills.

After 1880, Deaf people’s English skills went downhill, on average. Deaf people have
had problems with English ever since.

The organization which follows the oral-aural philosophy says that the problem
with Deaf people’s English is that Deaf people are not getting enough education with
through speaking and listening. Actually, no, the real problem is that we are not
educating the Deaf child’s mind. We’ve got to focus on the Deaf baby’s brain, not its
ears and mouth.

What’s going on?

I think that if you parents here, all parents, want your Deaf child to be a whole
person, a normal person. You need to put the focus on your Deaf child’s mind
starting as early as possible.

Do you know when I became a whole human being? When I was nineteen years old
at Gallaudet.

Here’s a phrase that many use: “Being between a rock and a hard place.” I’m sure
many of you have heard that phrase being used all over the place.

Here’s the rock [pointing]. Here’s a hard place [pointing]. The “rock” is Hearing
culture, Hearing reality. The “hard place” is the Deaf reality, Deaf culture. All my
life, until I was 19, I was between a “rock” and a “hard place.”

No matter how well I speak, I will never be hearing.

When I went to Gallaudet, I learned sign language and BAM!, I immediately became a
whole person. It was the first time I ever became a normal human being!

Here I am. I’m part of Deaf culture, the real Deaf reality.

All over the country, deaf students in oral-aural programs are between a “rock” and
a “hard place.” They are in that in-between place all the time. Even though they
might say: “I’m fine,” so did I. I said that, too, before I went to Gallaudet. I thought I
was a whole person.

The majority of those deaf students being raised in oral programs who say “I’m
fine”, are actually like goldfish in a small bowl who don’t realize that there’s a much
bigger and better aquarium out there where they aren’t being allowed to swim. In
the big aquarium, Deaf culture, there’s the full experience of reality, using a fully

accessible language modality. I used to be like the goldfish in a small bowl, thinking I
was fine, but I wasn’t. That’s who I was. I thought I was normal.

And so you see, we all need to start thinking about educating a Deaf baby’s mind
using visual language.

If you want speech as an additional skill, then good for you. But there are many
cases of Deaf children who are being limited to oral-aural programs and they can’t
succeed that way. When American Sign Language is used, the Deaf child will not be
left out.

The organization that follows the oral-aural only philosophy tries to tell parents
that sign language supposedly interferes with Deaf children’s acquisition of English
language. That is simply not true.

By the time the Deaf child reaches the age of eight, when the parents realize that the
child will never have normal speech, it’s almost too late to catch the child up fully by
using sign language.

Look at all those mainstreamed Deaf kids that transfer to Deaf schools after failing
in oral-aural programs. The teachers and the students who are already at the
Deaf school have to struggle to try to communicate with them. The children who
were mainstreamed do not have anywhere close to the same level of cognitive
development. They lost out on the chance of having what they should have had, all
because of the false philosophy of the oral-aural, monolingual methods.

Let’s use the bilingual method, using ASL and English. There’s no risk of failure
using the bilingual method.

Actually, everybody knows a little sign language. Every time you watch football
on TV, the referees use sign language: “touchdown”, “time out,” “holding”. What’s
wrong with signing? Shouldn’t Deaf babies learn ASL? Why not?

I’ve got five more minutes left in my allotted 30 minutes. Are there questions? Any
questions?

AUDIENCE MEMBER #1: I just have a comment to your story. I have heard this
thousands of times because I’m involved in the Deaf community and it doesn’t
matter if it’s an older Deaf person, I’ve heard it from teenagers, so what he is saying
isn’t a thing of the past, it is a thing of the present. And so I just applaud you for
telling your story because your story is what everybody needs to hear, because that
is the story of a lot of people in this world. Thank you, John.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #2: We’re worried because you don’t have this on PowerPoint
because all the presentations are going to be on PowerPoint and posted on the
website, and your story isn’t there for us to all go back to. Is it going to be?

JOHN EGBERT: You mean my presentation? You want to see it on PowerPoint? I
could write it up and give it to them to make available to you so you can get a copy.
I’ll work on that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #2: Okay.

JOHN EGBERT: I have to see about doing this using PowerPoint. To tell you the
truth, I feel a little guilty about having done this, but I have to tell you candidly. If
I had promoted this presentation as being by someone who learned sign language,
would half of you have come? I’m afraid people would say to themselves: “No, I
don’t want to see that one.” Maybe I’m wrong, but really, I’d like for you to be able
to come in here and get to know what my experience in life has been. I was afraid
to write out my presentation or prepare PowerPoint slides, because people would
probably see that and say: “Ugh, let’s don’t listen to him,” and then I would lose my
opportunity to reach out and educate you. But I will do my best.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #2: Okay. Because it needs to be saved and so we can share it
with other people.

JOHN EGBERT: Yes, I will.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #3: I have a question. First of all, I want to thank you very
much. It was a very empowering story, and I appreciate it, and how has your
experience growing up influenced the work that you do today? Are you involved
with Deaf education or anything? What are you doing now?

JOHN EGBERT: I founded a grassroots organization called the Deaf Bilingual
Coalition (DBC). It’s an education organization, whose purpose is to educate parents
about what they can do for their Deaf children, and the main message is that the
most important goal should be to focus on the Deaf child’s mind. And I think that’s
something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, really, set up something like
the DBC.

Somebody’s got to get the word out on what’s going on. There’s been years
and years, 130 years of abuse, of taking our sign language away, and telling
parents, “Don’t teach him sign language” and “Don’t teach her sign language.” That’s
still going on today, even though there are those who deny it and say: “It’s not true”,
but this is still going on.

On the way here to the hotel from the airport, a friend of mine was riding in a
shuttle and there were two women in the seat in front of him. My friend said he
heard one of the women saying negative things about sign language and she was
saying how successful her agency has supposedly been, winning court cases to
oppose the use of sign language in schools in California, and how Deaf people, blah,
blah, blah. You know.

Do you know what that’s called? It’s called “audism,” A – U – D – I – S – M. It’s
analogous to racism. It’s just like when there are White people attempting to
control the members of Black culture or men attempting to dominate women,
or straight people attempting to dictate to gay people. In the Deaf reality, take a
look here at this EHDI conference. There are about 700 hearing people and only
about 30 Deaf people. We need balance. Almost all the decisions by legislators, in
Congress and the states have been made by hearing people or medical professionals
who really only have “book smarts” or “paper smarts.” In reality they have no idea
what it’s like to be Deaf. We need balance here at this conference. I mean, this is
ridiculous. It’s ridiculous to have all these people making decisions for Deaf people.
Look at Black culture. How many White leaders do you see in Black culture? None.
Now look at the corresponding situation involving Deaf people. They’re all hearing
people! That’s audism. They look down on us. They think sign language is so-so and
not so good. I did too once…I really did. Then when I learned sign language, I found
out how wrong I was. This is now my calling, to ask: Why are you doing this?

AUDIENCE MEMBER #4: I’m sorry. I was letting you know you have five minutes.

JOHN EGBERT: Oh, I didn’t realize what that meant. I’m learning. I’m a “tenderfoot”
here. Next year I’ll have the hang of it. (Laughter.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER #5: I have a question for you. I want to thank you so much for
being here with us. I really appreciate hearing your story. And I would like to ask
you for your advice to us. Sometimes I share with a group people who don’t really
understand the Deaf person’s perspective, just like the things you mentioned. And
their reaction to me is: Oh, today is different than it used to be. Today things are
much better, we have oral education as an approach, we have auditory-verbal as
an approach, and it’s different than it used to be. Back then it wasn’t right, but now
we have a different approach of teaching kids how to talk and how to hear. How do
you respond to that? You know, they mentioned technology and cochlear implants,
auditory-verbal. And they believe that we can still make deaf children talk. How do
you respond to their comments?

JOHN EGBERT: I would say that they are engaged in attempting to improve their
marketing system. Here’s an example of what I mean:

Take hamburgers. Can you make a better hamburger than McDonald’s? Yeah? Then
why don’t you get in the business? Well, McDonald’s, is making billions of dollars
all over the world, even though you can make a better hamburger than they can.
You know why? It’s because of marketing. It’s all about having a marketing system.
And they are good at it. They know how to use just the right words to influence
people.

I’ll give you another example. That oral-aural organization says that parents have a
right to make a choice. Using that word “choice” is a very slick marketing decision
on their part, because “choice” implies that one method will be chosen and the other
method rejected. Why don’t they use the word “opportunity”? That would be better.

Their marketing tactics bother me. They have a slick way of marketing. They work
on “improving” their marketing, but they just end up using even worse tactics. They
refuse to accept a bilingual philosophy.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #6: I’d just like to add a comment to your information here.
I’ve spent my entire life perfecting my speech, perfecting my effective use of my
hearing aid. At the end of the day, when it’s all said and done, my speech abilities
and my abilities to use my residual hearing with my hearing aid does not allow me
to fit in with my own family, my parents, my siblings at the dinner table and have an
effective conversation. And people forget that. There is no device or training that
will ever permit me to 100 percent effectively fit in with my own family. So and I
think it’s important that people remember that. It’s not about being able to speak or
being able to hear. It’s about belonging and being a whole person.

JOHN EGBERT: I agree. See, you, the parent, do not need to learn ASL perfectly.
You can try, but what’s important simply is trying to communicate. Do learn sign
language. That would be fine. Ma’am?

AUDIENCE MEMBER #7 (voice of interpreter): I just had a quick comment. I’m Deaf
and I grew up oral, but I just wanted to add to that that I’m an adult educator. Just
last week we had a student with a cochlear implant and she had some swelling,
and for the first time in a long time. She was Deaf. We brought in an interpreter, to
sign, because her parents didn’t know sign. I’m just saying that it doesn’t matter
if you have a cochlear implant or not. They all need sign. There are many times
when you have to go where those kids are. They’re Deaf. My students are. Can you
imagine? There were just a lot of people that need to understand that. They have
misapprehensions about hearing.

JOHN EGBERT: Perception… Perception. I’m talking about people finally
understanding and getting the right idea about who Deaf people are. Knowledge?
Knowledge about better ways to teach Deaf children is out there.

You know, when I grew up, like all these Deaf children being taught today under
the oral-aural only philosophy, I had to develop a lot of perceptions through second
guessing, and so do they. I had to always try to second guess what was going on.
Some teachers use lipreading, SEE signs or sim-com, and we have to try to figure
out what they are saying. I had to second guess what they were trying to say, and
that’s what my self-created perception was. I didn’t know if I was perceiving them
correctly or not. When a teacher uses ASL, sign language, the teacher is able to
convey the full message, so that you don’t have to do any second guessing and you
can get the correct perception. When a teacher uses ASL, I get the message perfectly
well, just like I’m watching a movie. The difference is quite stark. But when I don’t
understand a teacher’s oral-aural language, I have to resort to second guessing
and trying to figure out what I should be perceiving. As for interpreters, some
interpreters are good, some are not. What’s important is being able to accurately
perceive what is being communicated. Hearing people are used to learning by
listening, instead of how we learn, by seeing. So hearing people won’t really
understand our needs.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #8: I’m new to this field. I’m wondering where the controversy
is, because I don’t hear anybody disagreeing with you, so there must be people who
disagree and who are they? I have heard audiologists say that doing both at the
same time can interfere with learning oral skills. Is that where people disagree?

JOHN EGBERT: Would someone else like to respond to the question?

AUDIENCE MEMBER #9: I’m a parent. I have two children who have cochlear
implants. They were taught sign language and speech and they use both. They got
that implant and when they’re swimming or at the beach, they need to know what’s
going on, you need to be able to communicate with them. So I’m in the middle, not
completely on either side. So there’s someone else out there.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #8: But the good thing is that you are providing for your child’s
sign language. That’s what John is saying. Yeah.

JOHN EGBERT: My times is up? One last one. Time’s up. They might shoot me if we
go too long. (Laughter.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER #10: There’s no reason why it should be either/or (either sign
or speech). None. There is no research, there is no evidence that one decreases the
effectiveness of the other. It should be all.

JOHN EGBERT: Go ahead, quickly.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #11: That was my next question. Is there research that shows
using sign language at the same time as getting speech training slows down or
interferes with learning speech?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: No.

JOHN EGBERT: No. It helps.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Actually, it helps. It helps with your speech. They have
research that proves that sign language will help your speech.

JOHN EGBERT: When you teach them ASL, once the Deaf child’s mind has developed
normally, using ASL, you can teach them anything. There are no limitations. But if
a child is only taught speaking and listening skills, that doesn’t mean he or she can
learn.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think it’s important, though, that you stick to the message
and not try to lay blame to one group or another. I’m an audiologist, I have never
felt that it is all or another, and when you hear “audism,” it’s very degrading, when
you hear those audiologists, that’s not true. There’s a lot who don’t feel that way.
I think you just need to stick to the message that bilingualism works and it’s an
option and it should be offered. Choices, shouldn’t be one choice. There can be
many different choices along the way. So we just say we all want what’s best for our
children and that’s access to language.

JOHN EGBERT: It shouldn’t be: What can your child do for you. It should be about
what you can do for your child.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can you, when you work on the PowerPoint, can you include
studies or, you said that there’s evidence, the evidence base that both are helpful. I
think that would be really helpful to share with parents.

JOHN EGBERT: Look at our website: http://dbcusa.org. There’s lot of good
information there. And use the Contact Us link on dbcusa.org to reach me, if you’re
unable to reach me otherwise. I care for your children. Not my wallet. (Applause).

JOHN EGBERT: Thank you.