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Many teachers of the deaf, speech-language pathologists and audiologists believe that children who are deaf or hard of hearing should have the opportunity to learn to listen and talk. Historically, the majority of children with hearing loss communicated through sign language or in combination with the spoken word. Bell's vision that children who are deaf or hard of hearing have the ability to learn spoken language has only recently begun to gain widespread acceptance. Today, with the help of early diagnosis, advanced hearing technologies and early intervention, oral deaf education has proven that most children who are deaf or hard of hearing can develop spoken language skills comparable to their hearing peers by the time they enter 1st grade.
Early 16th Century
A Benedictine monk named Pedro Ponce de Leon tutored the children who were deaf or hard of hearing of the Spanish nobility using oral deaf methods.
Early 18th Century
A German teacher named Samuel Heinicke developed the foundations of modern oral deaf education. He believed that language was essential to the process of thinking, and felt that it was critical for children who were deaf or hard of hearing to learn to use spoken language in order to have access to the wider world. He was the first advocate of what is now considered mainstreaming. At the time, Heinicke and his colleagues focused on teaching speaking only.
Late 19th Century
Educators began to develop the role that residual hearing would began to play in the oral education of the deaf. Dr. Max Goldstein developed the notion of audition (the use of residual hearing) as an integral part of oral deaf education.
At first, audition was added to the other techniques for teaching children who were deaf or hard of hearing to speak. In classrooms, "multisensory" techniques, using vision, gestures and touch (tactile) were dominant and "unisensory" (audition-only) tutoring was attempted only in one-on-one situations.
Early 20th Century
After World War II, when many veterans returned from the war with hearing loss, the government funded research on hearing aids powerful enough to benefit even children with profound hearing loss. As a result, children were able to use their residual hearing as well as visual cues to learn to speak, and unisensory education became a dominant mode of teaching speech.
Late 20th Century
Cochlear implants and other new technologies have maximized auditory potential of children with hearing loss for whom analog hearing aids provided little or no benefit. Now, with early identification of infants and young children with hearing loss and the early intervention of technology and instruction, more and more children are learning to listen and speak at an earlier age. |