How Did Alexander Bell Influence Deaf History?

Benjamin James Bahan who was born by Deaf parents in New Jersey was very passionate about American Sign Language and Deaf Literature. As a child he attended Marie Katzenbach School for the Deaf in West Trenton, New Jersey as well as Gallaudet University where he is now a professor and chair of American Sign Language and Deaf Studies. Upon returning to Gallaudet University as a professor and chairs person in 1996 he went to The Salk Institute in La Jolla where he researched American Sign Language linguistics and acquisitions as well as receiving his masters degree in Deaf Education and helped operate the Deaf Studies Program in the School of Education at Boston University. Lucky for Ben, while attending Boston University he met his wonderful wife who was not only Deaf but had Deaf parents just like him.

Leroy helped contributed to the deaf world by proving that deaf people could do the same things just like hearing people also helping deaf people wanting to be deaf lifeguards proving to the government that they can do the job even if they can't hear people screaming for help.

In 1817, a man named Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, was a graduate from Yale University and lived in Hartford Conneticut. He met Alice, the daughter of his neighbor, Mason Cogswell, a well known doctor of the area. He found out that Alice was deaf and decided to teach her on how to read and write some basic things. He did really good in helping her and was encouraged by Cogswell to establish a school made for deaf people to learn on how to communicate. With enough help and funds, Cogswell and some others were able to send Gallaudet out to Great Britain where there he can the ways of deaf communication. When he got there he first was going to learn about an “oral method” of instruction at the Braidwood Schools in Scotland. This method was strongly

accept the diagnosis that their child is Deaf. They are in denial that may last

The legacy of Laurent Clerc is long withstanding. As the first teacher for deaf individuals, he pioneered a system of teaching the deaf that carries on today. Without him, the American School for the Deaf may not have come to fruition. By offering classes in sign

Although he largely setback some progress made by Gallaudet and Clerc, Bell did manage to desegregate education and facilitated communication between deaf and hearing persons. However, he was still an incredibly hypocritical and had a very dark

The Deaf Community in America: History in the Making by Melvia M. Nomeland and Ronald E. Nomeland is a book written to describe the changes the Deaf community, with a capital “D”, has encountered throughout time. The authors mention, “By using the capital ‘D’ to refer to a community of people who share a language and culture and the lower case ‘d’ to refer to the audiological condition of hearing loss” (Nomeland 3). In this book we are taken through a time line on how the Deaf community’s life changed socially and educationally allowing them to live normally.

In this 2 hours of deaf history I found it very interesting. It taught me a lot about deaf history. In those 2 hours I found out about how people would treated deaf people. Deaf people were treated very badly, they were treated like something was wrong with them. There is nothing wrong with them even though they can’t hear, nothing is wrong with them they are still humans with feeling. Deaf people were told that they had to go to a school so they could learn to talk (oral schools). In those they were not aloud to sign or use hands in class. They would try and teach deaf kids how to speak by putting their hands on the teacher's throat to feel the vibrations of when the teacher speak and the kids had to copy that feeling on themselves and when

All throughout history when an issue or problem presented it's self to a group of individuals. Their voices together would bring about change through toil and determination. However, what if the world couldn't hear your "voice" or understand your language? The degree of effort and work for such a group of people would seem futile. For the students of Gallaudet University, the barrier between the hearing world and the Deaf world could not have stopped them.

I chose to write this essay on a famous deaf person that completely changed the history of the United States and forever changed the history of the state of Texas. This Deaf man could moreover be singly part of the only reason the Texans do not speak fluent Spanish as their first language that was born in the early part of 18th century. The reason I chose this individual is because of my intrigue of American history, moreover, through my research I found that he introduced a fine stock of Muley (meaning hornless) cattle from Louisiana to the San Antonio area, where the Longhorn breed was previously popular. My intent of this paper is to bring the history of an extraordinary Deaf man to light with his trials and triumphs.

In 1861, George Veditz was born of hearing and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, USA by his two German immigrant parents. By the age of five he was already fluent in two languages, English and German. However, when he was just eight years old, Veditz lost his hearing to scarlet fever. Fortunately, he was taught sign language by a private tutor, and had decided to attend Maryland School for the Deaf. After his graduation, he went to National Deaf-Mute College, which later became known as Gallaudet University, to become a teacher (Cadeaf.org). Years passed and in 1904, he became the president of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD). There, he laid his legacy toward his most prominent accomplishment, the Preservation of Sign Language. With the help of film technology, Veditz also become a well-known Teller to the Deaf community and has made significant contributions to Deaf literature

By April of 1871, a Scottish immigrant named, Alexander Graham Bell (founder of the telephone), laid a foundation for teaching deaf children in Boston. Bell had a deaf mother and wife, and was always involved with the Deaf community. According to Baynton, “Bell thought that signing prevented deaf people from learning to speak, so he was against deaf people using sign, their

3 out of every 1,000 children in the U.S. are born Deaf or later on become deaf. It’s may seem like a small chance, but it’s often an unfortunate occurrence. However, most Deaf and deaf people have proven that anything is possible if you believe in yourself and try hard enough to achieve your goal. One of such is Miss America of 1995, a woman who significantly contributed to culture and history.

Early in 1874 Bell met Thomas A. Watson, a young machinist at a Boston electrical shop. Watson became Bell’s indispensable assistant, bringing to Bell’s experiments the crucial ingredient that had been lacking, his technical expertise in electrical engineering. Together the two men spent endless hours experimenting (Paschoff 43,44). Although Bell formed the basic concept of the telephone using a varying but unbroken electric current to transmit the varying sound waves of human speech, in the summer of 1874, Hubbard insisted that the young inventor focus his efforts on the harmonic telegraph instead. Bell wanted to continue his work on the telephone but he complied. When he patented one of his telegraph designs in February 1875, he found that Elisha Gray had patented a multiple telegraph two days earlier. Greatly discouraged, Bell consulted in Washington with the elderly Joseph Henry, who urged Bell to pursue his “germ of a great invention” speech transmission (Grosvenor and Wesson 55).

History tells us that the oral-manual controversy in deaf education emerged during the Age of Reason. The Age of Reason chronicles the so-called War of Methods when the manualists, followers of Abbé Charles Michel de l’Épée’s manualism, and the oralists, followers of Samuel Heinicke’s oralism, competed each other in the deaf education arena (Lang, 2011). Needless to say, no winner was declared; hence, the controversy has continued for centuries.