Introduction

Prior to the 1800s, America lacked educational opportunities for deaf children. The higher-class children were sent away to Europe, where deaf education was far more advanced. Braidwood Academy in Edinburgh, Scotland, was the best-known deaf educational institution (Crouch 25). It was a costly private oral school that only shared its methodology with a few select people. This institution laid the foundation of not only educating its deaf members, but its founder, Thomas Braidwood, also utilized hand gestures while teaching. His signs were the beginning of British Sign Language (BSL). It would not be until 1817 that the United States would also open a school for deaf students.

Through the development of schools within the context of time and varying viewpoints, deaf education in America has faced adversities while still being able to create community and language. The formation of deaf schools, their teaching methods, a revolutionary moment remembered as Deaf President Now, types of schooling, and the significance of it all will be discussed in this essay.

I. The Formation of Deaf Schools in America

The first school for the deaf in America was opened by William Bolling in Cobbs, Virginia, in 1815. It was titled the “Cobbs School of Virginia.” Their instructor, John Braidwood, was the grandson of Thomas Braidwood of Scotland. Unfortunately, the school was closed by 1816 when William could not financially support it (“America’s Oldest School”). Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet later founded the first permanent school for the deaf in America.

Born in 1787, Gallaudet was a Yale University graduate with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. In 1814, he graduated from Andover’s Theological Seminary but declined many positions as a pastor due to “an accident…to one of his eyes which threatened serious results (Gallaudet 40). It was in that same year, 1814, Gallaudet met a young deaf child named Alice Cogswell.

Gallaudet was visiting his family in Connecticut, and continuing to preach from time to time, when he met Alice. Attempting to communicate with Alice, Gallaudet wrote H-A-T in the dirt and was amazed that she understood (“Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet Meets Alice Cogswell”). This event inspired Gallaudet to work toward opening a deaf school. Alice’s father was a wealthy doctor who helped finance Gallaudet’s trip to Europe, knowing the Braidwood Academy of Scotland had already developed a system for educating people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Beginning with the Braidwood system, which utilized sign language and the study of articulation and lip reading. The very signs used in this system later became British Sign Language.

Gallaudet’s plan halted when administrators at Braidwood asked him to sign a contract, remain at the school for several years to be trained in oralism, and agree to keep the school’s teaching methods a secret (Crouch 39). Intending to bring deaf education to the United States and not wanting to be contractually obligated to Braidwood, Gallaudet refused. In France, Gallaudet attended a lecture for Paris’ National Institution for Deaf-Mutes, where Jean Massieu and Laurent Clerc were showcased for their successes in using the manual method of communication (“America’s Oldest School”). The men invited Gallaudet to study their school’s method of manual communication.

A few months after observing the school, in 1817, Gallaudet convinced Clerc to join him in Hartford, Connecticut, and establish the Connecticut Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb. The school was later renamed the American School for the Deaf. The school began with seven students, Alice Cogswell being one of them. Gallaudet was made the director, and Clerc was America’s first deaf teacher (“America’s Oldest School”). Within a year, attendance rose to thirty-three, and the school became the first permanent American school for the education of deaf people. Clerc instructed using French Sign Language and gradually modified it to match what is now called American Sign Language (Crowley).

As funding needs increased, Gallaudet and Clerc sought a more reliable avenue for financial gains. In October of 1816, the Legislature of Connecticut provided five thousand dollars in aid. It became a commonality to utilize public funds to help support these students and schools throughout the nation, including:

In 1819, the Congress of the United States gave the school twenty-three thousand acres of public land, and with the proceeds of the sale of this land, grounds were secured, suitable buildings erected, and a permanent fund provided. In 1819, Massachusetts provided by legislative appropriation for the education of twenty indigent pupils here. In 1825, New Hampshire and Vermont adopted the same policy of educating their deaf-mute children here at the expense of the State. Other States soon followed this good example. (“A Brief History” 1)

Not only were Gallaudet and Clerc foundational in creating education for deaf Americans, but their efforts also helped create policy to fund this education.

Laurent Clerc is now known as “the Father of Deaf Education,” and his work with Gallaudet continues to be admired. One of Clerc’s students, William Willard, went on to graduate from the American School for the Deaf and become the first deaf superintendent in America when he founded Indiana School for the Deaf in 1843 (“William Willard”).

Gallaudet’s legacy continued when his son, Edward Miner Gallaudet, founded and became the superintendent of Gallaudet College (now Gallaudet University) in Washington, D.C, in 1864. As their website states, “Gallaudet University has been the educational, political, social, and economic engine of the deaf and signing community on a national and global scale for more than 150 years” (“About Gallaudet”). Today, there are forty-nine residential and forty-seven day schools for the deaf within the United States (“Everything You Need”). The differences in schooling will be elaborated on in section four.

Teaching Methods

There is no inherently right or wrong method when deciding how to educate a deaf person. The options break down into two main categories – oralism and manualism.

The oral method—relies on spoken language and speechreading (also known as lipreading, though it involves more than just the lips). Oralism requires intensive practice and is most successful for individuals who learned to speak before becoming deaf. An alternative to oralism is the manual method, which uses sign language. Manualism facilitates natural and efficient communication, but few people outside Deaf communities know American Sign Language (ASL), which can limit interaction. (“Deaf: Cultures and Communication”)

With many states now having schools to educate deaf individuals, sign language was the standard form of communication. However, this perspective rapidly changed at the end of the nineteenth century.

Before the 1860s, deafness was most often described as an affliction that isolated the individual from the Christian community. Its tragedy was that deaf people lived beyond the reach of the gospel. After the 1860s, however, deafness was redefined as a condition that isolated people from the national community. Deaf people were cut off from the English speaking American culture, and that was the tragedy. (Baynton 15)

With Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet already being a Reverend prior to meeting Alice Cogswell, his appeal to reach out to the deaf community made sense. It was not uncommon, and still is not, for evangelical Protestants to learn the language of the people they share the gospel with, hence the direction of using manualism in deaf schools. Gallaudet’s overarching goal was to reach a point in communication to educate the deaf about the promise of salvation and the gospel of Jesus Christ. He saw no issue utilizing sign language as long as his message was reached.

Gallaudet understood the value of deaf education and the advancement of utilizing a

“language not only rich and complex but possessed of a beauty, a “picture-like delineation, pantomimic spirit, variety, and grace” that no “merely oral language could equal.” This language was valuable to the deaf, but it could be of great benefit to the hearing as well, for if widely cultivated it could “supply the deficiencies of our oral intercourse [and] perfect the communion of one soul with another.” Superior to spoken language in its beauty and emotional expressiveness, sign language brought “kindred souls into a much more close and conscious communion than… speech can possibly do.” (Baynton 17-18)

The shift from manual education to oralism occurred after the Civil War when the nation focused on “the creation of national unity and social order through homogeneity in a language and culture” (Baynton 16). Manual language became restricted as deaf people were now seen as outsiders or offensive for holding their own group identity and not integrating with many hearing individuals. It was feared that if deaf people did not learn to speak, they might never integrate within “normal” society.

In 1880, the Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf, commonly known as the Milan Conference, occurred. It was an international meeting of deaf educators to discuss whether manualism or oralism is the ideal way to educate deaf people. From the United States perspective, Alexander Graham Bell, a supporter of oralism, and Edward Miner Gallaudet, a supporter of manualism, constantly debated each form of education’s effectiveness. The Congress was organized by the Pereire Society, a group known for opposing sign language. In the end, the conference “declared that oral education (oralism) was superior to manual education and passed a resolution banning the use of sign language in school” (“1880”).

The times were not only favorable to speech but quite hostile to sign language. Nearly 40 percent of American deaf students [in 1899] now sat in classrooms where sign language had been banished. Within twenty years it would be 80 percent. Deaf teachers rarely hired by the schools anymore and made up only 16 percent of the teaching corps, down from 40 percent from the 1850s and 1860s… The new teacher-training school established in 1891 at Gallaudet College… refused, as a matter of policy, to train deaf teachers. [Frank Booth] would forbid the use of sign language at the Nebraska School for the Deaf when he became its superintendent in 1911. “That language is not now used in the school-room,” he wrote to Olof Hanson, president of the National Association of the Deaf, “and I hope to do away with its use outside of the school-room.” (Baynton 25)

According to Brian Greenwald, a historian at Gallaudet University,

Oralism was a tool — if successfully mastered — and oralists hoped it would normalize deaf people and remake them in the image of hearing, speaking Americans. The main goal was to ensure that deaf students integrated with hearing children while minimizing contact between deaf people. By blocking this contact, it was thought that [sign language] would peter out. (Christensen)

Deaf schools were no longer created to educate the deaf solely but also to prepare them to live in a hearing world. To integrate them into a mainstream, hearing society. This meant they must learn to speak, lipread, read, and write in English. The New York Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes and The Clarke Institution for Deaf-Mutes were the first schools for oralism.

Another perspective shift occurred during the civil rights era. Deaf people were far more resilient than anticipated by oralism supporters such as Alexander Graham Bell, Gardiner Green Hubbard, Horace Mann, and Samuel Gridley Howe. In response to the strong push for oralism, Gallaudet professor William Stokoe researched ASL as a language. In his 1960 dissertation, he showed that ASL has its own unique syntax and grammar. Suddenly, sign language was being recognized as a language, weakening the support for oralism.

In 1970, Roy Kay Holcomb coined the term “Total Communication.” Total communication is explained as the use of any/all modes of communication (manual, oral, auditory, and written) depending on the needs of the child (Hawkins).

This method began to be applied in deaf schools across the nation. Many schools began to utilize different sign language systems, such as Signing Exact English (SEE), where ASL signs are utilized but in English word order. SEE was developed by hearing people and follows a predominately English grammar structure. This system also led to consistent usage of Simultaneous Communication (SimCom), where verbal language and signs are used at the same time. Deaf people prefer neither of these systems as they do not allow for complete and proper usage of ASL. ASL is a language of its own and cannot be utilized alongside English.

When discussing teaching methods, it is also essential to acknowledge the terminology utilized in today’s Deaf education. Three terms utilized to describe the use of bilingualism include literacy, oracy, and signacy.

Originally proposed by Nover, et al (1998) as a list of abilities that Deaf students needed to acquire, signacy, oracy, literacy and the use of fingerspelling have become the core elements of a Deaf Bilingual framework that aims to emphasize the development and maintenance of all skills in two languages. The framework has been adapted over the years to reflect the growing understanding in the field of Bilingual and Deaf Education research. (Gárate, 40)

Literacy is defined as a person’s ability to read and write, while oracy focuses on listening and speaking. Students demonstrate these skills through a continuum of studying and development.

Signacy describes the ability to attend to and comprehend face-to-face messages, view and comprehend recorded signed messages, and produce appropriate messages in face-to-face and recorded situations. Whether a Signed Language is the students’ fire or second language, it is considered the students’ most accessible language because it bypasses the auditory channel and capitalizes on the students’ visual skills. (Gárate, 39).

Looking back to the 1970s, when forms of sign language were back in schools, a revolution was ready to take place. This is why, in 1988, Gallaudet University students formed a protest against the school’s new president.

II. Deaf President Now

In March of 1988, Gallaudet University announced they had narrowed the position of the seventh president of Gallaudet down to three finalists. Two candidates, Dr. Harvey Corson and Dr. I. King Jordan, were deaf. Dr. Elisabeth Zinser, the third finalist, was hearing and did not know sign language. On March 6, Dr. Zinser was announced as Gallaudet’s next president. The decision was meant to be announced on campus; however, the Board of Trustees has the Public Relations Office give out press releases. Students at Gallaudet were upset not only by the decision but also by how the announcement was made. Thus began the kickoff of Deaf President Now (DPN).

Since the Board of Trustees did not want to make themselves available for questioning, the president of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD), Gary Olsen, suggested a march down to where the Board had been meeting and demand an explanation. After many hours of discussion with the Board, it was agreed that Board Chair Jane Spilman would go to campus the following afternoon to discuss the issues with the student body. That night, other students marched to the White House, U.S. Capitol, and then back to Gallaudet’s campus (“The Week of DPN”).

By the second day, student leaders had formalized their demands to the Board:

• Zinser must resign and a deaf president be selected.
• Spilman must resign from the Board.
• The percentage of deaf members on the Board of Trustees must be increased to at least 51%.
• There must be no reprisals against any of the protesters.

After over three hours of assembly, the Board “rejected the demands and the selection of Zinser would stand” (“The Week of DPN”). The crowd of students, faculty members, alumni, and supporters decided to march to the Capitol and gather with chants and impassioned speeches.

In an interview with NBC, the NAD Executive Director, Gary Olson, signed his perspective. This is an English interpretation of what he said:

“We will get the information out. That this is the greatest insult to deaf people of America, 26 million of them and they are disgusted. No question about it. And I do not intend to sit back. We’ll have an organizational meeting tonight to discuss what we will do about it. This shows that we are not the ones who are really deaf, but it is they, the Board, who are deaf.” (Described and Captioned Media Program)

Local news began covering the story and found protesters eager to share. Interpreters also wore colored armbands to make it easier to identify for interpreting any interviews with deaf members (“The Week of DPN”).

On day three, students refused to attend class and continued protests throughout the campus. The event was beginning to reach national television.

By this time, four students had emerged as leaders of the protest: Bridgetta Bourne, Jerry Covell, Greg Hlibok, and Tim Rarus. Faculty, staff, alumni, and other advocacy group organizers continued their work in a less visible but well-coordinated manner. The Alumni House became the headquarters for the protest, and the Deaf President Now Council was formed. This group included identified student, staff, faculty and alumni liaisons, media, interpreter and fundraising coordinators, as well as legal and legislative liaisons. (“The Week of DPN”)

These four students were able to truly lead the movement. They were already a part of Gallaudet’s Student Body Government leadership, with Tim Rarus as president.

Tim Rarus, a government major from Arizona, was the most politically experienced of the “Gallaudet four,” the students who quickly rose to leadership positions during the DPN protest… Rarus has always been remembered as one of the most outspoken students. Bourne said this of him in a 1988 newspaper interview: “He always chooses the strongest words. He’s not afraid of anyone.” (“Tim Rarus”)

It was not until day five of protesting that Dr. Zinser announced her resignation. However, this was not the end of DPN, as only a portion of the first demand had been met. Students began wearing buttons with “3 ½” on them, signifying how many demands were left.

Finally, on day eight, the final press conference was held, and it was announced:

• Spilman had resigned as Board chair, succeeded by Phil Bravin.
• A task force would be set up to determine the best way to achieve a 51% deaf majority on the Board.
• No reprisals.
• Dr. I. King Jordan was named eighth president—and the first deaf president—of Gallaudet University.

Gallaudet’s National Deaf Life Museum summarizes it best:

DPN was more than a protest. It was also a unique coming together of Gallaudet students, faculty, and staff with the national deaf community-all bound by clear and defined goals… DPN was remarkable not only for its clear sense of purpose, cohesiveness, speed, and depth of feeling but also for its ability to remove the barriers and erase the lines that previously separated the deaf and hearing communities. In addition, it raised the nation’s consciousness of the rights and abilities of deaf and hard of hearing people. (“The Issues”)

The success of DPN did not end with Gallaudet having a deaf president. The event and wide news coverage provided Congress reason to start passing bills.

For example, in 1988, just months after DPN, the Telecommunications Accessibility Enhancement Act was passed, followed shortly by the Television Decoder Circuitry Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, both in 1990. The Telecommunications Enhancement Act assured that our national telecommunications system would be fully accessible to deaf, hard of hearing, and speech-impaired individuals. (“The Impact”)

This brought deaf people teletypewriters (TTYs), closed captioning, and protections from discrimination based on their disability.

Through DPN, the Deaf Community realized the power of banding together. They now have their own culture, heritage, language, and representation in schooling. From this movement and the many movements prior, deaf Americans now have access to schooling and the ability to choose what types of schooling work best for them.

III. Types of Schooling

Understanding whether a student wants to use oralism, manualism, or a combination of the two, will help identify which type of schooling would benefit the deaf person most. In the United States, deaf students are given three choices in attending school – mainstream, day schooling, or residential schooling.

Thankfully, the need for schools for the deaf is no longer optional but mandated by law. The Individuals with Disability Education Act requires that states provide a “continuum of alternative placements,” which includes “instruction in regular classes, special classes, special schools, home instruction, and hospitals and institutions.” (34 C.F.R. § 300.115)” (“Position Statement”). By knowing the difference between these types of schools, parents, guardians, and students can make the best decision for their learning styles and goals.

Mainstreaming is an option for deaf students that want to learn alongside their hearing peers. The main modes of communicating are done through hearing and talking. Today, all schools offer Individualized Education Plans (IEP) for every student and make corresponding adjustments to the curriculum where needed. Mainstreaming may be great for a student that gradually became deaf and is already able to utilize hearing and speech through assistive technology. Not all students in mainstream environments spend their entire school day in a hearing classroom, and their IEP may reflect specialize learning options. The unfortunate side of mainstreaming is the lack of bilingual-bicultural education.

In bilingual-bicultural education, a student’s deafness is looked at as cultural. This view allows educators to prioritize ASL above written and spoken English. Educators that utilize bilingual-bicultural education believe that deaf individuals are more equipped at utilizing visual language. After emphasizing visual language, they can then focus on the age-appropriate skills of both ASL and English to include reading, writing, and possibly speaking.

Day schooling is quite like a day in a mainstream public school. The main difference from mainstreaming is in school for the deaf, there are specially trained professionals who determine whether services such as audiology or physical therapy are best offered in the classroom or in a separate setting.

Residential schooling or on-campus boarding are schools where students live on campus through the 5-day week and return home to spend the weekend. Some students stay at the school through the weekends and only return home for holidays and school breaks. The most obvious benefit of residential deaf schools is that children live in community with one another and can utilize sign language in and out of the classroom. In this educational program, students, staff, and faculty are fully immersed in Deaf community and its culture.

Significance

The history of deaf education in America proved to the hearing world exactly what the deaf people and their community already knew; deaf people are capable of anything. I. King Jordan said it best in 1988, “Deaf people can do anything hearing people can do, except hear” (“Deaf: Cultures and Communication”). Or, as Deaf interpreter Justina Miles mentioned on The View, “We are not impaired to do anything. We can do anything, including hear” insinuating that many Deaf individuals today have residual hearing or utilize assistive technology such as hearing aids and cochlear implants (The View).

Events like DPN showed the deaf community how boldness can lead to victory. They did not have to mend to the standards or limitations society decided for them. They were allowed to take up space, be filled with pride of who they are, and change the worldview on deafness. America was finally able to see a glimpse into deaf joy opposed to all the limitations they may face.

Prior to DPN, very few deaf people held doctorates. Today, “almost 50 percent of Gallaudet’s graduating class continues to graduate school to pursue advanced degrees” (“The Impact”. This includes non-Americans as Gallaudet has established collegiate programs in Japan, Sweden, and South Africa.

Despite the many obstacles from the hearing world, Deaf education has been able to prosper. Beginning with Thomas Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc opening the American School for the Deaf, to the persistence of Deaf Americans fighting against oralism, and leading up to the various teaching methods utilized today, deaf education has a powerful and important history.

Works Cited

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