Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Chapter Six - Coggle Diagram
Chapter Six
The asylum
They worked on very little content from other subject outside of English literacy, but Gallaudet claimed to give small lessons in geography, astronomy, world customs, and government.
Clerc is due to return to France soon and Gallaudet is worried that the teachers cannot be trained without him.
School teaching was regarded a stopping point for young men to decide on their career. It was low pay and low status.
Teachers of the deaf had to train so much that this had to be looked at as a lifelong career, and they teachers of the deaf did not get paid any more than others.
The system of signing (sign encoded English) that was brought from Paris was difficult to adapt to English. The asylum switches to natural sign language would be implemented after Gallaudet left the school.
Gallaudet hired former pupils to teach as well which skipped the training step often needed with men from Yale. They only paid them a quarter ($250/year) of the measly salary afforded to Yale graduates.
Gallaudet fought for higher wages, but the directors felt they were entitled to pay them less since the school provided them that language.
The hearing instructors deemed themselves higher than the deaf instructors and didn't allow them a say in curricular or disciplinary actions.
They had a lot of disciplinary issues at the asylum, and Gallaudet proposed to raise the entry age to twenty or twenty five to root out immature attitudes. He also proposed that students had to know the manual alphabet, penmanship, and the names to some objects. They also needed to be able to sit still.
The asylum moved to it's new campus in 1821 where it had a chapel in which Gallaudet would lead prayer and sermons in sign language.
It is remarkable the level of language these deaf individuals were able to learn so much at this school. They were all too old to ever acquire a native language.
Gallaudet actually recommended raising the age from nine to twelve so that the kids would be easier to instruct, not knowing at the time that the window for native language acquisition closes at age 5.
The asylum didn't actually teach sign language. They were expected to pick it up from their peers, which they did.
There was a well developed, but undocumented sign language system used on Martha's vineyard, but by the time any of the children attended the Asylum, ASL was well on its way.
-
It sounds like Gallaudet was really good at using expressions to communicate his message. He would sign his sermons occasionally and "describe and illustrate their illimitable depths and draw therefrom ideas of the vastness and almighty presence and power of God." p. 126
Language of the students
There was wide disappointment in the proficiency of the students as Gallaudet and Cogswell both expected them to excell in the same way Clerc did.
It seems that the students often memorized sentences and when to say them, but not how to construct them themselves and how grammar plays into that.
They were actually doing very well given the circumstances based on the age most of the students enrolled. They were all well passed the acquisition window.
Sophia Fowler enrolled at 19, and her language would likely never improve. Gallaudet married her, and in his love letter, always wrote for a beginning reader.
The ones that weren't excelling, Gallaudet let quietly go home instead of making it known that they weren't succeeding.
Gallaudet and Clerc
Gallaudet blamed his depression on his difficulty teaching the deaf students and the lack of success.
-
-
Someone bought a $100 lifetime directorship for Gallaudet which allowed him to have more input in what happened at the asylum.