Transcript: At school, when we interacted, initially, signing was not allowed, that we’d be punished if we used signing. We only signed when we knew the teachers weren’t looking. We hid our signs. But when we were outside of school, we used sign freely. When groups of us went on trips, we signed. So, for me, I didn’t sleep at the school. I commuted back and forth between home and school on the train and it was a lot of fun. When class was over, at 2:30, we couldn’t wait to get together and get on the train. You know, in New York City, we had an area where we would all meet that was well known, under the 14th Street train. We’d gather and converse and just have a great time. I enjoyed that so much. We didn’t have student clubs or groups, so that time at 14th Street was what we did. We met as a group and had a good time together. Also, we did have sports teams. They were run by Deaf clubs. So, interacting and spending time in that setting exposed me to many great things.
Gallaudet University in Washington, DC was one of the earliest US schools for the Deaf and the world’s only university for the Deaf and hard of hearing. Thomas Gallaudet was an educator who founded the American School for the Deaf after he took an interest in trying to teach a neighbor’s deaf daughter. His son, Edward, went on to found Gallaudet University in 1864.
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At the beginning of the 20th century, New York City required more and more students to attend school and prohibited them from working. In these years, the school system created a variety of special classes and schools for Disabled children, as well as for students who skipped school or otherwise got into trouble. Deaf students went to specialized schools for a few years, and then were expected to join their non-disabled peers in general education classrooms. Blind students were also intended to learn beside their non-disabled peers with the help of special instructors. The Board of Education created ungraded classes for children with intellectual disabilities, who educators thought should be segregated from other children and learn different subjects. Though not specifically mentioned in this document, some children with physical disabilities received home instruction because architectural barriers kept them from accessing school buildings.
New York City’s Public School 47 opened in 1908. It was the city’s first public school for Deaf children, and students came to the school on East 23rd Street from all over the city. Some lived at the school, while others commuted from their homes.1 Other Deaf students in New York City attended other private or religious schools, but they did not typically attend schools alongside hearing pupils.
Sign language is believed to have been in use by different peoples, including Native Americans, for many centuries.1 Systems for signing the alphabet were used by monks in the Middle Ages,2 and formal Deaf education started in Europe as early as the 16th century, when the first hearing aids were invented.3 The first private school for the Deaf was founded by a British man, Thomas Braidwood, in the late 1700s. Braidwood is believed to have used a combination of sign language and oral techniques like lip reading and training in “articulation”—working on making speech sounds, even if they are difficult or impossible for a deaf person to hear.4 An early American educator of the deaf, Thomas Gallaudet, wanted to learn these teaching methods to bring them back to the US, but Braidwood was secretive about his techniques.5 Gallaudet learned “manualism” from French educators and became an advocate for educating Deaf people only in sign language. Because there are many causes and varying degrees of deafness or hearing loss, different students needed different educational methods.
