American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expressed by employing both manual and nonmanual features. Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL is also widely learned as a second language, serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has been proposed that ASL is a creole language of LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of creole languages, such as agglutinative morphology.
Thomas Gallaudet, an American Episcopal priest, was born in Hartford, Connecticut. His father, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, was the renowned pioneer of deaf education in the United States. His mother, Sophia Fowler Gallaudet, who was deaf, was the founding matron of the school that became Gallaudet University. His brother, Edward Miner Gallaudet, was founder and President of the university.
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was an American educator. Along with Laurent Clerc and Mason Cogswell, he co-founded the first permanent institution for the education of the deaf in North America, and he became its first principal. When opened on April 15, 1817, it was called the "Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons," but it is now known as the American School for the Deaf.
Edward Miner Gallaudet, was the first president of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. from 1864 to 1910.
Manualism is a method of education of deaf students using sign language within the classroom. Manualism arose in the late 18th century with the advent of free public schools for the deaf in Europe. These teaching methods were brought over to the United States where the first school for the deaf was established in 1817. Today manualism methods are used in conjunction with oralism methods in the majority of American deaf schools.
Louis Laurent Marie Clerc was a French teacher called "The Apostle of the Deaf in America" and was regarded as the most renowned deaf person in American Deaf History. He was taught by Abbé Sicard and deaf educator Jean Massieu, at the Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets in Paris. With Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, he co-founded the first school for the deaf in North America, the Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, on April 15, 1817, in the old Bennet's City Hotel, Hartford, Connecticut. The school was subsequently renamed the American School for the Deaf and in 1821 moved to 139 Main Street, West Hartford. The school remains the oldest existing school for the deaf in North America.
The recorded history of sign language in Western societies starts in the 17th century, as a visual language or method of communication, although references to forms of communication using hand gestures date back as far as 5th century BC Greece. Sign language is composed of a system of conventional gestures, mimic, hand signs and finger spelling, plus the use of hand positions to represent the letters of the alphabet. Signs can also represent complete ideas or phrases, not only individual words.
The National Theatre of the Deaf (NTD) is a Connecticut-based theatre company founded in 1967. It is the oldest theatre company in the United States with a continuous history of domestic and international touring, as well as producing original works. NTD productions combine American Sign Language with spoken language to fulfill the theatre's mission statement of linking Deaf and hearing communities, providing more exposure to sign language, and educating the public about Deaf art. The NTD is affiliated with a drama school, also founded in 1967, and with the Little Theatre of the Deaf (LTD), established in 1968 to produce shows for a younger audience.
Jane Fernandes is a Deaf American educator and social justice advocate. As of August 2021, Fernandes is the President of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She previously served as president of Guilford College from 2014 to 2021.
Henry Clay Trumbull was an American clergyman and author. He became a world-famous editor, author, and pioneer of the Sunday School Movement.
Alice Cogswell was the inspiration to Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet for the creation of the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut.
Mason Fitch Cogswell (1761–1830) was an American physician who pioneered education for the deaf. Cogwell's daughter, Alice Cogswell, was deaf after the age of two, prompting Cogswell to jointly establish the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut.
The first school for the deaf was established in France during the 18th century, in 1771 by Charles-Michel de l'Épée. L'Épée was the leader in establishing sign language for the deaf and is notable as the "father" of deaf education. He founded the Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris. French Sign Language was developed and heavily influenced by L'Épée working with deaf people who were already using their own home signs and combining those signs with new signs, which, in this time period, became known as L'Épée sign language. This French sign language became a major foundation and influence on all international sign languages, especially on American Sign Language, which still retains much of the historical signs and signing grammatical structure that originated from France. The American School for the Deaf, in West Hartford, Connecticut, was the first school for the deaf established in the United States, in 1817, by Thomas Gallaudet, in collaboration with a deaf teacher, also from France, named Laurent Clerc with support from the well-known Hartford Cogswell family. Alice Cogswell was the very first student to attend this school in 1817.
The history of deaf education in the United States began in the early 1800s when the Cobbs School of Virginia, an oral school, was established by William Bolling and John Braidwood, and the Connecticut Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, a manual school, was established by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc. When the Cobbs School closed in 1816, the manual method, which used American Sign Language, became commonplace in deaf schools for most of the remainder of the century. In the late 1800s, schools began to use the oral method, which only allowed the use of speech, as opposed to the manual method previously in place. Students caught using sign language in oral programs were often punished. The oral method was used for many years until sign language instruction gradually began to come back into deaf education.
The Deaf rights movement encompasses a series of social movements within the disability rights and cultural diversity movements that encourages deaf and hard of hearing to push society to adopt a position of equal respect for them. Acknowledging that those who were Deaf or hard of hearing had rights to obtain the same things as those hearing lead this movement. Establishing an educational system to teach those with Deafness was one of the first accomplishments of this movement. Sign language, as well as cochlear implants, has also had an extensive impact on the Deaf community. These have all been aspects that have paved the way for those with Deafness, which began with the Deaf Rights movement.
Samuel Thomas Greene was a Deaf American educator and Ontario's first Deaf teacher in 1870 at the Ontario Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb, which later changed to Sir James Whitney School of the Deaf in Belleville, Ontario, Canada. He was born in 1843 in Portland, Maine and attended America's first Deaf school in Hartford, Connecticut.
Levi Strong Backus (1803–1868) is widely considered the first deaf editor of America, if not the world. He ran a newspaper called the Radii.
Kendall Demonstration Elementary School (KDES) is a private day school serving deaf and hard of hearing students from birth through grade 8 on the campus of Gallaudet University in the Trinidad neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Alongside Model Secondary School for the Deaf, it is a federally funded, tuition-free demonstration school administered by the Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center at Gallaudet University.
The establishment of schools and institutions specializing in deaf education has a history spanning back across multiple centuries. They utilized a variety of instructional approaches and philosophies. The manner in which the language barrier is handled between the hearing and the deaf remains a topic of great controversy. Many of the early establishments of formalized education for the deaf are currently acknowledged for the influence they've contributed to the development and standards of deaf education today.
Gilbert Eastman was an American educator, actor, playwright, author, and television host. He acted in American Sign Language (ASL) plays and wrote many of them. Eastman taught and performed at the National Theatre of the Deaf (NTD), while writing and performing in many of their plays. In 1993, he won an Emmy Award for co-hosting the show Deaf Mosaic.
