At Home Among Strangers: Exploring the Deaf Community in the United States

5. Education and Rehabilitation

5 EDUCATION AND REHABILITATION Scientists have estimated that only a third or less of the average child's knowledge comes from the classroom. The remainder derives from incidental learning-from radio, television, overhearing conversations, talking with others. Deaf children, however, are cut off from some or all of those sources of information. Until they can read English, captions are useless. In daily contacts, they may observe , for example, an adult who is obviously angry with another child, but they do not learn a lesson from the incident because they do not hear the accompanying dialogue. Thus, deaf children learn by formal tuition, or not at all, many of the customs, taboos, and folkways that normally hearing children learn effortlessly. Rehabilitation also exerts a strong influence on Deaf adults. Since only disabled people may avail themselves of rehabilitation, its process has no direct parallel for those who are nondisabled. The encounter with government bureaucracy at a relatively young age has a strong potential for shaping Deaf people's attitudes and modifying their behavior. This chapter looks at education and rehabilitation from the Deaf side, in relation to Deaf culture. The focus is on how these agencies impact on the Deaf community rather than on how Deaf individuals respond to particular situations. The search is for generalizations that will have predictive value. EDUCATION Can the school be the seedbed for the Deaf community? In chapter 4, we observed that most Deaf people come from normally hearing 136 AT HOME AMONG STRANGERS families. These family members lack connections with the Deaf community and have little or no knowledge of Deaf culture. Bringing together deaf youngsters as they do, the schools often provide these children's first meeting with others like themselves. The school's place as a recruiter for the Deaf community or as a transmitter of Deaf culture is another matter. CAPSULE HISTORY OF DEAF EDUCATION1 Until the eighteenth century, most deaf children received no formal education. A mistranslation of a brief quotation from Aristotle legitimatized the deprivation of instruction to deaf children. The early translation read, "Those who are born deaf become senseless and incapable of reason." Scholars agree that a more accurate translation is "Those who become deaf from birth also become altogether speechless. Voice is certainly not lacking, but there is no speech."2 Too bad for Deaf people that the second translation did not prevail. In the fifteenth century, a scholar or two challenged the Aristotelian dictum, but the great breakthrough did not occur until the sixteenth century. Two Spanish monks, Pedro Ponce de Leon and Juan Pablo Bonet, working with deaf sons of the aristocracy, became the first teachers who also wrote of their successes with deaf students . Their results led to the seminal work of the Abbe Charles Michel de l'Epee, in France. He modified French sign language to suit spoken French grammar, demonstrated the capabilities of many deaf students, and established the first public school for deaf students , in Paris, in 177l. The progress of Deaf education in the United States follows a direct line from the Abbe via a student of his school, Laurent Clerc, who was brought to America by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet. Gallaudet was a normally hearing clergyman who had tried to teach a neighboring deaf child, Alice Cogswell. Her parents and parents of other deaf children raised funds to enable him to go to Europe to study Deaf education. He went first to England, but was rebuffed by the leading authorities; he then turned to France for the keys to educating deaf students. Gallaudet returned a few months later with Clerc to establish a school that continues to this day. The American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, in Hartford, Connecticut (later renamed the American School for the Deaf [ASD]) opened in April 1817, with funding from the Connecticut legislature. Education and Rehabilitation 137 Clerc, deaf and an experienced teacher, served ASD for forty years as the resident expert and as a model for what education of deaf children could accomplish. He wrote and signed gracefully, and his influence spread widely. Within a year after ASD was founded, New York opened a school for deaf students, and, shortly after, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Ohio followed. By 1850, the United States had thirteen public and parochial schools for deaf students . At first, Deaf adults shared in developing the education programs . Clerc not only set the curriculum at ASD, he trained...