A conversation on TED.com: Based on this, do cochlear implants deminish the overall experience of beauty for a deaf child as compared to allowing them to grow up deaf?

Aylene Gracie
Ottawa
Canada

This conversation has closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »

Based on this, do cochlear implants deminish the overall experience of beauty for a deaf child as compared to allowing them to grow up deaf?

Is it possible that, with cochlear implants, we are diminishing the overall experience of beauty for a deaf child as compared to allowing them to grow up deaf? I am not deaf but I know that many in the deaf community have a bias against cochlear implants in young kids because of the gut feel that they will lose out on some precious development of other senses by attaining functional hearing. After seeing this, I can imagine that there is a chance they are right. Most people have heard of how much better defined a deaf person's remaining senses become compared to someone with full 5 senses and they seem to derive a greater sense of beauty from their remaining senses than the those of us with 5-senses. It's easy to guess that the hightened senses are out of necessity and the heightened perception of beauty via those senses is the wonderful side-effect. If you give them basic functionality at a young age, they would not perceive beauty through that sense but would have functionality and therefor no need to compensate with heightened perception in the other senses. So, have we deminished their over-all experience of beauty by providing them just enough function to stunt the superior development of their other senses? The question becomes more profound when we realize that this decision is usually on the shoulders of the parents and not the person who lives with the results. The deaf community might contend that there are ways to acheive the functional by way of beautiful sign language, the vibrant deaf community and consideration from hearing people and that it is a way that might maximize the deaf person's overall perception of beauty in this world. Anxious for comments.

Related Talks:

Charles Limb: Building the musical muscle

Sort By:

Kristofer Schmolze
- 0
Dec 2 2011: I think Stevie Wonder would be just as incredible if he could see. I would be heart broken if he couldn't sing or play keys, especially if I was deaf. I know I will be some day due to the little tines inside breaking away with age in my ears. I hope cochlear implants improve to the point where I can get one in the future. This may be similar to having cataracts removed and seeing colors correctly again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvB7I2O7Zs8 "The way you make me feel"
Susan Durnell
- +1
Dec 2 2011: Hearing families often struggle to raise deaf children. There is no doubt that a thriving deaf community exists, but many don't have access to it, and they and others may prefer that their children grow up in the hearing community instead. As my sister, who directs and implant program (for an adult population only) says, parents make decisions that affect their kids' lives all the time--that's a parent's job.

Would you give up your hearing in order to have other enhanced senses?

"Most people have heard of how much better defined a deaf person's remaining senses become compared to someone with full 5 senses and they seem to derive a greater sense of beauty from their remaining senses than the those of us with 5-senses." I have never head that the deaf have any greater sense of beauty than the rest of us, although I'm sure that some may. Who's to say whose sense of beauty is better than someone else's, and how are we to measure.

I am lacking some taste sensations due to medical treatment, and my daughter was born with no sense of smell. That means we may not perceive things you do, but it doesn't mean we have no or diminished beauty in our lives. It truly is in the eye of the beholder, and a child or adult with an implant has many avenues to appreciate and be involved in creating beauty, whether or not music may be one of them.
Antonio Di Gregorio
- +1
Dec 1 2011: Given that it is possible to aquire heightend senses without the loss of one or more senses, I don't think one's desire to improve other senses should be achieved by depriving different sensory input. By having a hearing impairment it forces one to develop different skills and aesthetic but it isn't the only way those skill (and aesthetics) could be developed. Personally I know I have taken pride in achievements despite my shortcomings but there is a part of me that wishes I had the facilities which didn't require me to compensate in order to move forward in life. I would have still been pround of my achievements without the shortcomings as hurdles. Just re-reading your first sentence, I wonder how it is possible to evaluate the "overall experience of beauty" for someone else? Should not that be a personal journey?
- Sara Gould
  - 0
  Dec 1 2011: "I wonder how it is possible to evaluate the "overall experience of beauty" for someone else? Should not that be a personal journey?"
  
  Very good point. Regarding the original video, just because things sound different to me with cochlear implants doesn't mean I don't experience beauty out of them.