History of Deafness

By sshiever
  • 1000 BCE

    Deafness & Property Ownership

    Hebrew Law (the Talmud) did not allow people who were deaf to own property (Traynor, 2020)
  • Period: 1000 BCE to 1500

    PRE-CHRISTIANITY- 1500CE

    Deafness from BCE- 1500CE
  • 427 BCE

    427-347BCE-Plato’s philosophy of innate intelligence

    Plato believed that all human intelligence was present at birth and that language was pre-programmed in the human mind. According to his philosophy, a person without the capabilities for speech could not demonstrate any outward sign of intelligence, which led to the belief that deaf people were not capable of thought, language , and thus, intelligence (Traynor, 2020)
  • 384 BCE

    384-322 BCE, Aristotle adds to Plato's Philosophy

    Aristotle stated that people could not be educated if they could not hear, and as a result believed that people who were deaf could not learn. He went as far as to state that anyone who could not speak Greek was considered a "barbarian". As a a result, and according to Aristotle,those who were deaf and hard of hearing fell into this category, and were considered "barbaric" (Traynor, 2020)
  • 50 BCE

    Lucretius & Pre-Christian Rome

    Prior to Christianity, it was wildly believed that those born deaf were cursed, and often, as a result of this misbelief, those with hearing loss were even put to death.
    Lucretius summarized common beliefs of the time around deafness with the following: "To instruct the deaf, no art can ever reach,
    No care improve them, and no wisdom teach." (Traynor, 2020)
  • 50

    50-100CE- Deafness in The New Testament

    Mark 9:25"When Jesus saw that a crowd was rapidly gathering, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, "You deaf and mute spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again."
    Deafness viewed as a "curse" or punishment for familial sin ("30 Bible verses about Deafness", 2020)
  • 354

    354CE- St. Augustine & Deafness as a "Punishment for Sin"

    With the New Testament, views around deafness shifted toward inclusivity at least as it related to extending "kindness" to those "afflicted". Still, St. Augustine circa 354 CE – 430 CE, believed that deafness was the result of sins of the parents, and therefore “afflicted” children were a sign of God’s anger or punishment for familial sin
  • 529

    529CE- Justinian Code

    Justinian Code/Roman Law in 529CE discriminated against those who were deaf by stating that a "speechless person" was considered a legal burden/ impediment, and that speech was a necessary prerequisite for Roman citizenship.("The development of education for deaf people", 2020)
  • 1100

    1100-1453 CE- Deafness in The Middle Ages

    In the Middle Ages, those who were deaf, were excluded by the "early Christian church", because it was believed that “people born deaf could not have faith, could not be saved and were barred from churches.” The attitude of most at the time, was that to understand God a person must be able to :hear the word of God"(Branch-Smith, 2014)
  • Period: 1501 to

    Developments of 16th & 17th Century Europe

    "In Europe the Enlightenment brought about a new faith in reason and a new curiosity on the part of scholars about the ability of deaf people to achieve rational and abstract thought. In that period the education of deaf people attracted prominent attention, and historians have generally pointed to Paris as the crucible of deaf education in the modern era."(Murray, 2014)
  • 1540

    1540's-Ponce de Leon

    "Early small-scale attempts by European religious orders to educate the deaf children of rich noble families began. Spanish Benedictine monk Pedro Ponce de León was the most prominent of those early teachers. In the 1540s he taught the deaf brothers Don Francisco de Velasco and Don Pedro de Velasco, as well as 10 to 12 other deaf people, at his monastery. Ponce’s work would be replicated in other small-scale schools throughout Europe"(Murray, 2014)

  • 1714 - Martha's Vineyard

    "From the 17th to the mid-20th century, a significant population of deaf people coexisted alongside their hearing counterparts in certain towns on the island of Martha's Vineyard. In those towns, nearly everyone was able to use some form of sign language, and deafness was an accepted, unremarkable fact of daily life"(Murray, 2014) Residents created and used Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (Harvard 2020)

  • 1748- First Experimentswith Extra-Auricular Stimulation in Deaf Individuals

    "The invention of the first electrical capacitor in 1745, the Leyden jar, provided a great stimulus to the medical application of electricity. The first extra-auricular electrical stimulation dates to at least as early as 1748, with a report made by the English portraitist and electricity researcher Benjamin Wilson, who described his experiment on a deafened woman as resulting in 'improvement in her hearing' " (Mudry & Mills 2013)

  • 1750's- Institut National des Jeunes Sourds (INJS) & Sign Language

    " In Paris, Charles-Michel, abbé de l’Épée, founded what would eventually become the first state-supported school for deaf children.Beginning with a class for two deaf sisters, de l’Épée’s school served as a model and a source of inspiration for the establishment of other European schools. Those schools generally followed the INJS’s use of a signed language to teach deaf children in their national spoken and written language. "(Murray, 2014)

  • 1778-Leipzig, Germany: "Oralism"

    " Samuel Heinicke exemplified the oral method (oralism), a method emphasizing training in speechreading (or lipreading) and articulation as a means for deaf people to learn their national language."(Murray, 2014)

  • 1780's- Oralism VS. Manual Method(Sign Language) Debate

    De l’Épée, a proponent of sign, and Heinicke,a proponent of oralism & lipreading, "entered a correspondence in the 1780s debating the merits of their respective methods, a debate judged by the rector and fellows of the Academy of Zürich to have been won by de l’Épée. " Though this debate would hardly end here.(Murray, 2014)
  • Period: to

    19th & 20th Century Education in America

    "Deaf education in the first part of the 1800s was largely inspired by an impulse to save deaf people’s souls, to ensure that they received sufficient religious training to understand the word of God."(Murray, 2014)

  • 1817-American School for the Deaf

    "A deaf teacher from the INJS, Laurent Clerc, together with American educational philanthropist Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, established what later became the American School for the Deaf, located in West Hartford, Connecticut. Through his interactions with his deaf students, Clerc's French Sign Language (LSF) influenced the makeup of contemporary American Sign Language (ASL), and shaped an entire generation of American teachers of deaf people."(Murray, 2014)

  • 1864 Gallaudet University

    "Starting on land donated by Amos Kendall the U.S. postmaster in 1856, a school for deaf and blind students was founded. In 1864. Congress voted to let the school confer college diplomas and Abraham Lincoln signed the new law. The college portion of the school was named Gallaudet in 1894 with the rest of the school following in 1954 through an act of Congress. This is the Nation's only fully deaf university."("The History of Gallaudet University: 150 Years of a Deaf American Institution", 2020)

  • 1867- First Oral Schools for the Deaf in the USA

    The Clarke School in Northampton Massachusetts followed and largely popularized the oralist approach to teaching deaf students.(Christensen, 2019)

  • 1880's-ASL Supressed in 19th century USA

    Oralism (lipreading) rose, and numbers of teachers of the deaf decline. "This was due in part to a shift toward assimilation into national spoken-language communities as the primary motivation behind educating deaf people. Oralists saw speech training as the best way to assimilate deaf people into modern American society, and Social Darwinism portrayed sign language and its users as relics of a primitive era, now superseded by the “modern” use of spoken language"(Murray, 2014)

  • 1880- U.S. National Association of the Deaf

    "The U.S. National Association of the Deaf (NAD), the first organization of deaf or disabled people in the Western Hemisphere, was founded in 1880" Associations have been concerned largely with ensuring the place of sign language in the education of deaf people and securing the rights of deaf people to participate in all aspects of daily life."(Murray, 2014)

  • 1883- Alexander Graham Bell "threat of deaf-mute"

    "Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone and a prominent supporter of the oral method, posed the threat of a “deaf-mute variety of the human race” and urged measures preventing the marriage of deaf people. Bell’s ideas about educating deaf children with their hearing peers were gradually enacted, but the intermarriage of deaf people in the United States was never forbidden by legislative statute."(Murray, 2014)

  • 1924- Suppression of ASL & Creation of Clubs & Associations

    "In the 20th century deaf people saw the ongoing suppression of sign language in schools and the increasing importance of clubs and associations of deaf people as sites of cultural and linguistic interaction. International organizations and events were also established, including the International Committee of Silent Sports and the International Silent Games (later known as the World Games of the Deaf, or the Deaflympics)."(Murray, 2014)

  • 1930's 1940's WWII

    "The rubber factories of Akron, Ohio, employed large numbers of deaf workers and became a deaf mecca of sorts during the war years. In Nazi-occupied Europe, an estimated 17,000 deaf Germans were sterilized. Under Nazi rule, a number of deaf Germans also underwent forced abortions or were killed. Deaf Jews were sent to concentration camps; only 34 of Berlin’s prewar population of 600 deaf Jews survived the war"(Murray, 2014)

  • 1951- World Federation of the Deaf Founded

    " Deaf people in the early 20th century were largely concerned with access to blue-collar employment opportunities,. Organizations like the WFD, lled several campaigns to ensure that employers and the general public saw deaf people as good workers and contributing citizens and taxpayers. Deaf Europeans did the same in their own countries."(Murray, 2014)

  • 1952- Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL) ends

    "The last deaf individual from Martha’s Vineyard that knew MVSL, Katie West, passed away, effectively making MVSL an extinct language" (Harvard 2020)

  • 1958- Captioned Films for the Deaf Act

    " Legislation signed by President Dwight D.
    Eisenhower federally funding the captioning of movies, and eventually television programming."(Bravin 2017)

  • 1960- Teletypewriter Invented

    Invented by Robert Weitbrecht the " teletypewriter is an electromechanical typewriter paired with a communication channel that allows people to communicate through typed messages. A TTY is required at both ends of the conversation and can be used with either a landline or a cell phone. Its creation greatly expanded the means of long-distance communication for the deaf" (Harvard 2020)

  • 1961- First Cochlear Implant in America

    The first true CI was implanted by the American otologist William (Bill) House of the House Clinic and the neurosurgeon John Doyle of Los Angeles, California, on January 9, 1961 (Mudry & Mills 2013)

  • 1964- Video Relay Service Invented

    Robert Weitbrecht "expands means of communication for the deaf. Video Relay Service is a form of Telecommunications Relay Service that enables people who use American Sign Language to communicate with voice telephone users through video equipment, rather than through typed text" (Harvard 2020)

  • 1965-ASL Dictionary

    William Stokoe (a linguist) " worked to show the general public that ASL was a fully-formed language with its own grammatical structure and rich vocabulary, rather than a visual form of English or mere pantomime. He created the first ASL dictionary along with two Deaf colleagues at Gallaudet, Carl Croneberg and Dorothy Casterline." (Harvard 2020)

  • 1973- Rehabilitation Act

    "The Rehabilitation Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in programs conducted by federal agencies, in programs receiving federal financial assistance, in federal employment and in the employment practices of federal contractors" (Harvard 2020)

  • 1975- Mainstreaming of Deaf Children

    In "1975 PL 94-142 passed allowing disabled children free, appropriate public educationThis legislation started the mainstreaming of deaf children in public schools." (Harvard 2020)

  • 1988- Deaf President Now! Gallaudet University

    "Students protested the appointment of a hearing president and demanded:Elisabeth Zinser must resign and a deaf person selected president;Jane Spilman must step down as chairperson of the Board of Trustees;& Deaf people must constitute a 51% majority on the BoardBy the end of the week, all of their demands had been met and Dr. I. King Jordan was named the Gallaudet's eighth-and first-deaf president."("The History of Gallaudet University: 150 Years of a Deaf American Institution", 2020)

  • 1994- Harvard Stops Offering ASL

    The Harvard Linguistics department" cites lack of funding as reason for eliminating beginning ASL courses that were taught by Marie Phillip" (Harvard 2020)
  • Period: to

    Contemporary Education/Law/Trends in Deaf Culture & Education

  • 2012-21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act

    In 2012 the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act was put into place, mandating "that all televised material be captioned, including its online distribution " (Harvard 2020)

  • 2016- Harvard Offers ASL Again

    In 2016," for the first time in over 20 years, Harvard began offering for credit American Sign Language courses under the instruction of Andrew Bottoms" (Harvard 2020)

  • 2017-2019-Alice Cogswell Anne Sullivan Macy Act Formed

    In 2017 & 2018 a The Cogswell-Macy Act was first "proposed as legislation that will serve as an amendment to the IDEA providing special considerations for deaf, hard of hearing,
    blind, and deaf-blind students" (Bravin 2017) It was presented to Congress in 2019

  • 2017-The Future of Deaf Education: A New Vision for American School for the Deaf

    " ASD Implements the American Sign Language/English Bilingual
    Approach:Students are provided with a bilingual foundation in both American Sign Language and English, ASL and English are separated to ensure students receive the best modeling of each
    Approach integrates American Sign Language, speech, auditory training,reading, writing, and the use of assistive listening devices
     Specialized services are designed to meet the unique learning needs of each individual student" (Bravin 2017)

  • Present Day: American School for the Deaf (2017-Now)

    "ASD Continues Legacy of “Firsts”:opens Source Interpreting in response to the closing of Connecticut’s interpreting services program,ASD partners with NPR to broadcast the first ever regularly scheduled interpreted radio show through Facebook Live,ASD is in the development stages of a state-of-the-art Autism Program for deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing nonverbal autisticchildren who will benefit from visual language to acquire communication skills " (Bravin 2017)