The history of deaf education in the United States began in the early 1800s when the Cobbs School of Virginia, an oral school, was established by William Bolling and John Braidwood, and the Connecticut Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, a manual school, was established by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc. When the Cobbs School closed in 1816, the manual method, which used American Sign Language, became commonplace in deaf schools for most of the remainder of the century. In the late 1800s, schools began to use the oral method, which only allowed the use of speech, as opposed to the manual method previously in place. Students caught using sign language in oral programs were often punished. The oral method was used for many years until sign language instruction gradually began to come back into deaf education.
Early history
Before the 1800s, few, if any, educational opportunities existed for deaf children in America. Some wealthy families sent their children to Europe's schools, but many non-high class children had no access to education.
Early oral education in the United States
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many wealthy colonists sent their deaf children to Europe to receive schooling. The best known deaf educational institution was the Braidwood Academy in Edinburgh, Scotland, established in 1760 by Thomas Braidwood as the "Academy for the Deaf and Dumb." The Braidwood Academy was an expensive private oral school that was very secretive about its methods, only sharing their methodology with a few select people.
The Bolling family, who lived in Virginia, were the most prominent colonists to send their deaf children to the Braidwood Academy. Thomas Bolling and his wife Elizabeth Gay (who was also his first cousin) had three deaf children, John, Mary, and Thomas Jr., as well as at least two hearing children. John was the first of the three children to go to the Braidwood Academy in 1771, with Mary and Thomas Jr. arriving later. The three Bolling children arrived back in the United States in 1783; however, they became ill shortly after arriving home, and John died on October 11, 1783. Because of this, it cannot be determined how effective the ten years of oral instruction he received were. Mary and Thomas Jr. lived for at least another four decades, and comments about Thomas Jr. noted that he was a "miracle of accomplishments."
The next generation of hearing Bollings had deaf children, and they wanted their children to be educated in the United States. William, the last child of Thomas and Elizabeth, married his first cousin Mary, who bore five children, two of whom were deaf. The couple's first deaf child, William Albert, drove his father's desire to create a school for the deaf in America. William Bolling met John Braidwood, a descendant of Thomas Braidwood, after he arrived in America in 1812. Bolling invited Braidwood to stay in his home as Braidwood sorted out a more permanent living arrangement. Braidwood discussed with Bolling his desire to open a school similar to the Braidwood Academy in America. After many setbacks, the Cobbs School was established in 1815. It closed about a year and a half later, in the fall of 1816, when Braidwood's personal problems caused him to leave the school and Bolling could no longer financially maintain it.
Early manual education in the United States
In 1812 in New England, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet met a little girl named Alice Cogswell, who inspired him to create a school for the deaf in the United States. In 1815, he traveled to Europe to gain insight on their methods of teaching deaf students. He attempted to learn from the Braidwood system, but the administrators wanted him to sign a contract, remain at the school for several years to be trained in oralism, and agree to keep the teaching methods of the school a secret; Gallaudet refused this. He attended a lecture in France by Abbé Sicard showcasing two successful pupils of Paris' National Institution for Deaf-Mutes, Jean Massieu and Laurent Clerc. Gallaudet spent several months at the school, and he convinced Clerc, a thirty-year-old assistant teacher, to return with him to Hartford, Connecticut. Back in America, they established the Connecticut Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, which was later named the American School for the Deaf, in 1817. Gallaudet was the director, and Clerc was the first deaf teacher in America. Alice Cogswell was one of the first seven students.
For most of the remainder of the century, education of deaf children using sign language, a practice known as manualism, continued to grow. Approximately forty percent of all teachers were deaf. More than thirty schools for the deaf were opened, the majority of which were manual. In October 1829 Ohio School for the Deaf was established; it is the fifth oldest residential school in the United States. and is the only publicly funded residential school for the deaf in Ohio. William Willard was the first deaf superintendent in America and founded Indiana School for the Deaf in 1843. Gallaudet College (now Gallaudet University) was founded in Washington, D.C in 1864 with Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet's son, Edward Miner Gallaudet, as the school's superintendent. Edward Miner Gallaudet strongly believed in the use of sign language and had a number of arguments with Alexander Graham Bell, an oralist.
Before the 1860s and before the American Civil War, manual language was very popular among the Deaf community and also supported by the hearing community. The hearing community viewed deafness as “[isolating] the individual from the Christian community”. At the time, the people of the United States were fairly religious (notably Christian), and the hearing-advantaged believed that sign language opened deaf individuals' minds and souls to God. Through this, the hearing community believed that manualism brought deaf people closer to God and opened deaf people to the Gospel, which brought manualism general acceptance.
Prior to the 1860s, the American hearing community viewed manualism, sign language, as an art, and naturally beautiful. They also thought of deaf people who signed as being like the Romans because of the pantomimes that are a part of the language.
Change from predominantly manual education to oral education
By the end of the American Civil War in the late 1860s, the argument for “Survival of the Fittest” was applied to the issue of education for the deaf as a result of a Darwinist perspective of Evolution. This movement brought manualists arguing their view that signs were closer to nature because the first thing babies learn to do is gesture, which is akin to sign language. To the Deaf community, manualism was at the time considered a gift from God. During this particular time in the United States, oralism was coming about which gave some a negative view of manualism because, it was argued, it was not a natural language.
Support for oralism gained momentum in the late 1860s and the use of manualism started to decrease. Many in the hearing community were now in favor of the evolutionary perspective, which depicted deaf people who used manual language akin to “lower animals”. Some hearing people viewed speech as what separated humans from animals, which in turn caused manual language to be viewed as unhumanlike. The first schools for oralism opened in the 1860s were called The New York Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes and The Clarke Institution for Deaf-Mutes (now the Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech).
At that time the teaching of manual language was restricted because the American Hearing Society saw deaf people who used it as different, as foreigners, or as a group with a separate language that was a threat to the hearing society. Members of the hearing community who were in favor of oralism took offense to deaf people having their own group identity and refusing to integrate within the greater community.
Oralists believed that the manual language made deaf people different, which in turn led them to believe that deaf people were abnormal. Oralists believed that the teaching of oralism allowed deaf children to be more normal. Oralists strongly believed that deaf children should put as much effort as possible into learning how to live in spite of their disabilities, thus promoting the teaching of lip reading, mouth movements, and use of hearing technology. Oralists also argued that if deaf people continued the use of manual language as their form of communication, they would never integrate within the rest of society.
It has been remarked that the better-funded northern schools switched to oralism while their poorer southern counterparts kept signing because it was difficult to hire new oralist teachers.
A model figure for oralism and against the usage of sign language was Alexander Graham Bell, who created the Volta Bureau in Washington, D.C. to pursue the studies of deafness. Two other Americans who encouraged the founding of oralist schools in the United States were Horace Mann and Samuel Gridley Howe, who travelled to Germany to see their oral schools and who wished to model them.
In 1880, an event called the Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf (which, despite the name, was actually the first) took place. The Second International Congress was an international meeting of deaf educators from at least seven countries. There were five delegates from America and around 164 delegates total in attendance. The Congress was planned and organized by a committee created by the Pereire Society, a group that was against sign language. More than half of the people invited were known oralists; therefore, the Congress was biased and most, if not all, of the resolutions that were voted on by the delegates gave results in favor of the oral method. Many of the resolutions were worded in ways that supported the oral method, such as "Considering the incontestable superiority of speech over signs in restoring the deaf-mute to society, and in giving him a more perfect knowledge of language,/Declares –/That the Oral method ought to be preferred that of signs for the education and instruction of the deaf and dumb". Until the 1890s, deaf education in the United States was limited to children as in the school of Sarah Warren Keeler, but Lillie Eginton Warren and her assistant, Edward B. Nichie, expanded the teaching to adults.
Early 20th century
After the Congress, deaf education in America changed. Manualists, those who advocated for sign language usage, were effectively "kicked out" and replaced with teachers who used the pure oral method. Deaf teachers were removed from the profession and replaced with hearing ones. Most schools switched to the oral method or were created as oral schools in the first place, and few manual schools remained in existence. The work of deaf educators in the oralist schools, who were mostly women, was to prepare the deaf children for life in the hearing world, which required them to learn English, speech, and lipreading. All students that were sent to the oral schools were forced to use the oral method, and oralist schools restricted the deaf students' use of American Sign Language (ASL) in class and in public. Students in pure oral programs were not allowed to sign in class and were also forbidden to sign in dormitories. Students caught signing were punished, but students continued to learn sign from each other anyway. One type of punishment used on deaf students was to force them to wear white gloves that were tied together to prevent them from using signs. Those who were not successful under the oral method after several years were transferred to manual classes and considered "oral failures" who would never know anything or be able to make it in the world. Some consider this the "Dark Age of Oralism".