Not surprisingly, most of these hearing parents want their children to be like them, to grow up in a world full of sound and music and speech. Now, with the advent of more finely tuned digital hearing aids and cochlear implants, the stakes are even higher — and the rift between and in the Deaf culture is even more apparent, even though some in the Deaf community do now accept implants as "one option," Pollock says.

A recent study conducted by Utah State University's National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management found that 85 percent of parents with newly identified deaf children say they want their children to learn to speak and hear.

"Parents want amplification (for their deaf children) at a year old or younger," says Rich Harward, director for the Newborn Hearing Screening Program for the Utah Department of Health. For most children that means hearing aids, or cochlear implants for children who can't benefit from hearing aids. Very few children, he says, "can't benefit from some sort of amplification," although no one touts the hearing aids or the implants as a "cure" for deafness. There are some children for whom hearing aids and implants don't work, especially well enough to understand speech.

Harward predicts that the new technologies will decrease the number of people who feel they are part of Deaf culture.

On a recent afternoon at Millcreek Elementary, speech tutor Chris Franco worked with 6-year-old Joshua Dyal,

who wears a cochlear implant. Putting her hand over her mouth so he couldn't see her lips, Franco asked Joshua questions like "Where does a whale live?" and "Where do you keep your pillow?" Joshua responded clearly: "A whale lives in the ocean" and "I keep my pillow on my bed," although he struggled a bit with the "p" in "pillow."

Across the valley, on the same afternoon, a group of third-, fourth- and fifth-graders at the Jean Massieu School in West Jordan were practicing signing "The Star Spangled Banner" for the Opening Ceremonies of the 16th Winter Deaflympics, raising their fists triumphantly on the word "brave."

JMS, a charter school, is what is known as a bi-bi school for the Deaf: bilingual (ASL and English) and bicultural (Deaf and hearing); every teacher signs in ASL. The school was started by Wilding-Diaz and Diaz, who were frustrated that the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind had no bi-bi option. There are now 55 students, preschool through 10th grade.

A school like this is the gold standard to someone like Dwight Benedict, chairman of the 16th Winter Deaflympics. A school where everyone signs provides a "critical mass" of children who can communicate with each other and learn from each other, and have access to Deaf adults in a way that some deaf children never do, he says.