Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell, mostly known for his invention of the telephone, played an important role in promoting the oral method in deaf schools. Bell had close ties to the deaf community, as both his mother and his wife were deaf. Additionally, both his grandfather and his father were interested in the elocution of speech and the study of the human voice. It was because of these factors that Bell gained the interest in the oral teaching of deaf individuals. He believed that the deaf community should assimilate into society and in order to do so, oralism had to be imposed in deaf schools. Bell saw the oral method as a superior approach to the teaching of the deaf community, therefore, he pressured for schools to adapt to it.
Bell firmly believed that institutionalizing the oral method was the best way for the deaf community to assimilate into society. He wrote various books that gave teachers lectures for them to implement in their classroom. A few of these books included Lectures Upon the Mechanism of Speech and The Mechanism of Speech: Lectures Delivered Before the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf. As the titles suggest, these books focused on promoting the idea that following certain processes, which usually required physical techniques and exercises that were meant to work the vocal organs.
In Lectures Upon the Mechanism of Speech, Bell describes lectures that center around the concept of “Visible Speech” symbols. As described in the chapter Visible Speech as Taught to the Deaf, a description of one of these lectures is that of the teacher choosing an individual to come to the front of the classroom so that the teacher can draw the face of the individual on the chalkboard. Afterwards, the teacher points to the corresponding facial parts between the drawing and the individual. The process is then repeated with the inner part of the mouth. The teacher would them point to either a facial part, or an organ within the mouth and the students would have to point to that same body part within themselves. Each of the major vocal organs are then given a symbol. Some of these organs include the throat, the back of the tongue, the top/front of the tongue, the point of the tongue, and the nose. These symbols were meant to show the passage through which air may pass. These symbols were taught through a kinesthetic approach. For example, a deaf child would put their finger on the teacher’s nose while the teacher would pronounce the letter m or n so that they could feel the vibrations that were paired with these letters. There would be a symbol that represents the air passage present in these sounds, which was through the nose. Many of these symbols would then be put together in order to represent a word.
Bell firmly believed that institutionalizing the oral method was the best way for the deaf community to assimilate into society. He wrote various books that gave teachers lectures for them to implement in their classroom. A few of these books included Lectures Upon the Mechanism of Speech and The Mechanism of Speech: Lectures Delivered Before the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf. As the titles suggest, these books focused on promoting the idea that following certain processes, which usually required physical techniques and exercises that were meant to work the vocal organs.
In Lectures Upon the Mechanism of Speech, Bell describes lectures that center around the concept of “Visible Speech” symbols. As described in the chapter Visible Speech as Taught to the Deaf, a description of one of these lectures is that of the teacher choosing an individual to come to the front of the classroom so that the teacher can draw the face of the individual on the chalkboard. Afterwards, the teacher points to the corresponding facial parts between the drawing and the individual. The process is then repeated with the inner part of the mouth. The teacher would them point to either a facial part, or an organ within the mouth and the students would have to point to that same body part within themselves. Each of the major vocal organs are then given a symbol. Some of these organs include the throat, the back of the tongue, the top/front of the tongue, the point of the tongue, and the nose. These symbols were meant to show the passage through which air may pass. These symbols were taught through a kinesthetic approach. For example, a deaf child would put their finger on the teacher’s nose while the teacher would pronounce the letter m or n so that they could feel the vibrations that were paired with these letters. There would be a symbol that represents the air passage present in these sounds, which was through the nose. Many of these symbols would then be put together in order to represent a word.
In The Mechanism of Speech: Lectures Delivered Before the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, Bell addresses the concern that certain individuals had at this time, one of which was that when deaf individuals spoke, the speech they produced did not resemble that of a non deaf individual. Bell mentions how some teachers described the speech spoken by some deaf individuals as unpleasant and “resembling somewhat the cry of a peacock” (Bell page 19). Some of these teachers believed that this was because the disease that caused deafness had also affected the individual’s vocal chords. However, Bell had a different explanation to this. He believed that deaf individuals had some form of constriction in their passage way of the vocal chords and that this could be fixed by exercising certain organs. For example, there were certain breathing exercises that were imposed in deaf children because it was believed that due to the fact that they were deaf and could not speak, their lungs had not been fully exercised and developed, compared to those of non deaf children. Bell’s logic was that if deaf children exercised their lungs they could therefore be able to produce verbal language.
It was through these books that contained lectures for teachers to implement in their classrooms that Alexander Graham Bell had a strong influence in promoting the oral method in deaf schools.