A Cup of Honesty

Gallaudet was considered a moderate and an advocate for effective and humane deaf education. He advocated for an approach in which Deaf educators were relied upon to educate Deaf pupils through bilingual instruction. Nothing else matters.






Edward Miner Gallaudet
b. February 5, 1837
d. September 26, 1917

"E.M. Gallaudet took the rostrum to denounce the widespread erroneous beliefs concerning the deaf: namely, all deaf children can learn speech; oral schools receive all pupils; the best oral results cannot be obtained where the sign language is employed; signs can be banished from schools for the deaf; orally educated deaf are more fully restored to society than manually educated deaf; sign language is an imperfect and crude means of conveying thought; and orally educated deaf will not associate with each other after graduation."
pp. 363

"Gallaudet's views placed him on a middle ground between Clerc and Bell. He had, after all, launched the movement that brought articulation training into the residential schools. He had coined the term "combined system" and aggressively espoused its cause- oral instruction for those who could profit, sign for the rest. But he was vigorously opposed to banishing sign. It was not that he wished to safeguard the signing community; like Bell, he opposed intermarriage of the deaf and even their organizations. It was rather that he believed education of the deaf in spoken language was impossible. 'The great body of intelligent instructors,' he wrote, 'are agreed that no error could be greater than to expect all deaf children to succeed in learning to speak. The supporters of pure oralism from the days of Heinicke to the present time have hugged this delusion to their hearts and, as a consequence, the education of hundreds and thousands of deaf children in Germany, France, and Italy, who have been cruelly stretched on the Procrustean bed of a single method, has been more or less of a failure."
pp.366-367

"He claimed that oralism had not fulfilled its promises and he raised the question of whose testimony should carry the most weight in determining whether it had kept its promises or not. The teachers'? But they are partisan and too familiar with their pupils' speech to make an accurate judgment? The testimony of friends and acquaintances of the deaf? They, too, adjust to the poor speech and gestures of the orally taught pupil. The opinions of strangers? Their testimony is more important. But the greatest weight should be given to the views of the deaf themselves. You can imagine how those remarks were greeted by oralist teachers, who had repeatedly excluded the views of the deaf! But even harsher words were to come. Gallaudet raised the question whether oralist educators were defective morally. He stated that they were engaged in a cover up. It was hardly possible that these teachers were deceiving themselves about the poor fruits of oralism, so it must be that they intended to deceive everyone else."
pp. 411

"'If I am in the minority of the hearing section, I am in the majority in the section of the deaf, and proud of it. It is inadmissible that you refuse to speak with the deaf. They have as much awareness of their rights, as much discernment, and as much determination as you do! They are the first to be affected by these proceedings, they have the right to be heard. I protest your attitude.'"
pp.412

When The Mind Hears : A History of the Deaf
Lane, Harlan, 1984