A History of Deaf Education

History of American Sign Language and Deaf Education around the World

Ancient Egypt, ​c. 3100-2686 B.C.

Unlike many other ancient societies, deaf and mute people were not harmed nor killed in Ancient Egypt. They were, in fact, believed to have been chosen by the gods and were respected and educated, usually through the combination of hieroglyphics and hand gestures.

Egyptian God Ra, Maxpixel (2011)

Ancient Greece, c. 800-500 B.C. Many famous Greek philosophers addressed the issue of deafness and muteness in their teachings, most famously Aristotle (right) in his work ‘The Problems’. He wrote that deaf people were barbarians because they could not speak Greek, and also stipulated that deaf people should not be educated. He wrote, "Those who are born deaf all become senseless and incapable of reason”. Plato, however, disagreed and mentioned people using basic gestures and signs to communicate. He believed deaf people had intelligence and should be educated, though he did not mention any instances of deaf (or ‘dumb’, as they were called) people being educated.

Socrates, Wikimedia (2002)

Pedro Ponce de Leon, 1520-1584 Though not the famous explorer Juan Ponce de Leon, Pedro Ponce de Leon is credited with creating the first ever uniform sign language. He was a Spanish Benedictine Monk who lived from 1520 to 1584 and was very passionate about education and communication. He started as an educator of the youth, going out into his community and teaching young people how to read, write, and how to do basic math. But he began to notice some children who could not understand his lessons, whether they were deaf, or spoke different languages. Benedictine monks, along with most other monks at the time, took vows of silence and had a very rudimentary form of sign language to communicate with each other. Ponce de Leon, seeing how much these children were struggling, taught them this monastic sign language, and helped them develop it into a fuller language. He spent his entire life after this developing his language and teaching it to as many deaf, mute, and foreign language speakers as he could.

Pedro Ponce de Leon, Wikimedia. (2011)

Juan Pablo de Bonet, 1620- 1633 Juan Pablo de Bonet was a Spanish priest and pioneer for deaf education. He wrote the first book on sign language, in Madrid in 1620. This book was called ‘Reducción de las Letras y Arte para enseñar a Hablar a Los Mudos,’ or ‘Summary of the letters and the art of teaching speech to the mute’. Bonet first came into contact with deaf people when he became the personal secretary to Juan Fernández de Velasco, 5th Duke of Frías, who had a deaf son. Unusual at the time, the Velasco family taught all of their relatives, even those who were deaf or mute, which was common in the family.

De Bonet Book, Wikimedia. (2007)

Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language, 1640-1790s When Chilmark, part of Martha’s Vineyard, was founded in 1640, it was a small, rural fishing town. But, there was something very unique about this place. When a man named Jonathan Lambert immigrated from Kent, England to Chilmark in the late 1600’s, he brought with him his own deafness and his two deaf children. Because Chilmark had no port of its own, and only small and rough roads connecting it to bordering towns, it was relatively secluded and isolated. This meant people tended to marry within the town and stay there their whole lives. After only about 50 to 60 years, Chilmark’s population was about 1 in 25 deaf. To put that in perspective, the rest of America was only about 1 in 5,700 deaf. Because of the huge population of deaf people, by the late 1700s, nearly one hundred percent of the residents of Chilmark spoke a now-extinct form of sign, which may have evolved from a basic sign language

brought there by the Lamberts. “It was passed on to kids as part of, ‘Here’s the stuff you need to know to make a living in this corner of the world,’” Said Bowdoin Van Riper, the librarian at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum.

Unfortunately, not much of the language was recorded, but we do know that some signs have overlaps with ASL.

Jonathan Lambert, unknown (1650)

Thomas Gallaudet and American Sign Language, 1815- In the early 1800s, Thomas Gallaudet was a minister and a tutor for children. One of his students was a little girl named Alice Cogswell, who was deaf. Gallaudet was very set on being able to communicate with her, and managed to teach her a few words, but kept getting stuck. Alice’s father, Dr. Mason Cogswell, was very pleased with Gallaudet for being able to teach her and encouraged him to start a school for the deaf, of which there were none in America. So, in 1815, Gallaudet gained passage to Europe, where deaf schools had already been established for decades, and where most countries had different methods of teaching. He first went to Scotland, famous for their Braidwood Schools, which seemed to be successful in preparing deaf children, but they turned him away. He then went to England to visit the London Asylum, where he was turned away, as they wished to keep their methods secret. Luckily, while he was in England, he saw a demonstration by the director of the Paris School for the Deaf, Sicard, about using hand signs to teach deaf people. Sicard had with him two of his deaf students, Laurent Clerc and John Massieu, both who were teachers at the Paris School for the Deaf. The Paris School for the Deaf was founded in 1771 by a man named Abbe Charles Michel de L'Epee, and was revolutionary in the way it taught. They used a complex system of hand signals, called langue des signes française (LSF), or French Sign Language. Gallaudet, who had never seen sign language before, and saw the benefits of it for deaf people, asked Laurent Clerc to travel back to America with him to establish a sign-based deaf school in the United States. After some convincing, they both moved back to America and established the first school for the deaf in Hartford, Connecticut in 1817. The school was called the American School for the Deaf (ASD), and they taught the students there French Sign Language, which eventually evolved and was altered to fit English-based grammar to become American Sign Language (ASL). Gallaudet was principal and a teacher there until 1857, when he died, and his son took his place and continued his legacy.

LSF Alphabet, Albert Taboat (2012) ASL Alphabet, Clipart WWW (2007)

Thomas Gallaudet, Brandy and Hady (1810)

Edward Miner Gallaudet, Smith (1889)

Gallaudet University, 1856- Edward Gallaudet, the son of Thomas Gallaudet, took over the position of principal for the American School for the Deaf in 1857 after two years of teaching there. In 1856, ​Platt H. Skinner, a native of Washington DC, established Skinner School for the Deaf, which started with started with 20 students. Just 2 months later, when 15 of the 20 students had been removed due to abuse, Amos Kendall, who had served on the Board for the Skinner School, decided to donate​ two acres of land to establish a school for the deaf in Washington, DC, where he lived. He, however, did not speak French or American Sign Language and was not experienced in teaching, so he needed help. He persuaded Edward Gallaudet to move to Washington, DC to establish the school that eventually became Gallaudet University, the first University for the Deaf in the world. In 1864, Gallaudet University was authorized to give out college diplomas by President Abraham Lincoln. Gallaudet’s motto, Ephphatha, translated from Aramaic Greek, means “be opened”

"Deafness, though it be total and congenital, imposes no limits on the intellectual development of its subjects, save in the single direction of the appreciation of acoustic phenomena."—Edward Miner Gallaudet, 1869.

Deafness in Sports, 1925- For a very long time, deaf people have made huge contributions to sports. One of the deaf people to pioneer the movement to allow deaf people in sports was Eugène Rubens-Alcai, a French car mechanic and competitive cyclist who founded the Deaflympics, an Olympics competition that occurs every four years, in 1925. He also started the Comité International des Sports des Sourds, or CISS, which was the first national committee for deaf people in athletics. One of the most famous deaf American athletes was William “Dummy” Hoy, who, besides being a very accomplished center fielder and batter, is credited with starting

using pitching signs. Because he was deaf, he could not hear the other players’ speaking, so he asked his teammates to use a simple code made up of number signs. This trend caught on, as it was harder for competing teams to guess what was coming next, and it is still used to this day. Even after his baseball career was over, Hoy used his celebrity status and wealth to continue advocating for deaf people across the country until his death in 1961.

Summer Deaflympics, CISS (1925) Dummy Hoy, Goodwin & Cane. (1933)

Deaf President Now, 1988 Deaf President Now was a protest that took place at Gallaudet University. Ever since its beginning in 1864, the University had never had a deaf president, despite being a deaf school. In 1988, when the Board of Trustees announced their decision to appoint yet another hearing person, Elisabeth Zinser, as president, Students were frustrated at the continued appearance of hearing presidents, as they could not possibly know what it is actually like to be deaf. The protesting began on March 6 of 1988 and continued until March 13, when the demands of the students were met. The students and staff who protested demanded that Zinser resign, that the Chair of the Board of Trustees, Jane Spillman resign, that the Board of Trustees have a majority of 51% deaf chairs, and that there would be no legal actions taken against the students and staff who protested. To get these demands heard, students, staff, and members of the community marched, made speeches, had meetings and rallies, and got members of the government involved. On Day 3 of the protests, Zinser met with Congressmen Steven Gunderson and David Bonier, who urged her to resign. Greg Hlibok, the student body president at the time, sent a total of four letters to Zinser, but she continued to refuse to meet with him. On Day 5, which would’ve been the students’ spring break, they vowed to stay and continue the protests until their demands were met. Finally, on Day 6, March 11, Zinser resigned. And, after two days of deliberating, the board chose Dr. I. King Jordan as the University’s first ever deaf president.

DPN Demands, NPR (1988) I. King Jordan, NPR (1990)

Works Cited “History behind DPN.​” Gallaudet University, Gallaudet University. “​Juan Pablo Bonet.​” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. 1 Nov. 2010.

MacNeil, Marcus.​ “Pedro Ponce de Leon.”​ Start ASL, EIPA. 29 Nov, 2016.

Mills, Sean​. “Deaf President Now.”​ Life Print. ASL University.

Romm, Cari. ​“The Life and Death of Martha's Vineyard Sign Language.”​ The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 25 Sept. 2015, Vicars, Wiliam G. ​“History of ASL.”​ Life Print, ASL University,