Cochlear Implants and Boarding School...

Both the stories told in Sound and Fury and in Brainwashing and Boarding Schools: Undoing the Shameful Legacy were controversial ones, and people had/have passionate things to say about both. However, other than broad and general arguments, I don't believe that they have much in common. The idea of getting a cochlear implant, an artificial device to improve hearing, doesn't register on the same scale as boarding schools with the intend to brainwash the culture out of their students. Cochlear implants aren't permanent or government regulation like the boarding schools were. The actual implant doesn't force the recipient to loose their culture; the boarding schools did. The boarding schools would violate human rights, like privacy, and keep students away from their families. The Cochlear implant is just an option, and doesn't physically separate families. It may however put a wedge between them. The article mentioned that once the school children were returned to their families they had a hard time "fitting in". In the documentary, the deaf community not accepting people with Cochlear implants was a huge theme. Another issue raised by the father Peter, was that his daughter would loose  her ties to deaf culture. Many Native Americans did loose their ties to the deaf culture, unfortunately; they didn't have a choice. The biggest factor, at least for myself, is that the intent behind the boarding schools was malicious. They had a purpose, and that purpose was to strip these people of their culture and shape them into what the U.S. Government thought they should be. Cochlear implants were only created with the intent of helping make some people's lives easier. That makes all the difference.