Do hearing impaired persons have a disability that needs treatment or is their deafness a personal identity that allows participation in the deaf culture community, with no need to be mainstreamed into the hearing population? This sensitive issue will be covered at the upcoming Millsaps College Hot Topics seminar.
The one-day conference is scheduled for Saturday, December 1, and will feature four educators and advocates of Mississippi’s deaf population along with a PBS documentary on deaf culture and cochlear implants.
For Millsaps accounting professor Dr. Kimberly Burke the issue of whether or not to use technology to help her hearing impaired daughter understand the hearing world was an obvious choice.
“My concern was without the technology she would always have to have an interpreter to navigate the hearing world and that would close a lot of doors for her,” said Burke, who also serves as assistant dean of the Else School of Management. “I’m just not willing to close those doors.”
Burke’s daughter was diagnosed with severe to profound hearing when she was 15 months old. Now at age five, with the help of a hearing aid and cochlear implants, she is reading, doing math and speaks with no sign of a disability. As a featured speaker at the conference, Burke will speak on, “The Deaf Child’s Right to Hear.”
Cochlear implants are controversial in the deaf community because some believe they weaken deaf culture by implying that deafness is a condition that needs to be cured.
Other speakers for the conference include Ray Freeman, president of the Mississippi Association of the Deaf, who will speak on, “Deaf Babies Have Rights Too”; Anne Sullivan, director of Magnolia Speech School, who will speak on, “On Teaching Deaf Children to Talk”; and Sandra Edwards, elementary principal at the Mississippi School for the Deaf, who will speak on, “PAH, Whatever It Takes.”
The conference begins at 9 a.m. on Saturday, December 1, with check-in at 8:30 a.m. The cost is $59 and there is a $10 charge for those who desire CEU credit. For more information contact Patrick Hopkins at 601-974-1293. For registration contact the Continuing Education Office at 601-974-1130.
