Cover next page > title: Seeing Language in Sign : The Work of William C. Stokoe author

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Page and his supporters, oralism gained such a foothold in America that by 1927, probably the height of pure oralism in this country,
sign had been almost completely banned from classrooms, except in the case of "oral failures" As more and more schools adopted the oralist-only approach, deaf teachers' prospects for employment became "so bad . . . that Gallaudet College openly discouraged deaf students from considering a teaching career" The elimination of deaf teachers was one of Bell's most important aims. In his Memoir Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of
the Human Race (published in 1884), he observed that "nearly one-third of the teachers of the deaf . . . in America are themselves deaf, and this must be considered as another element favorable to the formation of a deaf raceto be therefore avoided Bell and his followers aspired to nothing less than the total dismantling of any institution that enabled deaf students to gather together, for he believed that such gatherings would encourage intermarrying, and he had erroneously concluded that deaf people who married were highly likely to produce deaf offspring.
Bell and his followersand there were many of them, including some of the most influential eugenicists of the time refused to acknowledge the utter failure of oralism (and the concomitant prohibition of sign language) in the classroom. As long assign language was permitted to flourish in the United States, as long as it was used as the primary language in schools for the deaf,
deaf people were able to thrive socially, academically, and culturally. The very fact that a special college had been founded for deaf students was testimony to the success teachers were having in educating deaf students through the use of their own sign language. However, by the turn of the century oralism so dominated deaf education in this country that many deaf people feared "the sign language" would be lost forever.20
Study after study confirmed the dismal results of oralism. Jerome Schein, in At Home Among Strangers, an account of the deaf community in the United States, cited more than nineteen studies and surveys (conducted over a fifty-year period) showing that,
within twenty years of the acceptance of oralism in the United States, "deaf students were leaving school after twelve or

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