This is a super interesting comment, thank you. I am certainly guilty of believing the deaf experience is inferior to the hearing experience - but not because I think ASL is lesser than spoken languages or deficient as a communication channel. It's because deaf people don't hear music. I know people can dance to the beat and often distinguish songs by vibration patterns, but that is surely not equivalent to the emotional and intellectual experience most people can have listening to music.

Less important but similar: birdsong, the sound of crashing waves, children laughing in a playground. Hearing brings us much besides transfer of information.

On the other hand, from my brief number of ASL lessons (about a years worth taken as an adult in my mid 20s) the facial expressiveness inherent to ASL gives it something hearing people don't get in normal conversation. But to me that's a pretty small benefit compared to the things a deaf person is missing.

I'd respect anybody who chose not to get treated for themselves, but I think I'd be pretty judgy pretty quickly for anybody who tried to deny or dissuade anybody else from becoming hearing, including their children.

> On the other hand, from my brief number of ASL lessons (about a years worth taken as an adult in my mid 20s) the facial expressiveness inherent to ASL gives it something hearing people don't get in normal conversation. But to me that's a pretty small benefit compared to the things a deaf person is missing.

I don't know ASL, so can you elaborate on this? Aren't facial expressions just as important for non-deaf people?