Case Study: Horace Gillespie
Growing up in Wisconsin in the late nineteenth-century, Horace Gillespie felt America's 'Gilded Age' rise and the broadening of economic prospects for the majority of Americans. Gillespie's eight siblings dominated the family scene, with Gillespie labeled as "hard of hearing and dumb" by his parents, though not as deaf. Attending a small, local school for the deaf (taught by a Maude McGinty), Gillespie learned the 'oral method' with astonishing success. Young students began the journey into the oral method by holding their hand to the teacher's throat, feeling the vibrations/tones associated with varying lip movements. Next, students intuited and then memorized words based on lip movements. This enabled those without hearing capabilities to understand spoken works, if lighting conditions were appropriate and the teacher spoke with a slow pace.
Gillespie's endeavor to adopt the oral method didn't terminate with his lip-reading prowess. McGinty expected students to speak as well, producing auditory tones without the aid of auditory function. Here, too, students relied upon local vibrations (i.e. a wood floor or table might vibrate in response to auditory tones). Gillespie excelled at producing these speech patterns, perhaps because he lost his hearing at a young age, as opposed to those with inborn deafness. Regardless of the cause, however, Gillespie highlighted the successes of the oral method to the deaf community, studying at Lawrence University, teaching at Columbia, and giving pulpit speeches all with deafness. Many proponents of oralism tout Gillespie's meteoric rise as the quintessential American success story of the post-civil war boom years. Enterprise and ingenuity can shatter the barriers of deafness, advocates of the oral method espoused.
This success, however, masks the struggles felt by the deaf community at-large. Assuming that Gillespie's triumph is within reach for the majority of deaf individuals discounts the uniqueness of Gillespie's situation. Such assumptions mirror the social construction of the soundscape. Gilded Age America built a soundscape deemed inclusive by those with power (i.e. those not in the deaf community), but that which also limited the expression of group identities outside of this soundscape. Limiting the inculcation of American Sign Language (ASL) may have propelled Gillespie to 'normalcy,' but it constrained the deaf community. Without school-sanctioned ASL, deaf communities lacked inclusion into the arena of communication: while 'hearing' communities might have little trouble learning ASL, deaf community struggled to assimilate into the American soundscape via oralism.
Gillespie's endeavor to adopt the oral method didn't terminate with his lip-reading prowess. McGinty expected students to speak as well, producing auditory tones without the aid of auditory function. Here, too, students relied upon local vibrations (i.e. a wood floor or table might vibrate in response to auditory tones). Gillespie excelled at producing these speech patterns, perhaps because he lost his hearing at a young age, as opposed to those with inborn deafness. Regardless of the cause, however, Gillespie highlighted the successes of the oral method to the deaf community, studying at Lawrence University, teaching at Columbia, and giving pulpit speeches all with deafness. Many proponents of oralism tout Gillespie's meteoric rise as the quintessential American success story of the post-civil war boom years. Enterprise and ingenuity can shatter the barriers of deafness, advocates of the oral method espoused.
This success, however, masks the struggles felt by the deaf community at-large. Assuming that Gillespie's triumph is within reach for the majority of deaf individuals discounts the uniqueness of Gillespie's situation. Such assumptions mirror the social construction of the soundscape. Gilded Age America built a soundscape deemed inclusive by those with power (i.e. those not in the deaf community), but that which also limited the expression of group identities outside of this soundscape. Limiting the inculcation of American Sign Language (ASL) may have propelled Gillespie to 'normalcy,' but it constrained the deaf community. Without school-sanctioned ASL, deaf communities lacked inclusion into the arena of communication: while 'hearing' communities might have little trouble learning ASL, deaf community struggled to assimilate into the American soundscape via oralism.