Now hear this

Congratulations to the state and the governor for having the courage not to be tolerant. Many parents and students affiliated with the Indiana School for the Deaf are upset with Gov. Mitch Daniels for his appoinment of three new board members with ties to the mainstreaming approach to teaching deaf children, an approach that encourages them to listen and sometimes read lips. This is sacrilege to those who prefer to keep their distance from the hearing world by using only American Sign Language:

At the core of the debate, which is raging nationally, is a disagreement over what deafness is. Some people see it as a vital part of a person's identity, something to be embraced. To them, ASL is a defining, unifying characteristic.

ASL is more than a language; it's a culture," said Kim Yurek, the secretary of the school's parent organization, whose son, Philip, was a year old when he lost his hearing. Today, Philip is a sixth-grader at Indiana School for the Deaf and communicates enthusiastically through ASL -- he said he doesn't mind being deaf one bit. "It's just how I am," he said through his mother, "and I want to stay deaf."

[. . .]

But others see deafness as a malady to be remedied and communicating through spoken language as a welcome alternative to ASL.

That discussion is not new, but with technological advances of the last decade, the spoken-language forces have become emboldened. New medical devices, such as improved digital hearing aids and cochlear implants, have made mainstreaming far more feasible. Eight of 10 families are now choosing that route, said Amy McConkey Robbins, a speech language pathologist who specializes in teaching deaf and hard-of-hearing children to communicate orally.

It's one thing to accept your disability and overcome it, even to embrace your condition. It's another to celebrate it and treat it like a culture/lifestyle/religion even as the methods to compensate for it become more effective and available. Yes, yes, I know, I haven't experienced deafness, so I should be careful in judging people who have. But since 80 percent of families are now choosing the mainstreaming route, it seems like a reasonable assesment.

At any rate, the state can recognize that some in the deaf community want to isolate themselves, even urge understanding of their decision. But it is not obligated to support and subsidize that decision as the right one by the way it governs its school for the deaf.