Discussing Bilingualism in Deaf Children

Essays in Honor of Robert Hoffmeister

Charlotte Enns, Jonathan Henner, Lynn McQuarrie, Charlotte Enns, Jonathan Henner, Lynn McQuarrie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000361025
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Inklusive Bildung

This collection unites expert scholars in a comprehensive survey of critical topics in bilingual deaf education. Drawing on the work of Dr. Robert Hoffmeister, chapters explore the concept that a strong first language is critical to later learning and literacy development. In thought-provoking essays, authors discuss the theoretical underpinnings of bilingual deaf education, teaching strategies for deaf students, and the unique challenges of signed language assessment. Essential for anyone looking to expand their understanding of bilingualism and deafness, this volume reflects Dr. Hoffmeister's impact on the field while demonstrating the ultimate resilience of human language and literacy systems.

PART I

Seaworthy Construction

Theoretical Underpinnings of Bilingual Deaf Education

1

TWO CENTURIES OF DEAF EDUCATION AND DEAF AGENCY IN THE UNITED STATES

Brian H. Greenwald

Each Deaf person, myself included, is part of the continuum of Deaf history. We are influenced in ways by the generations of Deaf people who came before us. This chapter is an effort to summarize the history of Deaf life in the United States to provide something of a frame for the chapters that follow in this book. It is exceedingly difficult to distill such a complex story over two centuries. Below are threads that are merely a start to the topic, and it is my hope that this will be of value in considering how we got to this particular moment in history.¹

The Grand Narrative

The grand narrative in American Deaf history typically recounts the fundraising prowess of Dr. Mason Fitch Cogswell and the subsequent transatlantic journey of Reverend Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet. Gallaudet first traveled from America to France, then returned to America with French master teacher Laurent Clerc to form the first permanent school for deaf students in Connecticut. Mason Fitch Cogswell was a prominent citizen in Hartford and well connected with successful Connecticut luminaries, including Daniel Wadsworth, Nathaniel Terry, Henry Hudson, John Caldwell, and Daniel Buck. Daniel Buck, for example, profited off the trade and sale of rum, molasses, and cotton produced by slave labor. Buck would go on to found an insurance company in Hartford, the predecessor of The Hartford (Sayres, 2017). Cogswell tapped into wealthy Hartford men and women, including Lydia Sigorney, who made their fortunes in banking, insurance, and the slave trade and raised money via subscriptions to fund the trip to Europe.

The grand narrative continues that Gallaudet, while in England, was rebuffed at the Braidwood Academy, as the school’s founders sought to protect their pedagogy techniques which favored speaking and lipreading. They had wanted to keep their methods a proprietary secret, which would not have worked for Gallaudet since his chief aim was to bring a mechanism of teaching deaf children to the United States. That pushed Gallaudet from the United Kingdom toward Paris and a meeting with the Abbe Roch-Ambroise Sicard. Abbe Sicard worked under the Abbe de L’Epee at the Institut National de Jeunes Sourdes de Paris (at St. Jacques), where Gallaudet met star pupil and model teacher Laurent Clerc.

Clerc was ensconced at the Paris school, working in a familiar environment when Gallaudet asked him to uproot his work and community ties to relocate to an unfamiliar environment in the United States in the midst of the War of 1812. The agreement, bound by Gallaudet’s promise, was that all expenses would be paid should Clerc decide to return to his native France. That never came to pass, however, as Clerc married a deaf woman and raised two children in the United States. On the Mary Augusta ship, the narrative continues with Clerc teaching Gallaudet French Sign Language and Gallaudet teaching Clerc written English. Clerc agreed to relocate to Hartford, Connecticut, essentially on a guarded leap of faith.

A gifted teacher, Clerc also established himself as a shrewd negotiator in his contract signed in Paris, France, on June 13, 1816, shortly after the end of the War of 1812. Clerc agreed to a three-year contract before a school was even founded in America. Gallaudet would cover all of Clerc’s relocation expenses – transportation, lodging, meals, washing clothes – from France to the United States. Arriving at Hartford, Clerc was furnished with an apartment, and his laundry, lights, and wood for fire were supplied. He would eat with Thomas Gallaudet daily. In exchange for his work, Clerc was compensated 2,500 francs annually, paid in quarterly installments. Had Clerc decided to return to his native France, a separation package required Gallaudet to pay 1,500 francs in addition to all relocation expenses (American Annals of the Deaf, 1879).

Laurent Clerc was to teach six hours per weekday, three hours on Saturday, and was exempt from teaching on Sundays and all other holidays. The content areas were specified: grammar, language, arithmetic, the “globe’, geography, and history. Clerc, a Roman Catholic, was not obligated to offer religious teachings that contradicted with Catholicism. Gallaudet would assume other teachings, “which may not be in accordance with this faith” (American Annals of the Deaf, 1879, p.117). Religious instruction remained prevalent in residential schools for more than a century.

Residential schools served as a cornerstone of the American Deaf community ever since the founding of the Connecticut Asylum for the Deaf-Mutes and Dumb (later American School for the Deaf (ASD)) in Hartford in 1817. Located on lands provided by state governments, residential schools created that critical mass of deaf students using sign language, and contributed to the rise and growth of the Deaf community in America. Starting with this first permanent school for deaf students in the United States, language passed from teacher to student, one generation to the next in hallways and classrooms. The majority of deaf students came from hearing families, so they acquired sign language at the residential schools and not at home. Thus, language, along with traditions and values, were transmitted from cohort to cohort over the years.

Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and the Second Great Awakening

Working within the context of the Second Great Awakening, a Protestant religious revival that began in the north and swept throughout the south, Gallaudet developed educational and salvation plans for students enrolled at the ASD. Ministers in the Second Great Awakening led by Lyman Beecher, Henry Ward Beecher, and Charles Grandison Finney worked in Rochester and other locations in upstate New York before the movement spread to New England, and the South. The current reached Hartford and swept Reverend Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet into this movement, and he, like other ministers, pushed for closer, more direct access to God. Direct access to God, Gallaudet believed, lay in the salvation of deaf students through sign language. God, as the omnipresent being, could understand the natural language of signs. Gallaudet’s ministry was tinged with paternalism, claiming older deaf students at ASD as childlike. The average age of ASD students at the time of admission was 18 years old, nearly adults. As a result, some students procured alcohol in Hartford, caused some property damage, and suspicious conversations occurred between male and female students at the school. Gallaudet struggled to impose discipline, and, therefore, he suggested raising the age of admission to over 20 years, along with some knowledge of writing, fingerspelling, and demonstration of the ability for self-discipline and sitting in a classroom (Sayres, 2017).

With Gallaudet as the Principal of ASD, hearing faculty maintained tight control on academic matters. An exception was made for a single deaf person, Laurent Clerc. Clerc not only commanded the highest salary but also retained voting privileges denied to other deaf faculty at ASD. It is not known to what extent Clerc argued for expanding voting rights to all deaf faculty. After Clerc’s initial term expired, he took temporary leave to influence the inception of other schools in the United States emphasizing sign language in the curriculum. Students often learned from deaf teachers. Deaf teachers routinely earned less than their hearing counterparts and endured paternalism exhibited by school administrators who exercised tight administrative and fiscal control over school matters.

The ASD struggled to survive in the early years. To address some of the financial shortcomings and the need for a new building, the school sold the parcel of land in Alabama that was gifted to them from the Federal government. In addition, income from slave labor and the sale of slaves funded building construction at ASD, which in part, helped to bring the school on more sound financial footing (Sayres, 2017).

The education of deaf children in the first half of the nineteenth century was largely modeled on the successes at the Hartford school. In residential schools, sign language was used to deliver the curriculum. There were speech training classes as early as the 1830s at the Virginia School for the Deaf, and the 1840s at the Kentucky School for the Deaf. It is important to note that education was focused primarily on white deaf children. Although a black student attended ASD as early as 1825, and reportedly the New York School for the Deaf had a black student in 1818, the numbers were small, with a total of only 11 black students enrolled at ASD between 1829 and 1870 (Edwards, 2012).

The Midpoint

At the midpoint of the nineteenth century, residential schools used sign language in the curriculum, and a professional journal, American Annals of the Deaf, became a mechanism for dissemination of information on the pedagogy of educating deaf students. As the nation found itself mired in the Civil War, several residential schools in the south contributed to the southern cause. Most schools experienced a decline in enrollment during the war, with Georgia School for the Deaf at Cave Spring suspending operations. Kentucky School for the Deaf was the only southern school that remained open throughout the Civil War.

Willie J. Palmer, a hearing principal at North Carolina School for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind at Raleigh, “quickly turned the school into a major resource for Jefferson Davis…in no other Southern school for deaf children were the children more directly involved in aiding the Confederacy” (Lang, 2017, p. 124). Lang (2017) further credits Palmer for his acumen in running a school with a good academic and vocational program while working to “inspire the deaf children to the Southern cause” (p. 124). The North Carolina School for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind in Raleigh printed Confederate dollars and made ammunition ( Joyner, 2004).

Several hearing principals and some teachers, for example, from the Virginia School for the Deaf at Staunton, took leave from the school to participate in the war out of duty and to support the Confederate army (Lang, 2017; McPherson, 1997). Facilities at some school...