The History of Gallaudet University: 150 Years of a Deaf American Institution

Preface

This book focuses on the history of the unique collegiate program that was established in 1864,which still is the only freestanding institution of higher education in the world designed to meet the specific needs of deaf students.It chronicles Gallaudet’s growth from a tiny college of less than two hundred students into a modern comprehensive American university.Along the way,it will discuss the university’s achievements as well as its failures,the development of American Sign Language (ASL) as a language of scholarship at Gallaudet during a time when its use in educational institutions was largely discouraged or prohibited,and the struggle by deaf people to gain control of the governance of their university. Gallaudet University has been known by various names throughout its history. Federal law established Gallaudet as the Columbia Institution for Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind in 1857, with the status of a private corporation. It has been governed by an independent board of directors during its entire history. Although it has received a federal appropriation annually since 1858, it is not a government agency,and it has never been controlled directly by the U.S. government.The corporation was relieved of responsibility for educating blind children in 1865 and thereafter was known as the Columbia Institution for Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb. In 1954, federal law changed the name to Gallaudet College, then the Education of the Deaf Act of 1986 renamed it Gallaudet University. The university campus occupies the site of Amos Kendall’s estate in northeast Washington, DC, and has long been referred to as Kendall Green. In 1864 the U.S. Congress authorized the establishment of collegiate programs as a department of the Columbia Institution.This department was known for many years as the National DeafMute College and, informally, as the College for the Deaf or Gallaudet College.The board of directors changed the name to Gallaudet College in 1894 in honor of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, the founder of deaf education in America, although the legal corporate name did not change until 1954, as noted above. After the establishment of the college program, the Columbia Institution continued to operate a school for deaf children.This school was generally known as the Kendall School in honor of Amos Kendall, and it was eventually replaced by two separately authorized schools—the Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD) in 1966, and the Kendall Demonstration Elementary School (KDES) in 1970. All three programs, the university, MSSD, and KDES, are now authorized by a single piece of federal legislation, the Education of the Deaf Act (EDA) of 1986, and the name of the entire corporation is Gallaudet University. In this book, the word Institution generally refers to the corporate body, under any of its legal names.The term school generally refers to the Kendall School and its successors; college refers to the collegiate program or the corporate body after 1954; and university refers to the Institution as it has existed since 1986. The word deaf has both physical and cultural meanings.Throughout this book, Deaf refers to cultural entities and concepts, such as Deaf culture, Deaf organizations, and Deaf perspectives, for example.The word deaf is used for all other references , including an audiological condition and to individual people. PREFACE  Statue of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Alice Cogswell by Daniel Chester French, 1889. ...