Deaf History Unveiled: Interpretations from the New Scholarship

15

15 Some Problems in the History of Deaf Hungarians William 0. McCagg Jr. Editor's Introduction William McCagg's study of Hungarian deaf history challenges many recent interpretations. Contrary to several essays in this collection, McCagg concludes that the history of deaf people has not been a record of oppression, at least not in Hungary. He also argues that when deaf education began in Hungary-and he says this is true of most other countries outside of Western Europe and North America-the arguments about language were not about signs. Rather, they were disputes about which spoken and written language should be emphasized in the schools for deaf children. McCagg, in short, claims that the historical experiences of deaf people in the United States, France, and England are not typical of what deaf people in poorer, colonized areas like Eastern Europe have faced. Despite these heretical observations, McCagg does show that deaf history in Hungary is not unlike deaf history elsewhere. McCagg demonstrates as clearly as any historian has how the deaf experience has been linked to the historical fate of an entire nation. His evidence and arguments, from the eighteenth century to the late twentieth century , convincingly portray deaf people as caught up in the larger political , social, and economic movements of their times. When Hungary lost World War I, or when the Russians forced communism on Hungary after World War II, deaf people's lives were affected. McCagg's examination also reinforces some specific trends that influenced deaf history throughout Europe and even in the United States. In Hungary-as in Italy, France, England, and the United States, at least-sign language dominated schools for deaf pupils in the early nineteenth century. And in Hungary, as in those other nations , the late nineteenth century witnessed a shift toward oralism, 252 The History of Deaf Hungarians 253 which was much more complete in Hungary, however, than in the United States. The shift to oralism in Hungary, McCagg argues, was mostly due to German influence. Hungarians believed that Germany represented science, progress, and the future. If oralism and a medical model of deafness was best for the Germans, then Hungarian leaders believed that it was best for them, too. The Germans, McCagg argues persuasively , were themselves strongly oralist due not only to Heinicke's pioneering oral school but also to a strong German aversion to anything French. As Napoleon swept across Europe in the early nineteenth century , spreading French ideas, Germans reacted by trying to resist anything that would link them to French culture. Thus the Germans rejected the "French method" of deaf education and substituted for it their more "philosophical" model of oral language, speech, and speechreading. THE HISTORY of deaf Hungarians since 1800 is in some ways just a complicated corner of a very complicated national history. But it is worth looking at, because, more than most, it illustrates the many pitfalls deaf people have encountered worldwide during the period of modernization, and which they still encounter. Further, this case is a good deal more typical of the modern deaf experience than the well-known, but highly exceptional, Anglo-Saxon case. For purposes of Clarity this material is organized in three main sections , one focusing on the early 1800s, the second on the period around 1900, and the third on the contemporary period. Each section centers on problems that can be easily compared to difficulties deaf people have faced in other countries. The main question of the paper, however, is as follows: How is it possible that after 200 years of trying to help its deaf citizens, Hungary still mixes deaf education with the education of those who are blind and those in need of remedial education of all other sorts; still uses an oralist method exclusively for teaching deaf pupils; and still provides its deaf population with no appropriate telephone devices (TDDs)?1 The Beginnings The modern history of deaf Hungarians begins with the establishment in 1802 of a school for deaf children in the town of Vacz, a few miles north of Budapest.2 The available records about the school im- 254 William 0. McCagg Jr. mediately present seeming disagreements. The official documents tell that the founder of the school was the king of Hungary, who was simultaneously emperor of Austria, and who was named Francis and came from the house of Hapsburg. The histories of the school report, however, that the real founder...