Oralism In Deaf Education Essay

America’s Deaf and hard-of-hearing is a community unified and proud of their heritages. Most wouldn’t accept a cure even when given the opportunity to. Sign language has always been a big part of this culture, being the current native form of communication used amongst Deaf people. It however, was combated when Oralism was made popularized near the eighteen-seventies by Alexander Graham Bell, who started publicly promoting it’s usage over signing. This Oralism method has been considered a way made to “fix” people born with hearing deformities, founded on ideals of combining and “normalizing” how the Deaf conversed with others. Supporters believed the Deaf must learn spoken language in order to fully function in the hearing society. Everything was seen in only the

These methods spread throughout to schools for the Deaf across the United States. In 1867, two of the largest deaf schools started educating their deaf students in using only oral methods and encouraged all the other deaf schools to do the same. Deaf teachers in these schools were even being fired and replaced with hearing adults to further separate the children from any other forms than those using speech therapy. Oralism was taking over, and majority of people who supported the spread of this method at the time also promoted completely banning all sign languages or any kind of gestural communication from schools and limiting students to speech and lipreading. Alexander Graham Bell was someone who was a very influential person at the time, and used his fame and wealth from the telephone to prescribe his beliefs. He thought that deafness was a horrible curse that caused suffrage. Bell suggested preemptive measures that he thought would deflect the children's hereditary deafness. That, including endorsing the acts removing sign language from the residential