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Quotable Quotes of Dr. Edward Miner Gallaudet

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Here are these interesting quotes by Dr. Gallaudet in 1886, six years after the 1880 Milan Conference:
I commend this auricular method to all who are interested in the education of the deaf as one deserving of very great attention, because, if we take the number of the deaf who are capable of being taught aurally as amounting to 10 per cent, only, it is conferring upon them a great boon to teach them aurally; it is a greater boon even than giving them the power of imperfect speech.
And this quote:
Within two years after that time I exhibited this boy before the National Academy of Sciences at Washington, and talked with him through the tube without difficulty, and today he has advanced far enough to be a student in our college; he is a young man full of promise, and he hears well enough to be able to sit by the side of either of you gentlemen and carry on a conversation with you through the tube.

And this one, too:
A third method which we are now practising in America with some exceedingly interesting results may be spoken of as the aural or auricular method. A very considerable percentage of those who are classed in the community as deaf-mutes have a degree of hearing which makes it entirely possible that they may be educated through the ear.

Who ever thought that Dr. Gallaudet would trot out a deaf boy at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C., of all places, and hold him up as an example of a successful product of an oral and auditory teaching approach to gain a language? Imagine people like him doing that today at Gallaudet University. Students and staff over there would just have an apoplectic fit.

All this occurred on Nov 9,1886 according to the Royal Commission report. Dr. Edward Miner Gallaudet acknowledged the importance of listening and speaking. This important acknowledgment came six years later after the famous Milan Conference in 1880 when Dr. Edward Miner Gallaudet and Rev. Thomas Gallaudet opposed a resolution that passed banning sign language.

Let me repeat that again for you.

How do you reconcile with Dr. Gallaudet being against the banning of sign language in 1880 (Milan Conference) and 6 year later explained to the Royal Commission of the United Kingdom on the Condition of the Blind, the Deaf and Dumb on his commending the successful use of aural and oral teaching method?  How do you reconcile with those two facts? And the fact earlier in his life he became the first president of Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and Blind in 1864 now today called "Gallaudet University."

Interesting, eh? I'm sure your brain hurts right now.



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