Talk:Models of deafness

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Contents 1 Creating page from previous redirect 2 Capitalization of "Deaf" 3 In-depth Deaf community/culture moving to separate articles 4 Views of Treatment dispute 4.1 Implanting very young childrend is no longer so controversial 4.2 Like Hell it isn't! 4.3 Let's all be sure to have our references straight 4.4 "Views of Treatment" Insulting the Deaf community then blaming the victim. 5 Neutrality Issue 5.1 Request for Comment 5.2 Reverted to 22:07, 1 Jan 2005 Version 6 Proposal for revision of Article 7 Comments on proposal 7.1 Infirmity vs medical 7.2 Model of disability vs Model of deafness 8 Removed Information 9 Future plans for this article 9.1 Page moved again: Models of deafness 10 Article Category 11 Grammar

[edit] Creating page from previous redirect

This page was a redirect to hearing impairment when I started on it. It needed to discuss Deaf culture.

Now we really need a Deaf person or a translator to look over this page and add to it!

There is a lot about the history of deaf people that I leaft out. Also, it needs discussion of organizations like the NAD and NTD. A reference to Gallaudet University, since that is so important to Deaf history in the U.S., is warranted as well. Also lacking is discussion of Deaf history outside the U.S. --hb

Thank you, hb!! I didn't know enough about this culture to do this myself, or I would have. It always bothered me that Deaf was just a redirect to hearing impairment, with nothing about the culture. - Montréalais

[edit] Capitalization of "Deaf"

Why is "deaf" capitalized in the article? -- Tarquin 00:21, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)~

That is a "holy war" type issue. Some deaf people consider there to be a deaf culture, separate and distinct from the rest of the world. Because their culture is distinct, they want it to be capitalized just like French culture or Russian culture. -BuddhaInside

P.S. - Good link here [1]

I think the capitalization in the article goes a little overboard. The "d" should not be capitalized when writing about the condition of being deaf, only when speaking of Deaf culture. Which leads us to trying to make the distinction between "deaf woman" (a woman who cannot hear) and "Deaf woman" (a woman who is a member of Deaf culture)... -BuddhaInside

[edit] In-depth Deaf community/culture moving to separate articles

The Deaf community and Deaf Culture really deserve their own article seperate from the article here. I have taken the cultural information and moved it to its own page and plan to expand on it over time. This way this article can just mention the big 'D' deaf and supply a link, then go on with elucidation of what this article should be about which is the state of being deaf seperate from the culture, hearing or Deaf, which a person may belong. The two topics are very large and deserve seperate treatment. Hopefully both articles will continue to be refined -Qaz

[edit] Views of Treatment dispute

[edit] Implanting very young childrend is no longer so controversial

Implanting very young children -- at ages as young as 6 months old, is no long so controversial from the perspective of efficacy. There of course remain ethical and Deaf cultural issues, but by today (Aug 2004) many studies have proven the efficacy of the treatment. Very early implantation combined with speech and language therapy has a very high rate of successfully enabling children to obtain spoken language. I suggest editing the paragraph on Medical Treatments to reflect this data.

Please note that I am somewhat biased -- my 5 year old son uses a cochlear implant, implanted at age 12 months. By age 3.5 years he was at a spoken language level appropriate for his age. At age 5 (current), his speech and language is indistinguishable from his peers. This outcome is not exceptional.

[edit] Like Hell it isn't!

It's child abuse. In 1995 the Mayo Clinic's follow-up research on the cochlear implant demonstrated that 70 percent of implanted children were no longer using the implant by the early teen. Seventy Percent, Sir! Why? Because with these 70 percent, the implant made no significant improvement in the deaf's ability to understand or articulate language. Not controversial? You must be working for the Cochler Corporation. It's child abuse. These children grow up still not hearing and understanding yet they also have no critical-age mastery of a language, including sign language. If you've ever worked with developmentally disturbed deaf children with these "transistor radios" surgically implanted in their skull and witnessed how language deprevation has stunted their intellectual growth, you'd not be making such a broad brush endorsement of this Frankensteinian "technology of normalization."

[edit] Let's all be sure to have our references straight

I'm obviously representing a Point Of View -- as are you -- but let's please make sure our facts are correct. Please cite the research where the 70% number comes from. How old were the children when implanted? Current data shows very high success rates over the long term for children implanted before the age of 5. Here's a pointer to one of my data source (2003 -- much more recent) -- http://www.bapo.org.uk/8th_ESPO/data/html/2744.htm -- and I would encourage everyone to research this issue and come to their own conclusions. This is obviously a controversial issue. The point here on Wikipedia is to try to represent a neutral point of view. It's OK to point out that there is controversy in this area, but let's try to keep the main article from espousing one belief or another, but rather I think it should raise the controversy itself and inform the reader. For you it's child abuse, for me, it's an amazing thing -- my child can speak as well as, and hear almost as well his hearing friends at school. He does not struggle with speech reading or strain to be understood. Given that he is going blind, I don't think it's child abuse at all. However, I understand why you do. How can this dispute be fairly characterized in the main article page? I have very slightly edited the main section (leaving your additions) to point out the NPOV question. And to answer your question, I don't work for Cochlear Corp -- I'm the father of a customer, not an employee or shareholder.

[edit] "Views of Treatment" Insulting the Deaf community then blaming the victim.

"This is obviously a controversial issue"

Thank you. That's a sea change in your prior attitude from "... is no longer controversial" stated in bold headline. My data came from "Audiology," the professional, peer reviewed publication of American audiologists. It was about 1995. I haven't been able to find an online link to the article, but I wrote an editorial on the issues at the time, when I was the editor for a deaf social services organization.

12 year old information? That's the most current? RyanGrant 05:27, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Let's not talk about neutral points of view when you cite "studies have proven the efficacy of the treatment." The heading on this issue is "Views of Treatment," is it not? And the previous version of that heading was,

"Indeed, there is controversy in the Deaf community as to whether cochlear implants are a Good Thing at all, given the negative impact which the community would suffer from its depletion."

That's not a view of the deaf community! It's an invention of the Three Billion dollar a year human-services machine!

Now *where* did the data for THAT comment come from? It's not linked, referenced or cited at all! If we are going to post conjecture into this topic, what better witness to the Deaf (yes, that's what is written, capital "D") cultural point of view is there than from someone who is "of" that culture? It is the height of insult to deaf people to hang a claim of "depletion concerns" on a class of people who have get their head, ears and skulls worked over by doctors touting the next BIG THING. The entire idea that deafness is a handicap is so repugnant to deaf people we shudder to think it. We work every day of our lives, pay taxes, buy homes, raise children, contribute to our community and that's a disability? We don't even park in the handicap parking spots at the grocery store and we be shocked out of our minds if we knew a deaf person who did, yet many states STILL endow the deaf with that privilege. I say, if you don't want controversy, don't hang the "label" of "disabled" on the deaf. You'll always be wrong in doing so and you'll just invite people like me to rebut the insult.

Ray Foster

[edit] Neutrality Issue

In the absense of a means of contacting the contributor, Dcreemer, I'll ask here.

There is a great deal that can be done to achieve the neutrality of the article's content; bland though it will become. I'm willing to discuss it but there seems to be no one willing to so much as comment or interact on this issue with the exception of this one comment by Dcreemer. I'd go ahead and make such an attempt but I'd rather not do so without input on what specific language is at the center of the debate. It would be wasteful to attempt writing a neutral POV then have someone come along and critize the work for non-neutrality as in the present case. Let's take case of it beforehand.

Therefore, I'm willing to offer the use of my personal web site, a site that is password-protected and in which any conversation can be hidden from the view of any other site users without their knowing it even exists. This would insure the private and uninterrupted flow of discussion. But this is prefaced on the willingness of other people to participate. It will require me to set up a private account for other participants and add them to a special group. I want to be fair about this, but one person doing the writing without feedback is an invitation for failure.

Please contact me via my Wiki page using the email feature if you'd like to join in on creating a document that we all can live with. I suppose at time limit is in order. I have a great deal to say regarding a number of pages that deal with the deaf. I'm willing to wait five days for responses. If I do not hear from anyone within that time frame I'll assume my present work on the page is satisfactory and I will remove the NPOV disclaimer. The time limit begin today, Sunday, Dec. 19, 2004 and will end at midnight, Dec. 24.

Ray Foster

1. Why use your personal web space? Please use Wikipedia itself, (i.e. this talk page) to discuss changes.

2. As for point of view, you really need to clean up your style. Comments like:

Human-service professionals react by finding yet more "needs" of the deaf person that must be fulfilled and they will not hesitate to appeal for funding with tears rolling down their faces and dollar signs in their eyes.

is not NPOV. You've consumed the entirity of "Adaptations to deafness" with 380 words on why the term TTY is preferred over TDD. It is a valid POV, but it is really your own view, and you have not stated it in an encyclopedic way, but as a soapbox style rant.

3. "Views of treatments" is even more one sided. While your views are valid, again they are narrow so far as to be derogatory towards Human-service professionals. Rather than write merely as a rant, you have included an anonymous narrative. Again, please try to write in an encyclopedic style and use facts and figures. Also remember this article is about deafness, which includes late-deafened and others who are often not part of the Deaf community. Some care should be taken to differentiate where views are coming from.

Please continute to contribute, but be aware of the goals and style of Wikipedia. See the Community Portal link on the left nav on every page as a starting point for more information.

--Pengo 02:26, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Pengo, thank you for your feedback. Having written on deaf issues for 20 years I'm used to having oralist/audist and proponents of the technologies of normalization talk to me like I'm a child or paternalize me. It's an old story. Yours is nothing new so I'm not surprised or offended. While I appreciate your general tone and your willingness to be involved, I worked all night on my real job (writing films) and I'm just too tired to address your points now. I will say that I've completely rewritten the introductory information for this article and will be posting it on the Talk Page for discussion and criticism with my aim being to work toward Featured Article status. No one has expressed that aim as a goal and I'm optimistic that a collaberative and respectful spirt are possible and will aid us in achieving such a aim. I ask you to hold you criticism until I've actually posted my proposed revision. I'm working very hard to satisfy the style and intent of Wiki philosophy, something I've been striving to do since well before your arrival. I'll get back to your points once I've had a chance to rest. Ray Foster 03:14, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I am not an oralist/audist, nor would I class myself as a proponent of "technologies of normalization", but I still believe these areas should be given fair and neutral treatment. I look forward to seeing your proposed changes. --Pengo 04:39, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Request for Comment

I'm not getting any feedback from the person who posted the NPOV notice so I placed a Request for Comment when I found out there is a system in place to assist to resolve problems. At dispute presently, or as pertains to the NPOV, a contributor cited a study that supposedly closes the debate as to whether the cochlear implant is controversial. He even states this view in a comment in this Talk page. I am not unsympathetic to his views, especially since I learned he has a deaf son. But his is not the only concern or viewpoint. Beyond that, before I edited the original section, someone arbitrarily stated that the concern deaf people had about the cochlear implant was mainly that it would reduce the numbers of deaf people. No data or research was sited and I strongly disputed the remark because I knew, after nearly 20 years of research on deaf culture, that assertion to be false.

At that time, the contributer posted the NPOV notice, then, simply.......vanished. Posting an NPOV notice implies that one is prepared to engage in any dialogue that would hasten an agreement and get it removed to that progress on the page can continue. But that hasn't been the case. I've not hear a peep and I'd like to re-write this entire page and give it a truly neutral POV. In its present state, I've had to tactfully rebute out-and-out falsehoods. People have been posting negative views of the deaf, or things that suggest the deaf have an irrational view of the world, then not explaining why the deaf see certain things in certain way. One glaring example was a comment on how deaf people exclude certain others from their community.

So I ask others to guide me. I new to Wiki, but I'm not new to any issue concerning deafness. I've been deaf most of my adult life, have written on deaf issues as an editor and reporter and have been a student of deaf history and deaf culture for nearly three decades. I'm dedicated to providing quality and impartial content on all deaf issues and I just seems to me that this current conflict seeks to exclude the input of the deaf community, the very people it concerns, because it's something other contributors never bothered to learn about.

I also want to add, that the person who posted the NPOV comment may be as ignornant about the process of resolution as I am. Instead of posting a request for comment, he went straight to posting the NPOV after only one exchange. Clearly, that isn't the way the resolution process works and it abuses the established system: if you can post an NPOV then just disappear, everyone else is left to deal with the disagreement while the person who posted the NPOV has no intention of returning to work out a solution. Such an act ought to be put to the test by requiring the person who posted the NPOV notice to defend his position to those who are willing to resolve the problem (me, for example.) Posting an NPOV implies that other don't have the right to remove it. I'm honoring that, but how long do I wait for the person to return to the discussion and get the resolution under way?

Ray Foster 19:45, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• I don't think this needs to be on RfC. I can't quite see what the issue is, to be honest. Is there something the npov tag poster is specifically concerned about? What I do see is that a lot of the article needs copyediting - more para breaks etc. Dan100 22:16, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Reverted to 22:07, 1 Jan 2005 Version

Some contributors have not seen the request to refrain from editing this article while it is in mediation. I have reverted to a previous version because ALL information on this page is being mediated and contributors have posted information since a "stop editing" request was posted, including external links and additions to any section. I ask your patience and understanding while we await the appointment of a mediator. Thanks to all. Ray Foster 00:26, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• With all due respect, articles are not mediated. Mediation resolves disputes between individuals, not the content of pages. RfC is the place for issues on the content of pages. Generally, however, it seems that an informal poll would precede a request for comment. In any case, neither mediation nor RfC is a form of arbitrary page protection. - Keith D. Tyler [flame] 00:42, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

• Thank you, Keith. This is news to me as, it seems, just about all the procedures on Wiki are. I'll chalk it up to the learning curve and continue my education. Actually, I'm anxious to get back to work on the page. I have a proposal to make regarding the entire premise of the discussion, something I've been working on since I first engaged the article. I'm going to contact Wally and decline advocacy, then I'm going to decline mediation. I certainly hope that is the correct procedure. Is it necessary for all interested parties to decline mediation and advocacy in order to end this fiasco? Would you mind alerting me if there is anything else I need to do in order to disengage from the mediation process at hand? I'm asking because I don't yet have the experience and knowledge to know what steps are involved. Ray Foster 18:35, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal for revision of Article

I asked four medical doctors for their views as to the accuracy and neutrality of this proposal. Two of them were pediatricians (Peds) and two were general practitioners (GP. None of them have any association with deaf culture but all of them have had deaf patients. One of them was my personal physician (GP), another is a physician in San Francisco and owns the home next to me (Peds) and visit my city a couple of times a month. Another is a recent acquaintance who lives down the street from me (GP) and the other is an old friend who lives 500 miles away (Peds). I didn't get a single reaction of this proposal being inaccurate or none-neutral. What I did hear was that they thought it was fair, impartial and interesting. Yet, ultimately, it's not for them to decide. It is for active contributors to Wiki to criticize and improve. I think this proposal will solve most of the tension this subject generates. It will also render some current information moot, unusuable, theoretically unnecessary or patent nonsense. I ask that you read it and let me know what I can do to improve it. My analysis of the present article has led me to believe that it begins from an incorrect premise then wanders off into directions that render it difficult, if not impossible, to make a unified and coherent statement. Please let me know if you see any potential in this proposal toward correcting that problem. Ray Foster 21:47, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Proposal [now enacted] found here: [2]

[edit] Comments on proposal

First off, great piece of work. I recently commented on your soapbox style of writing, and this piece certainly does not suffer the same problems. It does not have the same POV issues, or at least they're too subtle to warrant debate. The content is good. I have no problem with it being immediately included in the main article as is.

Having said that, I'd still like to see some editing (all of which could be done after the material is included in the main article). • I found the article pretty confusing to read when it jumps between models of deafness and models of disability. Can the models of deafness be said types of models of disability? and then just have links to, for example. Medical model of disability and Social model of disability rather than re-including the material.

There is one major difficulty in linking and it has to do with the Social Model of Disability. The major weight of the argument from the Culturally Deaf view rests on an issue that is not addressed in the Wiki article on Social disability. Here is the concept that is absent from that article: ""...respecting that unique organization of life while regretting the conditions that create it.." In my rush to get the proposal online, I did not amend the Social Model of Disability article to incorporate this distinction. It is the Paramount, but certainly not the only concern deaf culture makes to distance itself from the conceptual framework of what constitutes a disabled group (there are other thorny issues of the impact of the label "disabled" that have importance also) The argument turns on the words "respecting" and "regretting". The Deaf cultural model "respects" but absolutely does not "regret" the condition, state, or anything else that might cause deafness because within their conceptual framework, nothing about deafness evokes negativity and nothing about deafness gives rise to regret. I would consider it presumptuous of me to amend that article without discussing the proposed amendment with other editorial contributors. They appear to be exceptionally well-informed on the entire scope of social disability and I want to respect that. I'll put it on my to-do list. Ray Foster

Actually, I'm confused as to how the models of deafness fit in with the models of disability. • I take it the "Infirmity Model of Disability" means the same as the "Medical Model"? (judging from Medical model of disability). Personally, I'd prefer the term medical to infirmity.

It doesn't appear to have the same vein of meaning from what I can gather in the literature. "Medical" does not automatically connote "Illness". The history behind the argument shows language from the culturally deaf like "Pathological view of deafness" or "illness view of deafness" "Infirmity model" seems to be the current language. You can look at my argument below for a greater discussion on the subtlties. Ray Foster

• Does "The Cultural Deaf view of the Infirmity Model and Disability Models" really need to be its own (rather long) heading? I'm guessing you may have structured it this way to avoid POV issues, but I don't think it's necessary. This material could equally well be included at the end of the section titled "The Cultural Model of Deafness".

Yes. I did structure it that way on purpose. I've explained my reason for doing so below further down the Talk page, but in a nutshell, I believe that since the minority view of the deaf is the least known and the most prominent in its opposition, that is bears the most weight of responsibility to explain it's views. Seeing as how this article will serve as the principle source of that explanation, the deaf cultural view really must to make it's major case know right here on the Deafness article. Other Wiki articles on deaf issues can be referred to this one in order to give background for deaf cultural beliefs, more, political agenda, organizations, art forms and history for other article. But it is here that the case must be made because it is only at the this particular crossroad, this context, this single juxtaposition, where Disability, Infirmity and Deaf Culture cross paths, that the differences can be examined side by side and with best clarifying effect. One of my great frustrations with the previous article was how the Deaf cultural view was brought into play but was so inadequately expressed. For example, the old article stated that the main concern deaf people had with treatment was the concern from depletion. It didn't explain that statement, didn't cite a source as evidence of it's truth. In short, it made an unsupported, unexplained assertion. To be honest, I cried about it. It upset me terribly. It was far off the mark, and when I tried to edit the paragraph, I got hit with an NPOV complaint. Yet the article had about one year of history behind it and no one had so much as disputed the statement. It was just left dangling there for some school child to come along and use in a school paper. So, when I came back to the article, I thought the best way to deal with that and several other extremely troubling problems would be to ground the article in the correct premise; one that did not invite such horrific conjecture and speculation. To do that, the deaf cultural view has to bear strong responsibility and given the complexity of the problem, I just had to try my best to restrict the explanation to as little space as possible. I do seem room for revising the view into more concise examples. I'll add that to my to-do list. Ray Foster

• Is there a Social Model of Deafness (seperate from the medical and cultural models?)

No. A cultural model and a social model are one and the same. The tradition of referring to Deaf Culture is well-established and would draw enormous anger by modifying it to Deaf Society. It is one of the "constitutive rules" of deaf culture; a term for which one's acknowledgement of is a determiner of one's membership in the community of deaf people. Ray Foster

The article seems to imply it. It also says there are three models but then only has two main headings. Can the whole thing be changed to have simply three main headings: Models of Deafness (introduction text)

1. Medical model
2. Social model
3. Cultural model

The three models are 1. Infirmity Model of Deafness 2) Cultural Model of Deafness 3) Disability Model of Deafness (from the Infirmity and Social Disability view). I explained each model in this same order. I was a little afraid to then give "The Cultural Deaf view of the Infirmity Model and Disability Models" a major heading because I didn't want to appear to be favoring the cultural deaf view of Infirmity and Disability in some special way. I can't predict how readers and other editors will react, but I know some people will deny the existence of deaf culture altogether and will never admit that a language like ASL is even a language. I've made a mistake in not creating a major heading for that paragraph. The purpose of that section is to illustrate example and rationale behind the culturally deaf opposition to the Infirmity and Disability models. The paragraph should also deal directly with each Model individually instead of trying to argue against both models within the same paragraphs and getting entangled. I did attempt to divide things up but it is the part of the overall revision I'm least happy with. To-do. Ray Foster

(the cultural model section would probably need to be broken up into subsections too) • Late deafened or "post-linguistically deaf" people don't seem to be addressed. I'm guessing many would be comfortable with the social or even medical models.

I can add this group to the section on the Infirmity model. I did something similar with the pre-lingual deaf in the Cultural Model. I agree. They should be added. Ray Foster

There are alternatives: Late-deafened is one. But in fact, the infirmity model is all-encompassing in its view of hearing loss regardless of the age of onset or the severity. We can generalize in this by stating whom among affected individuals are likely to embrace the infirmity model and describe them with something like, "people for whom the onset of deafness occurred after they acquired a mastery of language." Ray Foster

• Deaf schooling and education is a very large topic and it would be great to for it to be expanded, perhaps into its own article. But that's for another day.

It's in my outline for Deaf History. I have a mountain of resources for this project and I'm excited about doing it. Ray Foster

• and lastly, an introduction would be nice. e.g. (this is really rough): There are three models of deafness: the medical, social and cultural models, which affect how deaf persons are treated and their identity. The medical model sees deafness as an undesirable condition to be treated. The social model sees the design of the deaf person's environment as the major disabling factor, while in the cultural model, the Deaf belong to a culture in which they are not infirm or disabled. The three models are expanded below.

Pengo, these are excellent points to work on. I'll begin immediately to do them justice including the introduction. I greatly appreciate your thoroughness. Ray Foster 09:40, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sorry if these comments are a bit all over the place, but I've only come to grips with the material and structure as I've been commenting. Again, I'm in favour of including the material, and it would certainly move the article towards Featured Article status.

--Pengo 01:33, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm new to this article, having just attempted to link to hearing loss from audiometry. I found Ray's proposal to be fascinating, but the structure did seem confusing; I agree with Pengo that they should first be quickly defined, and it would be nice if subsequent references were consistent in terminology (even switching between infirmity model and disability model gets a bit confusing when mixed in with cultural model, social model, medical model or what-have-you). I also found parts of it to be needlessly wordy; as an example, it seemed unnecessary to bring up gay culture only to then point out that it was a completely different animal -- especially when membership in Deaf culture had already been clearly explained.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this feedback helps, but after completely giving up on the Deaf article partway through, I do think that this proposal represents a big move in the right direction. -- Oarih 14:12, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

---

I must admit that I tossed and turned last night waiting to see if I had just gotten myself into deeper trouble or had achieved a measure of exoneration. I'm very thankful to have found common ground on which to move forward and I thank you both for your thoughtful and highly useful criticism. I'll try to give equally thoughtful responses to your concerns. First, I want to address the points that both of you (Pengo and Oarih [how do you pronounce "Oarih"] :-) have in common. Then I will address the individual points each of you had that were not in common.

The issue of terminology was a perplexing one to me, too. Especially the fine distinctions that were made between:

• Model of Infirmity
• Model of Disability

These terms came from two sources. The first was the chapter I cited from H. Lane, The Infirmity and Cultural Model of Deaf People. The second was QUITE extensive. It was for the voluminous professional journal "Disability, Handicap and Society". I've subscribed to this journal for over a decade. It is now called "Disability and Society" but the references were from the period when it was know by the former name. The journal is a British publication and H. Lane (Harlan Lane) is an American, a professor of psycholinguistics at Northeastern Univ. in Boston. I've corresponded with him for the past year on a range of deaf issues more associated with deaf history than deaf culture. Lane is influenced by European views of disability because it was in Europe that the concept of social disability arose so powerfully and then quickly spread to the western hemisphere. Both Lane's research and that of the hundreds researchers who contribute to Disability and Society is quite specific about this distinction between models of Infirmity and disability and I can't say definitively that Lane embraced these European terms (he may have devised them himself) but the literature of this journal abounds with these distinctions and these precise terms. I tried to find instances in which "medical model" was used in lieu of "infirmity" and I searched for instances in which "infirmity" was not distinguished from "disability". I couldn't find any instances that did that in either case. It strikes me as so subtle that it is almost indistinguishable. Yet, I didn't want to make an arbitrary assumption and simply change terms that, apparently, are the very framework in which these matters are researched, critiqued, and debated.

I acknowledge that the language of research and the language of current lay usage is often at odds. I also acknowledge that a certain precision of usage is employed in a cross-cultural research environment to avoid cultural taint. I didn't want to be the "ugly American" and just apply my own label to the terms and, in doing so, try and turn the article into an American point of view. There were instances in my writing in which I felt so weak in knowing what subtle differences there were in deaf culture outside of the United States that I decided in favor of caution and used example from American deaf culture that I was well-read in, rather than generalize a parallel to another country and end up getting my ears boxed over for generalizing when it didn't apply. Also, in my own writing on deaf issues, I've had my hands slapped no small amount of times for extending the term "medical model" into "medicalization of the deaf". It's HIGHLY sensitive and contentious term to people outside the realm of deaf culture to confront unschooled people with that rendering of the term "medical." So I put 2 and 2 together on this problem and thought that perhaps the reason I didn't see it in the profession journal is for the very reason that is rubs people the wrong way. It's something researchers are aware of and avoid. Possible? I don't know for sure. I was just striving to keep the language unremarkable and avoid the charge of not having a neutral POV.

There is another point to consider. That point being the view from dictionary definition. That may be a key to understanding why "infirm" is preferred in the literature. Here are the definitions for "medical" and "infirmity"

Medical:

• Of or relating to the study or practice of medicine.
• Requiring treatment by medicine.

Infirm (Infirmity):

• A bodily ailment or weakness, especially one brought on by old age.
• Frailty; feebleness.
• A condition or disease producing weakness.

It very well may be that "infirmity" is preferred to "medical" because medical has an all-incompassing conceptual basic that includes "wellness," "health," "preventative medicine". It is possible to grasp the distinction between one kind of medical model and another, but the concept of "infirmity" narrows the scope to a specialized focus that is more toward with "pathology" and away from "wellness" and preventative medicine. Could this be why social scientists defer to using "infirmity" rather than "medical" to conceptualize the model? I think it's arguable in favor of "infirmity" but I will NOT be the advocate for either term since I don't know the actual basis for using them.

Whatever the case, it is clear that we must provide a means of easily distinguishing between an "infirmity/medical model of deafness" and an "infirmity/medical model of disability". I despair of melding the two together since I've seen such well-qualified usage of the terms, but only in isolation of one-another. Since these two distinction were well-made in the literature, I had to search the deaf cultural resources for examples in which deaf people themselves distinguish between "infirmity" and "disability". It was easy to do from the standpoint of my own experience as a member of deaf culture. These are distinctions we make routinely. But I have no desire to "go there" for my information. I believed that since the deaf model makes precise distinctions about the rejection of both an "infirm" model of both deafness and disability, and then also reject the "social model of disability" that this cultural perspective bore a responsibility to explain itself. In doing so, I encountered the problem of how to distinguish deafness as both a culture in it's own right AND how it meets the precise definition of a language minority. That is why I used the comparisons with women, gays, African-Americans to provide a view of groups "disadvantaged" by majority culture and then used Hispanic and Native Americans to show how deaf culture fits in the category of language minority. I elaborated on the comparison between gay and deaf community for a couple of reason: 1) It was such an interesting point. Since I am both gay and deaf myself, I was struck with amazement about this point because it is so unique. 2) It makes a very strong example of demonstrating how groups are classified as a "culture" in terms of enduring a disadvantage yet persisting and thriving within a majority setting. I though using this example would be a good one to help us toward Featured Article status since this is information that is not merely accurate and highly illustrative of the concept it reveals, but that is an unusual fact that is almost unknown in serious sociological literature about both gay and deaf culture. It's kind of like a "scoop" in the newspaper business in which a certain source make widely known something that may have languished in the depths of academia but is now a hot topic.

I think I made progress and I'm mostly satisfied with the deaf cultural explanation of why "social disability" is inappropriate. It needs improvement. but I'm not happy with the deaf cultural examples that explain why "infirmity model" doesn't fit. I'm not saying I think it's lame or invalid. I personally agree with the deaf cultural view. I just don't think my example was strongly presented and that it needs work.

After I post these comments, I will take a breather and then come and add the proposed revision to the article itself. Once I do that, I'm certain there are a couple of sections that will be rendered redundant or useless. I will remove them but I just want to say beforehand that in no way am concerned if anyone wants to put back things I remove. I will make adjustments based only on my understanding of the overall goal. I'm certain I can't think of all possible reason to retain some material and discard other things. So please don't misconstrue my actions as an agenda. I want an overall coherence and consistency and will edit with intention of achieving that goal.

Ray Foster 04:36, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Pengo. I know I haven't responded to all your point. I've worn my fingers to the bone today and just need to rest a bit. I'll get to them, I promise. Ray Foster 04:39, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Infirmity vs medical

To respond quickly to the infirmity model vs medical model: The existing article "Medical model of disability" nearly exactly resembled (bullet points and wording) of your description of the infirmity model. So they appear to be the same thing. Doing a quick google search gives the following number of pages with each term:

"___ model"

• Medical: 169,000 pages
• Infirmity: 10 pages

"___ model of disability"

• Medical: 6,910 pages
• Infirmity: 0 pages

"___ model of deafness":

• Medical: 58 pages
• Infirmity: 1 page

If the term "infirmity model of disability" was once popular in journals, it certainly isn't popular on the internet today.

Note: only English pages searched. (my default)

--Pengo 09:09, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Pengo, I'm aware of that resemblence between Medical and Infirmity Models. I used that precise article as my source material and I simply adapted "infirmity" in place of "medical" and made the points specific to deafness. I noted that source in the References section. In confirming your Google search terms I found 172,000 rather than 169,000 references to "Medical Model". However, for 'Medical model of deafness' I found only 67 references. Medical Model is certainly a popular terms. Infirmity (alone) yielded 417,000 references and "infirmity model" had 10, with only one reference to "infirmity model of deafness." I think all of these counts would increase if the professional journals that have their material online would permit indexing robots. But they don't, so there's no way to know how significant the change would be in the number of references per term. I also found quite a lot of hits when I used synonym for "model," such as, "definition", "type" "description" "criterion" "characterization" "portrayal" "picture" "classification" and "explantion". Altogether they amounted to about 25,000 references to "_______" of deafness with "Medical definition" showing 23,900, and the more specific "Type of deafness" showing 811 references. I would conclude, then, that the terms "Medical" and "Infirmity" are at least interchangeable to some degree when they specifically refer to deafness. I don't think either of them would be a negative. "Medical model of deafness" with 67 hits compared to "Infirmity Model of deafness" with 1 hit is a non-issue. We just have to be sure to make the language consistent if we go with "medical". If it ever comes up from some social scientist guru who specializes in this area as an issue, I'll just point them at you [tee hee]. Ray Foster 11:30, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Model of disability vs Model of deafness

As, from a medical view point, deafness is a disability, the medical model of deafness is going to be a type of medical model of disability. I don't think you need a journal article to point that out. The same applies to social models. For now I've verbatim pasted your "social of disability" description into a "of deafness" heading. The content should (at a later stage) really be merged into "Social model of disability" or adapted to discuss deafness in particular.

--Pengo 09:09, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Pengo, The Cultural Model of Deafness is emphatically, absolutely NOT rooted in disability. It is rooted in the model of Culture, specifically "sub-culture" since it is a minority group, and equally rooted in the classification of "minority-language group". In no way is this view a view for disability. I'm correcting this misunderstand on the article. This actually calls for adding additional categories to the page. I'll do that also Ray Foster 11:42, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing that (and other fixes). My fault for over-generalising. --Pengo 13:06, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Removed Information

I moved the following sections from Deafness to Hearing Impairment: I've recently worked on the H.I. article because I knew it dealt with the entire range of the various types and ranges of hearing loss. It is precisely the all-encompassing term that best depicts the infirmity view. So in addition to what I've done, I'll be spending a great deal of time with that page in an attempt to move it toward Featured Article status. It has tremendous potential and at least one person who has a special interest in the subject. Here are the sections I moved:

• Causes of deafness (Changed to "Causes of Hearing Impairment")
• All Subsections of Causes of Deafness including 1.) Genetic, 2) Disease or illness, 3) Medications, 4) Physical Trauma.
• Medical treatments (I removed the controversial language that cited lack of a NPOV).
• View of Treatment (I changed this back to the state it was in when I first encountered the Deaf article. I left room to add discussion, but the basic content is almost entirely in it's original form (meaning the form I found back in Dec. when I first read the deaf article).
• Adaptation to Deafness. Moved to hearing impairment and removed all my blathering about the TTY. I actually had a strong reason to include that information under the former context, but that now serves no purpose in this restructuring.
• Resources. Moved to hearing impairment. This section seems to duplicate Adaptation to deafness but I kept it as a major heading for the time being.

The following I just plain eliminated from the Deafness article because they are better addressed in Deaf Culture or Deaf History and are made somewhat unfocused by our revision. There is no Deaf History article yet. It's something I'm working on now. Given the great modification of the premise on the Deafness article, I thought it was simply overkill to go on and on about deaf culture. By doing that, one loses the intent of the deafness article's intention to disambiguate a sensitive subject. To just add more and more on deaf culture gives the appearance of tremendous imbalance of purpose. The truth is, deaf culture and history have enormous caches of literature, endless topics and gigantic philosophical arguments. With this page it would soon become a major concern as to where to stop illustrating the arguments over infirmity and disability the deaf cultural model has (substantial) and just seek a balance in perspective in all the competing arguments we presently have.

• Historical attitudes toward deafness.
• Subsections addressing Historical Attitudes including 1)Education of the Deaf, 2) Oralism versus manualism.
• Deaf Culture (this title was misspelled and I hadn't noticed it until today). I eliminated this since

I'll say once again that I am preparing major additions to the Deaf Culture article and an entirely new article on Deaf History. All the issues addressed in the sections I removed will be brought back to life in my work on the existing Deaf Culture article and the new Deaf History article.

Again, I will say that I'm not opposed to other replacing the information I've moved if will work with the overall direction we've established with the new revision.

Ray Foster 07:25, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Future plans for this article

This article no long really addresses deafness, but only models of deafness. It's not exactly what you'd expect what you follow a link from Hearing, Henry Baker, Halle Berry, Human variability, Hearing dog, or History of Minnesota. The merging of the old content with Hearing impairment actually makes more sense than I thought it would. And now I think it might make sense to rename Deafness to Models of deafness, and reference it from Hearing impairment. What further plans are there for this page to warrant keeping the title, and not simply redirecting Deafness to Hearing impairment?

--Pengo 09:38, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• On the List of Deaf People article and its associated talk page I opened a discussion about the criteria I believe should guide people about whether a person should be listed or not. In my view Halle Berry is not a candidate for the reason that, when one studies the history of the deaf, those who distinguished themselves *while* they were deaf are the notible individuals. Beethoven? Certainly. Bill Clinton? Not at all. Halle Berry? Well, she's not exactly Marlee Matlan or Laurent Clerc or Jean Massiue or Ferdinand Berthier or I. King Jordon or Thomas Brown or Helen Keller, is she. Is the Prime Minister of Australia deaf and did he distinguish himself in spite of it? No. He and several others on the list would never identify themselves as "deaf" and there lies the rub. It's about identity and not about diagnosis. To say Bill Clinton or Halle Berry experienced the world as deaf people is an absurdity. Let's add a hypothetical situation. Tell me if this person would merit listing on the List of Deaf People:

Mr. X was the first person in world history to earn the distintion of writing a column for an international daily newspaper on the Olympic sport of fast pitch softball. Prior to his work, no one in world history had such a distinction. Sports columnist are among the winners of the Pulizer Prize so the status of columnist in an individual sport is no minor achievement. He was honored by the International Softball Federation for his contributions to the the game. He accomplished this with distinction even though he was profoundly deaf. He is known throughout the world as the "Ambassador of Softball." Who is this person? It's me. I did that exact thing under the conditions of being deaf. What did Bill Clinton do under the condition of having a minuet hearing loss on his later years that 80 million people in the world with hearing aid didn't do? I am the ONLY person in world history to have both the status of First and Deaf to be a sports columnist for USA Today or any other major international daily newspaper. That's the difference between distinguishing a person for their achievement while deaf and distinguishing someone whose hearing loss is hardly incidental. To merit recognition for something that wasn't even remotely a barrier to the individual simply trivalizes the lives of people who had almost insurrmountable barriers to overcome in order to distinguish themselves.

• As for the linking of people like Henry Baker to the "deaf" article, deaf history is replete with people just like him who made fortunes teaching the deaf to speak. They are the most shameful examples of all the people associated with deaf education because they kept their methods secret in the same way that corporations now guard trade secrets. Why? Because if one held the keys to learning speech, which Baker did not, it meant that the only deaf children who would receive an education of any kind were those of the wealthy merchant class and the aristocratic and royal class. It was a highly competitive business in the 18th and 19th century. People like Baker "claimed" they devised the method of teaching speech. They also claimed it work. Well, they didn't and it didn't in the case of the profoudly deaf. They did have moderate success with people who were !) post-lingually deaf or 2) mildly affected by hearing loss. The others they would refer to as "Refractory" and send them back home. But history shows these Baker types to have plagerized the methods of a 16th priest and claimed the method as their own. Baker is typical of this class. England had worse examples. Thomas Braidwood held a varitable monopoly on the deaf children of the wealthy classes. It was because of his refusal to reveal his methods to Thomas Gallaudet that Gallaudet turned to Roch-Ambroise Sicard in Paris. It is precisely the reason why deaf education in North America was founded on sign language instead of speech therapy; because Braidwood and Baker and other ilk of their kind had absolutely no compassion for the lower class of deaf people. It is actually a kind of justice to see Baker linked to "deafness" because it has the effect of undermining his "contribution". The story that is the actual truth about Baker and Braidwood is also true about Alexander Melville Bell and his famous son, Alexander Graham Bell. Same story, different people. They called their method "Visible Speech". It was a huge hit - for about two years. But oral educators learned that it had practically no use for prelingually deaf people and it was universally discarded inside of a couple of years. A.G. went to his grave referrring to himself as "teacher of the deaf". Interesting to hear that from a man who taught a total of about two years and five students when he was in his 20s.

• I am often amazed at the tendency of editors to Wiki-link every possible word that can be linked on any given page. What, for example becomes better understood by linking the word "deaf' on the History of Minnesota article to the article on deafness? Nothing. It's incidental and it's epidemically incidental, not to mention a distracting nusance because the gratitous linking of words leads people away from an article to other article that does nothing to increase one's knowledge of the article from which they began. It's not always the case, but it most certainly muddies the waters of understanding and expanding knowledge. I believe linking should be purposeful.

• This article serves a very special purpose under its present title: It disamgibuates a term that is historically ripe with controversey. To direct the article to "hearing impairment" would shatter the profound truths we've illustrated here. Also, if we redirected the article, we would be negating the entire purpose of distinguishing this term. The concept of "deaf" and "deafness" as a cultural identity is historic. It is a rejection of assimlation for the culturally deaf. To place it under the heading of "hearing impairment" would be such a terrific insult that I shudder to consider it. Deaf culture is classless. It doesn't make distinctions about degrees of deafness (hard-of-hearing, semi-deaf, semi-mute, deaf-mute, mute, mild, severe, profound) in the sense of the medical model; ordinarily it would only be used in a historical context. "Hard-of-hearing" means something far different. It's what the deaf called me when I first encountered them. I couldn't understand why. My hearing was worse than many of them. But then when I studied deaf culture, I learned that the term referred to someone who identified somewhat with hearing culture (the medical model) and somewhat with deaf culture (the cultural deaf model). It didn't matter to them that I was stone deaf in one ear and had a 110 db. lose in the other. What mattered was whether I valued sign language or English and whether I valued the community of deaf people to the point that they were my main source of social interaction. I was hard-of-hearing. Later I was "a little hard-of-hearing" and that mean that if someone was "very hard-of-hearing" it meant a person could be stone deaf in both ears but preferred to use speech and to socialize primarily with hearing people. It could also mean that the person in question had said something awful about sign language. Hearning Impaired? There's not really as sign for it in ASL. It's sometimes fingerspelled but there is not definitive sign for it. Deaf people dispise the term because they don't want the use of medicalizing terms to divide them and the hate the connotation of being "impaired" since so many deaf people continue to be regarded as "moronic". It insults deaf intelligence. Hearing people's first question to a deaf person is often "What happended to your hearing" or "Can't they do anything about your hearing?" But deaf people ask "Where did you go to school (which school for the deaf)? See the difference? Medical Concern: What happened and how do we fix it. Deaf Concern: Where do you socialize? This page is unique in that it is the point in which these models cross paths and are differentiated. It deserves its own discussion and to move it to "hearing impaired" would destroy the great fruit the article bears. It tells readers what deafness and deaf really means. I think we are better served by creating a To-Do list right here on the talk page and making improvement rather than redirecting.

Ray Foster 13:56, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Page moved again: Models of deafness

Ray,

Sorry to move this page without further discussion. But it simply doesn't make sense under its present title ("Deafness"). You've really taken my comments the wrong way. My main concern (as indiciated by the heading) was the future of the article, as it only addresses models of deafness and no other aspect.

As a being disabiguation page, in the wiki sense of the term, models of deafness is nothing like one. (e.g. see dot or starfire)

As for the importance of linking being purposeful, I agree, and that's why I've redirected "Deaf" (and "Deafness") to a "Deaf individual" disabiguation page, which serves as an actual disambiguation page. With things left as they were, when someone clicked on "deaf" from Halle Berry they're treated to a discussion on how deaf persons are treated in society and Deaf identity. With the new page, when someone clicks on "deaf" from Halle Berry, they're encouraged to fix the original link to [[deaf|late deafened adult]], (or perhaps create a new monaural hearing page).

As for the list of deaf people, that's another topic entirely. I'd suggest starting a list of culturally deaf people or list of people in Deaf history rather than displacing the current information on that page.

As for Henry Baker, please write about him on his page, not here! I only brought him up because the word deaf is underlined in the article titled Henry Baker and "Henry Baker" happens to start with H. I didn't mean to be inflammatory or promote his work or begin a discussion on Henry Baker.

As for being Ambassador of Softball and a sports columnist for USA Today, congratulations.

PS. Please try to direct your energy towards creating great wikipedia articles, rather than defending your stances in the talk pages.

--Pengo 21:00, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Excellent points, all. I did have a ranting tone and I'm very sorry to have seemed as though I was directing remarks at you, personally. It wasn't the case. As I wrote I imagined something more along the lines of shouting a warning to you across a great gulf. I don't mean to say "warning" as a threat. I mean it in the sense that the way the Deafness article as written, at long last, was in a position to say that "deafness" means more than one thing and that we ought to try and allow the arguments be seen in contrast to each other and with dignity. So when you wrote all your questions, I was in a haze of worry and I couldn't see what you were actually saying because my heart was involved. I appreciate your thoughtful work and it makes me think that, since I've admitted my biases publicly, other contributors might see that admission as a reason to mistrust my work on a given article. Maybe they'll think of it as single-minded zelotry. I know you've characterized me this way but I want you to know that I don't take offense to it. I often feel that I'm speaking on behalf of the culturally deaf and that someone actually must do so since their average reading and writing skills equate to that of ten-year old children at the time they finish high school. Almost none of the culturally deaf would be able to construct what I wrote. I look at these article on deafness with a sense of failure in my heart because I know that most of the people I'm describing will never be able to read them. I suppose that is good, in its own way. They won't have to endure the pain of reading things about themselves that untrue, or half true or attributed to them that has no relationship to them. I feel this even more since the article has been shifted around so as to remove it from being the principle means of disambiguating the term "deaf". I don't think many people with think of using the search term "models of deafness" so I now believe the article has moved into obscurity. I may not have the heart to continue to pursue the work if the things I contribute to are going to be shifted from the mainstream like that. I thought the whole idea of a collaberation was to first discuss different an aspect of an article and then create something from the discussion. My mistake is that when I discuss things, I feel better about the process if I admit my bias and hope that others won't take that as my intention to be biased on the article, but rather to understand that when I take pains to write, I'll need others to point out what does seem out of balance that I can't see because of my bias. It only seems the fair thing to do. I've enjoyed working with you, Pengo. I'm not going to be one of your prize students, but I was striving to listen to you and everyone else. On my honor, I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Ray Foster 06:20, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

In principle I agree with your goals, I think. I've created Deaf individual as a new starting point for a real disambiguation page. See the talk page for my motivations if you haven't seen it already. The page needs a lot of work in fleshing out the non-existant and stub articles, and your help would be greatly appreciated. Basically I think the medical/social/cultural models should not be mixed when they don't need to be (eg late deafened adult), and not seperated when it would mean turning a blind eye to relevant issues.

However it also includes work in creating articles that aren't of great interest in Deaf people. I basically like the article Models of deafness, however I think it would reach a wider audience as a single paragraph (with a link to the main article, of course) in a bigger article about, say, Pre-lingually deaf individuals, rather than getting lost in an article about deafness where it only makes sense part of the time. (don't think the titles of the articles like "Pre-lingually deaf individual" are set in stone either, and suggestions on that part are welcome too).

I've come to realise that most links to deaf or deafness actually do refer to people who have lost hearing later in life, so proper disambiguation really does make sense. Again, please do continue contributing, and I'd appreciate any help on "deaf individual" as, while I do like organising content, I'm really no expert on Deaf culture or deafness.

--Pengo 07:14, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article Category

I applied the category of medicine and culture to reflect the idea that this article arises from philosophical views. Someone promptly revised "medicine" to "ear, nose and throat surgery" with short editorial comment that 'medicine' was too broad. I would respond that "ear nose and throat surgery" does not address the philosophical origins of the medical model as "medicine" does and that this article is not about surgery of any kind. Another consideration is that this article does not approach deafness as a type of surgery but rather from conceptual framework. Thus a category of "medicine" or perhaps "pathology" best reflects the philosophical nature of the Medical model, while "Culture" as a category best reflects the nature of the Deaf Cultural model. "Disability" as a category seems appropriate for expressing the origins of the social disability view. I've changed the category back to medicine for the reason I've stated here. Ray Foster 01:36, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't think you have the liberty of "forcing" a particular categorisation. The medical involvement in deafness is fairly technical. A doctor will determine whether the deafness is due to middle-ear or inner-ear pathology, request audiology, and perform surgery if this may improve hearing. By insisting that deafness falls immediately under medicine you are suggesting a relationship that is not there.

There is nothing medically philosophical or cultural about deafness. The category "Ear, nose and throat surgery" is actually a bit of a misnomer and should be called "Otolaryngology" (the terms are used interchangeably). Also, you underestimate that IF a doctor will treat deafness, the solution is likely to be surgical.

I urge you to reconsider. Can you imagine every disability or disfigurement with a cultural context to fight for direct categorisation under medicine? It will be a complete mess. JFW | T@lk 21:30, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I haven't taken the liberty of forcing this categorization. As you can see it is a subject under discussion at this very moment for the purpose of finding a proper category to respresent "one* of *three* conceptual models of disability; the original category under which the article was established. These conceptual models are addressed individually and are refined to single out the implications on deafness while still invoking the full range of human disability. Discussion began on this issue only two days ago in an exchange on this talk page. One of the proposed categories was the very one you've stated above: pathology. I nor any contributor has had sufficient time to consider it, and given the very contentious nature of this article, we've found that careful, diliberate and fully examined criticism is beneficial to progress on the article. We are in no way suggesting that deafness falls immediately under the category of medicine. It is the "medical model of disability," an important conceputal framework, that is being examined for that category in an effort to fairly represent the source of that particular view. Note that there are three conceputal themes illustrated in the article. They represent diffent views of the term "deafness" and by virture of their juxtaposition, it seems only a common sense issue to give credit to the field of study from which each model arises so that one view is not given preference over another and, therefore, in keeping with the Wikipedia policy of a neutral point of view. I also understand that some people do not accept the premise of a cultural model of deafness. However, for the purposes of this article, we have no need for a hypothesis of that nature that directly refutes the premise of cultural deafness since the medical model of disability renders that conceptual framework so very well. As a person who identifies with and embraces the concept of cultural deafness, being a deaf person, myself, I feel I have a responsibility to fairly represent that view. I've taken great pains to remove my personal views from the article by turning to the extensive literature that is available on the subject of deaf culture that is available throughout the world; products of seriously engaged social researchers. It is not the goal of this article to refute 250 years of research validating the existence of deaf culture. It is the goal of this article to disambiguate a highly contentious and very complex grand argument over what the term "deafness" evokes in different people. One is not required to embrace any single view and our goal encompasses a purpose to present the competing views in a way in which the reader cannot definitively say which model Wikipedia supports or opposes. We are dilligently working toward that goal and we welcome your input in achieving it. Ray Foster 22:36, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

gedday Ray, just so you don't feel singled out... its true that JFW (and I on occassion) work quite hard to keep the categories focused and the subcategories populated. I'm afraid I agree entirely with my colleague that the deafness cant stay in category medicine as cat:med would rapidly descend into anarchy without imposed order. My only constructive suggestion on categorisation is it probably works better on small focused articles... that is, it is easier to categorise an article that deals with one component of a topic... therapeutic management of hearing impairment is clearly a "medical model" article on the topic but would belong in cat:ent and maybe cat:audiology etc... I wonder if the current article would be better named as models of deafness it would then fit neatly within category:medical sociology... and maybe in another category that would include medical model and Biopsychosocial model and Evidence-based medicine... the deafness article could then be a shortish introduction that briefly touched all the facets of deafness sociological and medical within category:deafness... just some thoughts best wishes Erich 01:11, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, Erich. This is the type of input I'd hoped for. Since I've only a month's worth of experience with Wikipedia I'm not as well-informed on the potential categories as I'd like to be and strive to be. From you suggestions I'd think there were better alternatives to "medicine" than "ENT Surgery". I haven't looked at at any of the suggested categories because I presently lack the time to do so. But I'd be delighted to find among them one that compliments the article's emphasis on philosophical views. I must admit that I'm sometimes troubled by categories because it, at least, appears that categories are assigned based on the availability of an article that explain the category. But you seem to have suggested several very good options for the category from which the medical model of disability arises. Allow me to return to this inquiry and study your suggestion tomorrow. I'm excited at the prospect of resolving this problem and I hope I can rely on your input to set the matter at rest. Thanks to you, once again. Ray Foster 02:21, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ray, you are forcing a categorisation, namely, into Category:Medicine. Erich has offered some alternatives. Not that I exactly understand it, but I have no issues with the existence of "deaf culture". Still, even the medical model of deafness does not belong directly under Medicine. Medical sociology would be the best one. Category:Pathology is completely unsuitable, as this deals with physical abnormalities causing disease (e.g. microbes, carcinogens and defective genes). JFW | T@lk 07:50, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Please understand my delimma. Under a great deal of scrutiny, criticism, inspection and claims of not maintaining a neutral point of view, I was greatly pressed to determine a correct category for the "medical model of disability" - not deafness. The term "deafness" is being examined under that model. The pivotal words are "medical" and "disability" since that model encompasses the entire gammet of illness classified as disabling, from sexual disfunction to leprosy to cancer and on and on. Sources are available via the list of diseases covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act. Deafness is but one state of being within that framework. It is because of the all-encompasssing nature of that model that an argument over deafness even exists. The stance of viewing ALL disability as a "personal tragedy" brings the cultural model of deafness into shape conflict. The model does not single out deafness. It generalizes to ALL so-called disabilities, but for the purpose of disambiguating the concept of, we have focused on the term "deafness". The medical model of disability does not arise from ENT Surgery. It arise somewhere from the loftier reaches of the field of medicine itself. But where? That is the question that prompted the discussion and that is why "pathology" was one of the suggested categories. Why pathology? There are several reasons:

1. The Dictionary definition:

• The scientific study of the nature of disease and its causes, processes, development, and consequences. Also called pathobiology.
• The anatomic or functional manifestations of a disease: the pathology of cancer.
• A departure or deviation from a normal condition: “Neighborhoods plagued by a self-perpetuating pathology of joblessness, welfare dependency, crime” (Time).

2. The Literature on Deafness: Over the course of the 20 years I have been a student and writer on deafness, the phrase "Pathology of Deafness" or "Pathological view of deafness" appears frequently. The description "Infirmity Model of Deafness" is as frequently used, especially in the professional journals. Careful examination of the definitions of "pathology" and "infirmity" demonstrate they are both rooted in the term "illness". Indeed, my first draft of this article referred to the "Infirmity Model of Deafness" but that met with objection because Wikipedia itself referred to a "Medical Model of Disability". They are one and the same model whether one uses "infirmity" or "medical" and we had no difficulty in making the language consistent with Wikipedia terminology. However, once one begins to search for a category with other contributors bearing down to effect conformence to their decision on their schedule, and with the threatening accusation of "forcing the categorization" being wielded like a club, it seems only common sense to reach for a temporary category until the accurate, or shall we call that the "least objectionable" category is discovered; the category that seems not necessarily to satisfy the spirit and the letter of the subject, but the one that the most stident arguers will permit. Add to that that we are now told that "pathology" is not an option in spite of the professional literture being replete with this categorization of deafness and other disabilities and, well, you see the problem. To now make the choice of "pathology" as a category is to refute the opinion of another contributor whose expertise in this subject is unknown, therefore must be considered as valid as any other contributor. It is under these circumstance that I now find myself as the principle contributor to this article.

Yet, I am compelled to make a decision in spite of the objections. Under my ordinary schedule I would have spent the past two days examining the potential categories and studying the Wikipedia policy on categorizing articles. I was prevented from doing that by having to address the ligitmate concerns of the people entering into the discussion and editing of the article. It's an unnerving experience to be working dillegently toward the perfection of an article only to be stopped with shrill accusations that suggest I am deliberately impeding something that, apparently, will be applied with certainty and force even if it makes the lie of the voluminous libraries of information on the subject. I will apply the the category of "pathology" under these circumstances and leave all further responsibility for the explanation for subsequent choices of category on the shoulders of those who are prepared to refute the centuries old literature. Ray Foster 17:45, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sorry Ray, pathology is too broad and honestly off-topic ... category:disability and :category:ENT surg are really where this article belongs! by the way... this article lacks a whole bunch of basic info on deafness (how common? what causes it? historical aspects, impact on communication and language, key aspects of deaf culture, key medical aspects). best wishes Erich 19:00, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This article emphatically states its purpose: to disambuate the term "deafness". It does so by present the conceputal view for the term from the perspective of the Medical Model", then from the perspective of the Social Model, then from the perspective of the Cultural model. How much more is require to show the principle definitions of a single word? How common? That is best discussed in the [Hearing Impaired] article since different models deaf with the definition, not the incidence of deafness. What causes it? Again, the Hearing impaired article covers that issues completely. Historical aspects? Of what; deaf history or treatment of deafness or what? Deaf History is worlds apart from the discussion of treatment. Treatment is directly discussed on the Hearing Impaired article. I am now preparing a new article on Deaf History. I hope you'll assist me in my goal to achieve Featured Article status with as is my goal for the Models of Deafess (formerly "Deafness") article. Impact on communications and language? We are working on explaining the impact on the Hearing Impaired article. The impact on communications and language are also aspect of both Deaf Culture and Deaf History. We are in the process of bringing those discussions in those articles. Key aspects of Deaf Culture? Have you read the Deaf Culture article? It is the best place for a full discussion of deaf culture. This present article, again, is to disambiguate the views from three different conceptual frameworks. Key medical aspects? What, may I ask, would be the key medical aspect that would further illuminate this disambiguation? I'm open to suggestion, but I can't guess what you mean? Almost all of the things you are asking about are contained in the Hearing Impaired or Deaf Culture article. What else do you mean by "key medical aspects" that would help readers to know that "deaf" means one thing to a doctor, another thing to a professional in the social disabilities field, and yet another thing to a person who is a member of the deaf community? I await your clarifying remarks with anticipation. Ray Foster 00:16, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ray, you're wasting my time, not the other way round. You are not to insert this article into Category:Medicine or Category:Pathology inappropriately, and doing so will result me in me requesting mediation on this matter.

There are no "shrill accusations", there is no "threatening accusation", you're seeing ghosts. Your article will reach perfection without those cherished categories. Category:Medical sociology is your only option. JFW | T@lk 21:18, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have no intention of doing such a thing (changing the category, I mean). As you can see in my previous paragraph I'm leaving the choice of category for others to make and defend. This is the second time you've threatened me and what confuses me about it is that by my asking you to come here and discuss the choice of category, I believed your doing so was to assist in the best choice. Apparently I was wrong about that. You joined the discussion to insist that I embrace your conclusion about the category. I was mistaken. I apologize for that error. When you made the comment, "There is nothing medically philosophical or cultural about deafness." I believed you were approaching the article with some kind of bias. Yet you later state that wasn't the case. However, it did make me wonder why you chose "ENT Surgery". Otolaryngology is an outgrowth of the father field of Otology, the history of which I've explained in my response to Raul (see below). What I didn't explain to Raul is the sheer terror that strikes the hearts of culturally deaf people when Jean-Marc Itard's work is ivoked in the discussion. Never in his life was he ever concerned with all the all the areas of disability. He spent his entire life as the resident physician of the National Institute of the Deaf in Paris. In the history of the deaf, Itard is one of the great monsters. Yet the fields of Otology and Psychology honor him has a founding father. I've attempted to make an an argument against your choice, but you only saw it as something like stubborn resistence; something it never, ever was. So, this point is moot. The category is forever in the hands of the person who wants to defend it. It won't be me ever again. It's an irony, I think, in terms of Wiki's prominent reminder to all contributor to not bite the new people. On that account, you and your experienced collegues have failed. Ray Foster 23:40, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ray - as someone who is familiar with the dispute resolution process on Wikipedia, I have been asked to comment on this issue. First, as a fairly new user, you should be aware that categories are supposed to be as specific as possible -- without this, the whole categorization system would be totally ineffective. General categories like medicine or culture will have few (if any) articles specifically in them, but should be made up mostly of subcategories. Moving article out of these categories and into subcategories is, in general, a very good thing. I changed Category:Culture (which was far too broad for this article) to category:Human communication (which is a subcategory of culture) because it is a more appropriate (specific) fit to what this article is about. I think that you should find this acceptable. The disability category is also a more specific fit (I couldn't tell what your opinion of this is given your long but utterly indecipherable comment). The disability category is a subcategory of medicine, and moving this article into there a good use of the category system. →Raul654 21:58, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)

Raul, to your great credit you make a valid argument for changing the category to Human communication. It is now your responsibility to defend your choice. In looking at the lists of categories I wonder why you didn't choice something like "subculture" or "minority languages" to qualify the section of the article addressing Deaf Culture. The Deaf Culture article, itself, was categorized under "subculture" until I changed it to "Culture". That raised not a peep from anyone but I certainly would not be bothered by it being properly categorized. Where will you put it? Human communication? And the Medical Model of Disability? Does it arise from from the study of pathology or the study of disability? It's sort of like asking if the chicken or the egg came first. Whatever you decide, it's now your responsibility to defend your choice. Wikipedia guidelines recommend that contributors write about subjects they know about best and that I have done. I not only write about deafness, I'm deaf, myself. Not only do I believe deafness is classified as a pathology, I've been reading the professional literature on the subject and writing about the issues for 20 years. I agree that it doesn't make me more expert than anyone else, but at least I can say with certainty that the sociological examination of deafness has been a subject of the study of pathology for 250 years, since the very birth of the field of otology. The founder of the field of Otology, Jean-Marc Itard is also cited as one of the founders of the field of psychology. I've read his extensive writing on the subject of deafness. He was the resident physician at the Paris school for the deaf, the world's first public school for deaf students. So why not "otology" as a category to categorize the "medical model of disability". You'll have to decide on your own whether Otology is comphensive enough to cover all the known disabilities, since that's what the Medical Model of Disability proports to do. As to my unintellible writing, I thank you for pointing that problem out. I'm always trying to improve but I'm certain I'm not always clear when I'm writing a first draft. I'd appreciate it if you would point out example of the things that aren't intelligible. I will try to improve them. Ray Foster 23:40, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ray, ENT surgery is the old term for otolaryngology. I have renamed the contented category. Please see your talk page. JFW | T@lk 00:53, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

and, Ray, just to clarify my comments above relate to this article when it was deafness. The Models of deafness page seems nicely self-contained and unambiguous. JFW, any ideas for a cat that would include 'medical model', biopsychosocial model... and maybe even evidence-based medicine and holistic medicine? maybe something like category:theoretic models of healthcare? Erich 07:14, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Grammar

I spent more than half an hour cleaning up spelling, grammar, and syntax problems. I tried not to screw up the meaning of anyone's sentences in the process. My primary goal was to make this article use Standard English so that if a deaf child's parent came looking for information, she or he would not decide that all Deaf people are grammar-impaired. If someone would please deal with the rest of the article, I'd appreciate it.

Also, the stuff in "Cultural deafness and the medical model" has no apparent relationship with its heading. 'We are good parents' and 'How to tell if you're Deaf and not merely deaf' are interesting stories, but they say nothing at all about the medical model. It may be more relevant to move those to another page and delete the heading altogether.

Finally, I beg all writers on this article: if it's more than about 25 words long, please split it into at least two sentences! 70.137.173.241 19:40, 4 October 2006 (UTC)