When was deafness first discovered

At the congress, Alexander Graham Bell spoke for three days while advocates of American Sign Language were only given three hours to argue against oralism. NAD is an organization that promotes the civil rights of deaf individuals in the United States, created to defend the ability of the American deaf community to use sign language and organize around important issues.

A teletypewriter is an electromechanical typewriter paired with a communication channel that allows people to communicate through typed messages. A TTY is required at both ends of the conversation and can be used with either a landline or a cell phone.

Its creation greatly expanded the means of long-distance communication for the deaf. Expands means of communication for the deaf. Video Relay Service is a form of Telecommunications Relay Service that enables people who use American Sign Language to communicate with voice telephone users through video equipment, rather than through typed text. Stokoe was a linguist who worked to show the general public that ASL was a fully-formed language with its own grammatical structure and rich vocabulary, rather than a visual form of English or mere pantomime.

The Rehabilitation Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in programs conducted by federal agencies, in programs receiving federal financial assistance, in federal employment and in the employment practices of federal contractors.

Gallaudet had yet to have a Deaf president since its induction in , and students demanded a Deaf president to represent them. They argued hearing impairment was not an issue of education or communication, but rather a handicap. One key achievement of the League was the establishment of hearing clinics to properly assess hearing impairment, especially in children, to ensure medical care could be provided before it was too late.

This project was primarily spearheaded by Harold M. Hays , who was recruited as president of the League in , becoming the first active otologist collaborating with the League. Group hearing tests of schoolchildren, using an audiometer. Headphones are used first on the right ear, then the left.

Hygeia , February Yet, as Hays argued, regular hearing tests were not considered on par with other hygienic measures under public health services:. Indeed, in one report for the League, Hays remarked that with the increased publicity, there were 10, calls to the League in alone inquiring about aural examinations.

A steady increase in patients would follow: 17 clinic patients in , in , and then 1, in Hearing News, December The s publicity campaigns were primarily focused on fostering ties between otologists and the League, in cooperation with hospitals and schools.

In , the League purchased audiometers and offered invitations to conduct hearing tests in schools across New York, so children with hearing impairment could be assessed accordingly.

Two years later, the League worked with Bell Laboratories to further substantiate the conviction that deafness was a serious problem amongst schoolchildren and that something needed to be done. At the same time otologists across America established joint ventures between organizations like the America Medical Association and the American Otological Society.

An account of this is given in the paper which was distributed. You can think about how much it reflects the view of deaf people. Most of the information is factual but it seems to miss out a lot. People would know each other very well since they went to the same local schools. Most deaf people had trades and so would have worked hard throughout the day even on Saturday before going to the deaf club. However, most deaf people worked with hearing people just as they do now.

But it is interesting to try to think about how the deaf club was without electricity and all the other features which we take for granted. One of the features of the schools was their stability. When a master was installed, he was able to stay there for a very long time. There were fewer jobs and people were expected to stay in their post for much longer. Because of the rapid expansion in the early part of the century, the head teachers were appointed quite young. We can see that many remained in post until quite late in the century.

New ideas were absent and the schools slipped into a decay and there was a lack of new initiative. Signing became associated with low achievement and institutionalisation. Charles Dickens was interested in deaf education and he became a governor of the school in London - it is not clear how active he was but he did write about deaf education.

We can only imagine what it must have been like to be a new teacher at that time. When the new ideas came - they came with bang. Can you think of any new ideas which have come along in education in the last 20 years? Do you know of any new ideas in deaf education? Most people will think of the national curriculum and the major re-organisation of schools which have taken place recently. This has been a huge change in schools and it has affected all schools - including deaf schools.

However, there have been other shifts - child-centred education, information technology and so on. In the field of deafness people will often say cochlear implants are new but this is really a medical invention. Others might mention the expansion of mainstreaming, but this has been in the UK since the second world war. Perhaps the most significant new idea for deaf people has been the rise of bilingual education. This is of great importance to the deaf community.

Experiments with oralism happened in the s - these were probably only repeats of the situation nearly years earlier when Baker and others took individual pupils. However, what was not possible was to compare the progress of the individual pupil with the progress of the deaf child in the deaf school.

What they found, perhaps not surprisingly was that the child who was taught individually was better in learning the main target - speech. So the early successes of this type of approach contrasted markedly with the slow development of deaf children in the schools - who also were slipping into deaf stereotype jobs.

This apparent success was valued by parents and it was the parent lobby which began to give a fresh momentum to deaf education. The movement went in two directions at once - it decided to teach speech and it decided to make sure that the teachers were formally trained in method. There was no great tradition of teacher training - it was mainly the master-apprentice model. Since there were few masters who could teach oralism, the parents decided to set up their own college.

By the latter part of the century, all the meetings of head teachers discussed the need to develop training for the teachers. Such training was in the oral method and deaf people were almost automatically excluded. They said that deaf people would speak if they could. As a result the battle for speech teaching was won.

But the changes were slow. Although Bristol had a class with oral education in the s it was not until the school closed in , that signing was taken away from deaf education in the city. In Glasgow, the signing tradition was maintained into the 20th century. As has been repeated time and again, technology was seen as the great saviour of deaf people.

Every year there were new discoveries about medicine and about hearing. It was expected that deaf children could be cured to the extent that they would disappear altogether. The medical strand came together with the educational in when the young Alexander Ewing set up the department in Manchester which came to be called the Department of Audiology and Education of the Deaf.

Because of the medical advances in the testing of hearing, the eminence of the department was assured. Because Ewing married a teacher of the deaf - twice - the influence on deaf education was immense. Not surprisingly this training which was offered there, reflected the real advances in the assessment of hearing and in the treatment approach. Parents were guided to a better more systematic approach which ensured that the child would learn to speak.

This movement was sustained by the availability of hearing aids after the war. Now all deaf children could be fitted with hearing aids on the National Heath and so this meant that the aids were free. The immediate result was that some deaf children could hear. Now it was possible to separate out the deaf from the partially hearing children. Hearing aids were a wonder as now deaf children could be seen to talk.

The extract in Pictures in the Mind of the film "Mandy" which shows how deaf children can be saved by learning to talk, gives a clear indication of the ideas which were common at that time.

What can you remember of your early childhood. If you are deaf did you wear hearing aids - what were they like? Did they help you? How do you feel about your childhood, now that you can look back on it? Many profoundly deaf people are angry about this time in their lives. The emphasis on speech for all those who were in school from the s to s, very often meant that there was very little time for other study. Many deaf people report that they feel cheated.

This helps to explain why these courses on research and deaf studies are popular. Deaf people are just trying to catch up. When Conrad reported his findings in the s, people said the problems were because the children did not have proper hearing aids or new hearing aids - they had not had the benefit of technology Powell and Braybrook in a number of papers.

Nowadays the technology is cochlear implants - another medical development in education. Despite the claims, there is no proof that the money is better spent on costly medical treatment than on extended education. Throughout the history of deaf education, the protests of deaf people seem to have been ignored.

There was no power base and even when the deaf community came together in the late s to try to overturn the change which seemed to have come from the Milan conference, they were seen to be irrelevant to what was happening in schools and what was happening in the law.

The very strong arguments put forward by the scientist, Alexander Graham Bell, meant that what deaf had to say was seen as irrelevant. They were always looking back - while science and education looked forward. There was little point in saying things were better in the past, hearing people and society wanted to move forward.

Deaf adults were seen as having been educated in the past and so they showed up all the old errors of education. The hearing teachers wanted new ideas and new methods - and they wanted to believe that speech could be achieved. If you are deaf, have you ever tried to talk to teachers about your school experiences? Were you successful in changing their minds about the education you received? Do you think you could influence teachers nowadays?

Quite a few deaf people have gone back to their old school - with mixed feelings. For many it was a happy time when they mixed with other deaf people of the same age. However, it was also a very difficult time when they were more likely to fail than to succeed. Sometimes the teachers have changed in their attitude. In other cases, the deaf people feel as if they still have to lip-read the teachers and feel at a disadvantage. Most people feel it is very difficult to influence the education of today by talking to teachers about the experiences which they had in school.

Not surprisingly, parents were brought into play on the side of progress. Parents want the best for their children and they were persuaded always that there was a solution to be found in the denial of deafness - the overcoming of deafness. They still do. The result is a continuing tension between the child as he is and the child as the parents want him to be. When technology can solve so many problems, why should the technology not solve the problems of the deaf child?

However, the complicating factor has been the provision which has been available. Although it has always been the aim to meet the needs of the child, the reality has been that it is whatever is available which is offered to the child. Commonly parents were not told about signing and the resources devoted to signing programmes were much less as they became less fashionable, and as they became the last option.

Children tried out with oralism first. Then if they could not cope, they were able to catch up in sign. But it was second best. Parents did not want second best. So this short account of a long story is important for deaf people in what way? It is mainly important for the way in which it shows the strands which have been followed over time. It allows us to separate out the strands for explanation - which were medical and which were educational.

When we are able to understand these we can see that at the points where they came together, there were ever problems for deaf people.