The 175th Anniversary of the American Annals of the Deaf: Part II—1901 through 1960

This issue is the second part of a celebration of the 175th anniversary of the American Annals of the Deaf (see Paul, 2022, for the first part). After about a 7-year hiatus (1861–1868), the Annals resumed publication, and today, as I noted in Part I of this series of articles, it is purportedly the oldest continuously published refereed education journal in North America. In this issue, I cover the period from 1901 through 1960; my overview in the forthcoming Fall issue will address 1961 to the present. These are arbitrary divisions, not related to any specific turning-point event that occurred in 1901 or 1961.

Although I am still interested in language and literacy, I attempted to be flexible and broad so that I would not neglect any other mouth-watering articles. I selected a few for discussion purposes (definitely not easy) and others for reference purposes. It was interesting to see the types of published articles, considering that they appeared in an era that included catastrophic events such as the two world wars, the stock market crash of 1929, the postwar period, and the Korean conflict. Nevertheless, if you are a tired, weary scholar, you might remark, "Ah yes, more of the same, what else is new?" However, if you do not have hardening of the knowledge arteries, you might exclaim, "Holy smokes! Our view of the present can be expanded by a comprehensive understanding of the past!" With a tad more enthusiasm, you might even speculate, "This understanding might even direct (or has directed?!) our future progress."

Range of Topics

I encountered the same challenges that I had with the first segment of this celebration with respect to the selection of topics. My initial selection of articles, based on a quick perusal of the titles, and a brief reading of the first few pages, resulted in 338 manuscripts of interest. Obviously, I could not read all the manuscripts deeply and reflectively, so my choices are related to my own research and interests; plus, there were a few articles I simply could not resist.

There were the usual articles on language and language-teaching methods, reading and using reading as a means for teaching language, and the constructs of both lipreading and speechreading. Both terms, lipreading and speechreading, were used, which I found interesting. (Full disclosure: I did my master's thesis on speechreading.) There were other interesting topics, such as spelling as one way to the development of language and—in a progressive spirit—the idea that spelling is dependent on phonology and morphology.

The array of topics continues to boggle the mind. There were discussions of compulsory education, literature, training the imagination, character building, moral development, the study of intelligence, conceptual thinking, and the use of the Vineyard Maturity Scale, as well as a list of master's and doctoral theses from 1951 to 1960. There was even an article (Garnett, 1956) on how to explain Plato with the use of your hands (i.e., the use of signs)!

It should be no surprise that there were several articles on written language (i.e., reading and writing). One of the earliest articles I found focused on the analysis of errors in the written composition of deaf children (Thompson, 1936, included in this issue). This article began, "An analysis of 16,000 specimens of written composition from 800 deaf children, attending ten schools for the deaf, was made" (p. 95). This was a strict discussion—that is, descriptive analysis—of errors in the use of pronouns, conjunctions, nouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, sentences, clauses, punctuations, and even the use of vocabulary (words). I am certain that this provided some fodder for the work of Quigley on the development and use of syntax in the 1970s (see discussion in Paul, 2009). Thompson (1936) concluded with what still might be a surprising statement:

On the basis of these results, it would appear more necessary for the teacher to spend time and effort on the right use of words rather than on the treatment of structural...