Deaf History Unveiled: Interpretations from the New Scholarship

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12 Student Life at the Indiana School for the Deaf During the Depression Years Michael Reis Editor's Introduction School papers were often at the heart of deaf community communication in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Silent Worker and a few other institution periodicals had broad audiences and discussed issues of significance to the national deaf community. Chroniclers of deaf history have used papers to understand general themes and changes in attitude among deaf Americans, particularly the educated elite who produced and read school papers. This essay by Michael Reis uses the papers of his alma mater, the Indiana School for the Deaf, for a slightly different purpose. Reis is not particularly interested in the elite. Rather, he attempts to understand, through newspaper accounts, what the rhythm of life was at the Indiana School during the 1930s. Reis's investigation yields important information in several areas. For one thing, Reis, like Buchanan, shows that the school newspaper was a powerful tool. When a new superintendent was installed in 1935, one of his first steps was to take the editorial reins for himself. He also changed the paper's format and-in keeping with the actions of Pope in New Jersey-decreased editorials and news about alumni, replacing them with articles from professional education journals. In other words, he shifted the focus away from the deaf community and toward the educational establishment. Reis also describes, through his analysis of paper articles, a school for deaf children vastly different from modem examples. The Indiana School in the 1930s was more than an educational institution; it was home for its pupils. Reis's account helps demonstrate why and how residential institutions became the nursery for the American deaf community. Students were not encouraged (or even allowed) to visit 198 The Indiana School During the Depression their biological families regularly. The school required "housekeeping" tasks from the students; it required their attendance at chapel; it offered a plethora of clubs and organizations for after-school activities. Some students remained on campus through the Christmas holiday and even the summer. Teachers occasionally took students home with them during the summer, and students often accompanied teachers on weekend trips. Students were encouraged, sometimes forced, to write about their off-campus activities and publish these accounts in the paper. The sense that Reis describes is one of a large family, with students looking up to, and showing their affection for, the teachers and even the superintendent. More than the usual institution documents, the school paper, especially in its student accounts, provides insight into the way deaf children's lives were organized in the 1930s. What it does not reveal, Reis explains, is the motivation for administrative actions that had a large influence on students. He recognizes as well that the newspapers were, in a sense, public relations documents and thus have to be approached cautiously. These caveats aside, though, it is clear that the deaf communities that evolve in the future, as the United States and other countries move away from residential institutions toward mainstreamed programs, will approach their challenges from a vastly different set of childhood experiences. 199 THIS ESSAY IS BASED on a study of the school newspaper, the Silent Hoosier/Hoosier, of the Indiana School for the Deaf (ISD) during the crucial depression decade of the 1930s. The school periodical illuminates student life during that period, and it chronicles administrative changes that reflected the evolution of new attitudes toward the education of deaf children. Established in Indianapolis in 1843, the ISD remained on one city block several miles from the downtown area for the remainder of the nineteenth century. The school's rapid growth caused severe overcrowding of the classrooms and dormitories, however, and its large buildings took up much of the small campus. Thus in 1912 the ISD relocated to an eighty-acre tract in the northern part of the city; the old school was eventually demolished for a city park. Two superintendents presided over the ISD during the 1930s: Oscar Pittenger between 1919 and 1935, and Jackson Raney, who replaced Pittenger. The school has published a paper since 1887. Its functions were to promote wider knowledge of the ISD and its activities throughout the 200 Michael Reis state and to train its deaf pupils in the art of printing. Prior to 1935, the school paper was titled the Silent Hoosier, and its editor was the printing instructor...