The Transformation of Rhode Island School for the Deaf from Oralism to Bilingual Education

Editor's Note: This is the second in a series of posts about the Lippitts and the History of Equal Rights for Deaf Education. To read the introduction and overview of the series, please go here.

Jeanie Lippitt became deaf at four in 1856.  Thanks to the hard work of her mother and her family’s connections, she excelled in lipreading and speech under oralist education.  But what did oralist education mean for the broader deaf population in the 19th century?  If Jeanie had been a deaf child growing up in Rhode Island today, what would her education look like?

The Founding of RI School for the Deaf against the Backdrop of Oralism in New England

This is an example of oralist teaching practices – speech instruction. The deaf student was sensing the teacher’s vocal vibrations through touch. Photo of a Speech Lesson. Photo courtesy Gaullaudet University Archives.

Using Jeanie’s excellence as an example, her mother Mary Ann Lippitt steadfastly advocated for deaf education.  Starting in 1845, the state of Rhode Island subsidized its deaf children to study at the Hartford Institute, a Deaf residential school in Connecticut (Gallaudet 1886).  The Hartford Institute offered signing-based education, but Mary Ann valued speech-based education, so she advocated for the founding of oralist schools—first in Massachusetts in the late 1860s[1], and then in Rhode Island.  In 1876, she founded the Providence Day School for the Deaf (later Rhode Island School for the Deaf), which also adopted an oralist approach (RIDeaf 2024).

What is Oralism and Why Was It a Popular Philosophy for Deaf Education? 

As mentioned in the previous post, oralism is the idea that deaf children should be taught primarily through spoken English instead of sign language.  It prioritizes deaf children’s ability to “fit in” to the hearing world.  In the 19th-century, Western countries saw development in science, technology, industrialization, and capitalism.  The concept of “normalcy” started to gain traction, and gradually became a yardstick to judge who needed to be fixed or excluded.  The deaf population, then, was rendered “abnormal” in contrast with the hearing majority. As oralist education prioritized assimilation with hearing people, it became the golden path for deaf people to overcome deafness and achieve “normalcy” (Bauman and Murray 2012).

As oralism rose in popularity, schools used various methods of discipline and punishment to ban signing. In this photo, for example, this teacher had the students fold their hands on top of their desks to prevent them from signing. Deaf activists viewed the banning of signing as a form of language deprivation. Photo of an Oralist Classroom. Photo courtesy Jacobs Hall Museum - Kentucky School for the Deaf.

New England educators and politicians, as social engineers, were simultaneously concerned about children’s access to education and their ability to integrate into society—the hearing society.  Integration required resources and time from the deaf people themselves, their families, and their schools.  Whether they were conscious of this dynamic or not, Jeanie and Mary Ann had the privilege of time and access to resources to perfect Jeanie’s speech and lipreading so that she could assimilate successfully into the hearing world.

The Rise of Bilingual Education

Imagine an education that’s less about “fixing” or “fitting in."  What if deafness can be embraced instead of overcome?  What if deaf children can freely communicate in multiple languages?

Since the founding of RISD in 1876, the school’s educational philosophy and approaches have evolved.  Decades of scientific research overwhelmingly supports the use of American Sign Language (ASL).  Since Jeanie became deaf at four, she was able to fully access spoken English and develop basic fluency in her early childhood.   However, for children who become deaf before developing language abilities, it’s difficult for them to rely on a language when they will never experience listening or speaking in the same way hearing people do, and mastery of ASL results in better literacy development in English among Deaf children (Grosjean 2010).

Nowadays, while oralist schooling still exists, Deaf education can look very different from Jeanie’s days.  In 2012, RISD became a bilingual/bimodal school, honoring both ASL and English.  Bilingual/bimodal education views ASL as the natural first language of Deaf students.  It uses ASL as the primary language of instruction to support students’ acquisition of English and other subject knowledge (RIDeaf 2024).

There is a growing range of school and community resources for children and families to learn ASL and engage with Deaf culture. Girls learning the American Sign Language by David Fulmer, 2010, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Girls_learning_sign_language.jpg

If Jeanie had been a deaf child growing up in Rhode Island today, she would be able to learn in both ASL and English.  Her mother, Mary Ann, would have the option to learn ASL with Jeanie while supporting Jeanie in taking speech lessons.  Mary Ann could advocate for Deaf education that nurtures students to thrive in both the Deaf and the hearing world.

The shifts in Deaf education were propelled by the shifts in the broader perception of Deafness.  In the next post, we will introduce sign languages and Deaf culture to elevate the perspective that views Deafness as an asset to human diversity.

Click #DeafEducation to find all the posts in this series.

Guest blogger: Irene Zhiyi Chen AB Candidate ’25 Theatre Arts and Performance Studies and Education Studies, Brown University

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[1] Mary Ann, with Jeanie, actually first advocated for the Massachusetts state government to charter the Clarke School for the Deaf, the first large scale oralist school, in Northampton in 1867, opening in 1868. Massachusetts people thought that campus was too far away so, as an off-shoot, they established the Boston School for Deaf Mutes, the first deaf day school in the country, in 1869. In 1877, the school changed its name to Horace Mann School. Nowadays Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing is an ASL/English dual language program.

References

Taylor, Carrie E. 2020. “The Lippitts of Rhode Island: Anti-suffrage and Female Political Activism.” Newport History, 93 (282): Article 5. https://digitalcommons.salve.edu/newporthistory/vol93/iss282/5.

Bauman, H-Dirksen L. and Murray, Joseph J. 2012. “Deaf Studies in the 21st Century: “Deaf-gain” and the Future of Human Diversity.” In The Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies, Language, and Education, Vol. 2, edited by Marc Marschark and Patricia Elizabeth Spencer. Oxford Library of Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195390032.013.0014.

Gallaudet, Edward M. 1886. “History of the Education of the Deaf in the United States.” American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb, 31 (2): 130–147. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44468239.

Grosjean, François. 2010. “Bilingualism, Biculturalism, and Deafness.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 13 (2): 133-145. https://doi-org/10.1080/13670050903474051.

Rhode Island School for the Deaf. “About RISD.” Accessed on August 15, 2024. https://rideaf.ri.gov/AboutUs/index.php.

Taylor, Carrie E. 2020. “The Lippitts of Rhode Island: Anti-suffrage and Female Political Activism.” Newport History, 93 (282): Article 5. https://digitalcommons.salve.edu/newporthistory/vol93/iss282/5.