Acquisition of Deaf Culture
Historically, Deaf culture has often been acquired within schools for deaf students and within Deaf social clubs, both of which unite deaf people into communities with which they can identify. Becoming Deaf culturally can occur at different times for different people, depending on the circumstances of one's life. A small proportion of deaf individuals acquire sign language and Deaf culture in infancy from Deaf parents, others acquire it through attendance at schools, and yet others may not be exposed to sign language and Deaf culture until college or a time after that.
Although up to fifty percent of deafness has genetic causes, fewer than five percent of deaf people have a Deaf parent, so Deaf communities are unusual among cultural groups in that most members do not acquire their cultural identities from parents.
Read more about this topic: Deaf Culture
Famous quotes containing the words acquisition of, acquisition, deaf and/or culture:
“Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.”
—Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
“Always and everywhere children take an active role in the construction and acquisition of learning and understanding. To learn is a satisfying experience, but also, as the psychologist Nelson Goodman tells us, to understand is to experience desire, drama, and conquest.”
—Carolyn Edwards (20th century)
“and the deaf soul
struggles, strains forward, to lip-read what it needs:
and something is said, quickly,
in words of cloud-shadows moving and
the unmoving turn of the road, something
not quite caught ...”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)