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7 From the Small Space A Biography of Lawrence Newman David J. Kurs In 1968, the John Tracy Clinic, a prominent oral education academy in Los Angeles, published a widely disseminated pamphlet that addressed parents of deaf children with the title: “Talk, Talk, Talk, Talk.” The materials encouraged parents to continue talking because one day their child would eventually catch on. Lawrence Newman, at the time a math teacher at the California School for the Deaf, Riverside, and a father of four, fired back with an allegorical story in The Deaf American with the title “See, See, See, See!” that portrayed a blind student who was admonished to see by his parents and teachers. Two years later in the same magazine, he fired back at the same institution: “the minds of all civilized people are reached by communication in one form or another. When one of the five senses is no longer functioning, substitutes are sought to fill the void. The deaf themselves have found that manual communication is the greatest substitute available.” Dr. Edgar L. Lowell, the administrator of the John Tracy Clinic, wrote back in response: I would much prefer to have my child taught by a good manual teacher like Newman, “California’s Teacher of the Year,” than I would by some of the poor oral teachers that I have observed. . . . All parents, whether their children are hearing or deaf, are in for a good deal of frustration and disappointment . . . I just want to put down the notion that the oral method is to blame for all the disappointments and frustrations of the parents of deaf children. (see pp. 96–97, this volume) In response, Newman thanked him and then said, “the fact that all parents experience frustration is no defense for adding to the frustration one hundredfold” (see p. 100, this volume). The cultural battles that were fought in the 1960s and 1970s between the old guard of administrators of schools for the deaf and a nascent class of deaf educators would come to influence trends in deaf education 8 for the rest of the century. Deaf teachers like Newman bristled at the absence of deaf school administrators and the continuing dominance of oral education, which they had undergone as children and which they felt was destined to fail. Newman remained a loyal soldier, forging ahead in this battleground, by persistently highlighting his experiences as an educator and parent in publications such as The Deaf American. His success as a teacher and pundit would eventually propel him toward administrative positions, towards a role as an in-demand speaker logging hundreds of thousands of miles, and towards the presidency of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD). After his retirement in 1988, Newman has remained active in the community and continues to wax eloquently on the shifting landscapes of deaf education. Astute observers will credit Newman’s spirit and the need to correct the wrongs of the world to his upbringing by immigrant parents. Born on March 23, 1925, he was the third son of Isaac and Toby Newman (his older brothers George and Leonard were eleven and five years old, respectively.) The couple had met in their shared apartment in New York City—Toby’s sister had married Isaac’s brother—after they had emigrated from Poland. Isaac worked as a baker, a trade he had learned as an apprentice to his uncles in the old country, and eventually came to own the Garden Bake Shop, a small bakery that catered to the neighborhood . Their marriage lasted seventy-six years. Mischievous and scampish, Newman possessed a generous streak. On a visit to her parents in Poland in 1932, Toby gave her son a box of chocolates to alleviate the dullness of the transatlantic journey. Newman, preferring to share, gave away the chocolates to other children. When he was six, he gave a ride-on fire truck, a cherished present from an aunt, to a neighborhood boy who did not have any toys. Attheageof five,Newmancontractedmastoiditis,theresultof chronic ear infection. The doctor, while performing myringotomy, a procedure intended to relieve swelling within the ear, cut the seventh cranial nerve that traversed Newman’s middle ear. The accidental incision resulted in left facial nerve palsy and made Newman deaf: “I remember the ether administrated like a suction cup on my face and my body floating back and forth, and waking up from nothingness, swathed in bandages. I saw [18.224.63.87] Project MUSE (2024-04-20...

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