A Turning Point in American History
The founding of the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Conn., in 1817 was a crucial milestone in the way society related to people with disabilities. The time and place are significant because it was a unique conjunction of different currents which led to the school's establishment.
Many threads in developing U.S. society coalesced in Hartford in the early nineteenth century. The importance attached to universal literacy (by no means common in the world at the time) and the particular missionary religious doctrines of the prevalent Protestant sects provided both means and motive for the attempt to educate deaf people. The concept of self-reliance and the belief that religious salvation is possible through understanding the Bible determined the methods and purposes of the founders. Literacy, salvation and the skills needed to earn a living were the goals. Achieving these required clarity and fluidity of communication, which is why the school was based on sign language from the start.
History of Deaf Education in America
The first half century of the school's existence was a time of flowering and growth for deaf education in America. ASD served as a model institution and a training ground for numerous schools for the deaf which opened elsewhere during this period. Instruction was in sign language, with the goals of imparting literacy, training for productive labor, and religious salvation. ASD was a Congregationalist school in its early years, which was consistent with the civil government of Connecticut at the time the school was established.
An important feature of manual communication as a teaching language is that it allows deaf people to be teachers. Many alumni did go on to become teachers and principals at schools for the deaf throughout the United States, which spread sign language throughout the country. A deaf culture developed during this period, with periodicals, organizations, social relations and all the other features to be expected of a minority culture dispersed through the general population. So rapid and positive was the spread of this language and culture that the period is today referred to as a golden age.
The culminating achievement of that time was the establishment of the Columbia Institute for the Deaf at Washington, D.C. in 1864. Now called Gallaudet University, it is still the only liberal arts college for the deaf in the world, although there are now many other institutions offering college and post graduate degrees to the deaf.
The later half of the nineteenth century witnessed the rise of oral theories of deaf education. Although there are a variety of these theories, they have in common an emphasis on the importance of oral skills (speech-reading and speech) in the education of deaf children. A leading proponent of oral methods was Alexander Graham Bell, whose mother and wife were both hard of hearing. The first major oral school in the U.S., Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, opened in 1867.
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