Deaf History OralManual Debate

1
Deaf HistoryOral/Manual Debate   

• TutorialSocial Aspects of Deaf CultureSign
  Language Interpreter Training ProgramKirkwood
  Community College 

2

• Objectives
• Identify important events and people and
  ideologies in the development of Oral education
  for the deaf given information contained in the
  tutorial.
• Identify important events and people and
  ideologies in the development of manual education
  for the Deaf given information contained in the
  tutorial.

3

• Vocabulary
• Manualism - education of the deaf using sign
  language, and the manual alphabet
• 2. Oralism - education of the deaf using speech
  and lip-reading

4

• Deaf - a cultural and linguistic identity
  acquired by many deaf person which is viewed as a
  desirable and valued state-of-being.
• 4. deaf a term used to describe the inability
  to hear normal speech patterns and general sounds
  within the environment.

5
5. Residential Institution - state school for
the deaf, state funded schools serving a regional
or statewide population of Deaf and
hard-of-hearing children. 6. Language - a
systematic form of communication which enables
its users to talk about anything, anywhere,
according to a system of grammatical rules which
are learned and internalized.  
6

• American Sign Language - a natural,
  visual-gestural language  which is indigenous to
  North America with specific grammatical and
  linguistic properties.
• Congenital Deafness - deafness which is present
  at birth.

7

• Deaf Community a community made up of Deaf and
  non-deaf people who share the goal of furthering
  the goals and interests of Deaf people and work
  collaboratively to that end.
• Hearing a term used within the Deaf Community
  to refer to non-deaf people who are basically
  misinformed or uninformed about the Deaf
  experience.

8

• Pre-lingual deafness - the significant loss of
  hearing which occurs after birth, but prior to
  the time an infant acquires oral/aural language
  competence.  This is usually considered to be
  before the age of three.
• Post-lingual deafness -  the significant loss of
  hearing which occurs during adolescence, after
  oral/aural language competence has been acquired.
  

9
The Debate Gallaudet and Bell1800-1920
All text is taken from the Encyclopedia of
Deafness, Gallaudet Press
10
Horace Mann, a famous 19th century educator,
wished to create an oral option for deaf children
in Massachusetts. After visiting the German
schools with Samuel Gridley Howe, president of
the Perkins Institute for the Blind, in 1845, he
tried to open a school in Boston. But the manual
school defeated him. In the 1860s, parents of
three deaf children received endowments from John
Clarke, going deaf himself, to open an oral
school. The school based instruction totally on
the two pillars of Oralism speech and
lip-reading. Today it is called Clarke School
for the Deaf and is still a strictly oral school.
11
Edward Miner Gallaudet (1837 1917), son of Rev.
Thomas Gallaudet, in 1867 visited Europe to see
for himself if Oralism was really that great.
This visit resulted in two changes He could see
that one could use sign to teach English, so he
began accepting children much younger, and the
school began to emphasize fingerspelling. E.M.
Gallaudet thought that combining lEpee and
Heinecke would be beneficial to students and
began to teach speech. However, he did not
support using speech and signs together.
Unfortunately, that became the rallying cry.
12
E.M. Gallaudet had a dream of establishing a
college for the deaf. Many of the deaf children
who graduated from residential schools sought to
continue their education at a higher level. A
great number of students wanted to go to college
so they could have professional careers,
especially as teachers of deaf children and
superintendents of schools. To allow deaf
graduates to continue their education at higher
level, the worlds first college for the deaf was
opened by an Act of Congress in Washington D.C.
in 1864. Clerc himself addressed the audience.
Clerc retired from teaching in 1858 and died in
1869. A main figure in the establishment of the
college was Amos Kendall who had adopted five
deaf children.
13

Made rich by investments in his friend, Samuel
Morses invention, Morse code, he began to push
for an act to be passed in Congress to support
the establishment of the Columbia Institution.
The Institution needed a superintendent, and
Kendall asked Gallaudet to take the position.
Kendall donated two acres of land and the first
years salary for the superintendent. In June
13, 1857, at twenty years of age, Edward Miner
Gallaudet became the first superintendent of
Columbia Institution which ultimately became
Gallaudet University. He stayed in that position
for 54 years.
14

• Questions
• Trace the history of oral education of the deaf
  in America considering countries, persons, and
  ideologies.
• Trace the history of manual education of the deaf
  in America considering countries, persons, and
  ideologies.

15
Answers
16

• From philosophers, law givers, and physicians.
• Prevalent thoughts about deafness were that it
  was a disability.
• That deafness meant lack of a soul or a severe
  defect in the soul.
• Disability.
• Not much, however, they had located the center of
  speech in the brain, not the soul.
• As a sever disability, seemingly worse than
  blindness.
• Postmortem examinations helped mans knowledge of
  human anatomy which could anatomically trace
  speech and hearing to the brain.

17

• Physicians.
• From the St. Benedictine monks and their
  adaptation of signs to communicate due to a vow
  of silence.
• To preserve their vast fortune. They were not
  allowed to inherit if they could not read and
  write.
• It was used to teach reading and writing as well
  as crude manual communication.  De l'Epee used it
  to teach Parisian deaf children.
• Combination - manual signs were used to augment
  oral speech education, reading and writing.

18

• Using signs that he had made up and the manual
  alphabet from Bonet's book.
• To save their souls.
• One on one instruction and total memorization of
  the spoken language.
• Money
• Abbe Sicard, Clerc and Massieu were giving a
  public demonstration in London at the same time
  Gallaudet was there to consult with the Braidwood
  School.
• Two success stories Clerc and Massieu.

19

• We will discuss this in class.
• We will discuss this in class.