Why we need to support the Deaf institutes now more than ever
By Earl Mikell

Every unique community has something essential to keep it bound together in good times and bad times. What holds a community together can range anywhere from the seemingly minor to the most fundamental; sometimes it can’t even be quantified. To us or to others, what may seem insignificant as to what holds other communities together in fact appears very, even critically, essential to them. Whatever it is, it is plainly clear that it is the heart of the community. And so, just like a human body without a heart, a community will not sustain itself for the future if they do not keep the heart alive and beating.

The American Deaf community is one such entity that requires, more or less, a heart to keep the community alive. It doesn’t take very long, for perceptive observers, to note that it is the Deaf schools that help promote and sustain the American Deaf community. A strong case certainly could be made for our sign language as being the heart that keeps the community together, but that’s probably more so true of the international Deaf community than it is for us. If anything, our sign language can and should be considered the community’s brain, providing the intellectual and communicative foundation for the community.

Why should we consider our Deaf schools to be the heart of our community, you may ask? Laurent Clerc’s journey to the United States and the modest beginnings of the American School for the Deaf helped lead to the creation of the modern American Deaf community and, back then, much of our Deaf educational, social and athletic life revolved around these institutes, a traditional and essential practice that continues to this day. For example, you have the Little Paper Families, a group of Deaf schools writing and printing their own newspapers for the Deaf community back in the late 19th Century. The LPF papers helped to keep the rest of the community well informed and in frequent touch with one another.

Today, we have major athletic/cultural events at our schools, where the community comes together to participate in them and celebrate them, as well each other. We continue to send our children there, following in our footsteps. And we support them with our money and our passion. Some of us even take positions at the schools, invested in making sure the current experience today’s students receive are similar to our past experience, and infuse them with a sense of being within our community. We are intensely involved in the workings and survival of our institutes to an extraordinary decree; nowhere in the hearing world do you see similar efforts on a widespread scale.

The reason for that is pretty simple; schools do not attain a high level of sustained interest in that world, with only its educational and athletics capabilities of any interest to them in getting their children a good life past high school. For us, it’s different. They have much in the way of public and private offerings; we don’t, given the smaller numbers of Deaf people in America. They don’t have to worry about relevance in a modern technological age; we do, with the proliferation of cochlear implants, mainstreaming programs and other modern technological and educational adjustments.

And they also are not very dependent on the state and federal government for financial support (at least not to a greater extent than us), whereas our schools’ existence absolutely relies on the government to do its job and provide the necessary fiscal resources for us to accomplish our mission of teaching deaf children first and foremost, with supporting our community and culture a close secondary objective. Much of our budgets, if not all of it, come from the government. Therefore, we have to hope that the governments do not have more pressing and immediate financial concerns in order for us to receive the needed money to keep operating.

The saga of South Dakota School for the Deaf and Scranton (Pennsylvania) School for the Deaf is illustrative. Both schools are likely to be closed this year, because of their respective governments’ financial shortfalls. The Deaf communities in both states are mobilizing to stop the closing but given the state of the national economy it is unlikely that both schools will remain open, unless the state governments find a way to reprogram money for these schools in their budgets. At this time it appears that SDSD will most definitely close, and SSD’s story has yet to come to an end.

With each closing, a piece of Deaf history and culture is lost for maybe for a while, or maybe forever. For a small community fighting to remain relevant, each piece lost is very painful. We talk about the schools being the heart of the community, and participate heavily in that environment. We are proud alumni of these schools, and not a day goes by without some kind of thought or word about our alma maters. In some ways, we plan our lives around these schools. We send our children there to learn and to become a part of this Deaf community through language and culture.

Our heart of the community is the Deaf schools. And our heart is not doing well right now. This crisis of the heart demands our attention and support now, and we must put in everything we can to save the heart. It is possible we may survive with a smaller number of schools, but think of the Deaf history, culture, and everything else that we lose with each school that gets closed. We have already seen the passion of the people fighting to save the South Dakota and Scranton schools. We need to come to their aid and support them in saving these schools. We need to keep the heart pumping. Otherwise, what helps makes us a great community will be lost.