Laurent Clerc's Deaf School

I was crouching, playing with a wooden bead maze entranced with the different colours that it entailed. I was in this large regal office, the desk was made out of dark wood; certificates with glossy frames were hanging around the office. There stood a doctor behind the desk as he broke the news to my father that I was indeed hearing impaired. As they quietly discussed the best action of plan for me, I suddenly heard my father yell, “She is not going to deaf school!” and as the shouting got louder, the words started to sound muddled to me. Red with rage, my father grabbed me by the hand and slammed the door; I took a glance back and did not fully comprehend the life changing appointment that just took place in front of me. At the tender age of 5, I was diagnosed with sensorineural hearing loss. Sensorineural hearing loss occurs with a combination of inner ear

Deaf people have always existed, as did discrimination towards deaf people. As far back as 384-322 BCE, people had been saying that deaf people could not learn. Due to Deaf people being seen as inferior, we hardly have any documented history on them before the early 1500’s. Patient parents of Deaf children needed to have a way to communicate with their young, through this need the rise of Deaf education began. Geronimo Cardano, a mathematician, created

The book “A Journey into the Deaf-World”, by Harlan Lane, Robert Hoffmeister, and Ben Bahan, is about the different people who are considered deaf: hard-of-hearing, deaf, and CODA. People who are hard-of-hearing are people who don 't hear well; people who are deaf lack the power of hearing since birth; you can be born hearing and throughout time lose some or all of your hearing sense. People who are CODA (children of deaf adults) are often signing because their parents are deaf and CODA’s often are helpful by being interpreters. CODAs become a great link between their parents and the hearing world. This book explains about deaf culture and how sign is a visual and manual way of conversing. The benefits of sign language are many and the ASL “foreign language” is growing among hearing as well. About more than 500,000 people sign in America alone. ASL is dated from 1779, but probably even earlier. Sign language promotes cultural awareness; deaf culture uses sign language as their main form of communicating.

In chapter 4, it explains how Deaf people live in a hearing world. Some people who have grown up with Deaf people really don't see Deaf people as any different than themselves. Verditz had an idea that sign language comes from spoken languages, English and ASL are similar and different from each other having English as my first language has helped me learn ASL but the sentence structures are very different from English. Sign language is a visual language.

The book, Deaf Again, written by Mark Drolsbaugh, is an autobiography telling his life story which starts with a young boy growing up who goes through the process of losing his hearing and then, as he gets older, he struggles with trying to fit in as a normal child. When Mark was very young, he could hear fairly well then gradually he went hard of hearing until he eventually went completely deaf. Even though he had two deaf parents, the doctors advised speech therapy and hearing aids because they did not understand Deaf Culture and they thought that Mark would be a lot happier if he could hang on to his hearing persona. Throughout the rest of the book, Mark goes through a lot of stages of trying to fit in with everyone and eventually

Deaf Again is an autobiography written by Mark Drolsbaugh. In this book he begins at his birth, goes on to explain what it was like to lose his hearing, and details how this impacted and affected his life. Around the time Mark was in first grade, he began to realize that he was losing his hearing when he began having difficulty hearing some of his fellow students. His hearing continued to deteriorate until he was left completely deaf. This was very tough for Mark, because even though his parents were both deaf, they encouraged him to do his best to continue to be a hearing person. His parents believed that he would be happiest if he could fit in with all the hearing people, but didn’t understand that he could not truly be himself if he was

Perhaps one of the most notable and widely known members in Deaf society is Laurent Clerc, who was a teacher for the deaf. Born on December 26, 1785 in La Balme-les-Grottes, in southeastern France to hearing parents, it is unknown for sure whether Clerc was born deaf or was deafened later on in life. It is believed that Clerc became deaf at the age of one when he had fallen from his high chair into a fire, badly burning his cheek. He developed a fever from the burn, and was later found out to have lost his sense of smell and hearing. As far as it is known, Clerc was non-speaking and relied on pen and paper to those who could not communicate using sign language.

Nathie Marbury was born January 20, 1944 in Grenada, MS but grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of Lezera and Rosetta Marbury. Nathie had many siblings; she was the 16th of 17th children. Her parents for some reason did not believe in education, but Nathie as a child who was born deaf enabled her to better her education.

The story of Laurent Clerc starts with him at the age of six in his home village of La Balme, and recounts Laurent’s first visit to the doctor in Lyon, and the “medicine” he gave Clerc to try and cure him of deafness. However, all the remedies failed, and his mother was told that Clerc would never be quite right. The book then fast forwards to when Clerc was twelve-years-old, and is sent to his first school in Paris. He is taken to the national school of the deaf by his uncle, and is introduced to many students and his teacher, Jean Massieu. It is here that he sees signs for the first time, and learns about what his difficulty is. Clerc proves to be a bright student, and is allowed to join the speech class where he tries to learn how to speak. However, he quits his speech class well into his second year due to the cruelty of the speech instructor. During this time he also learned that you should not expect a deaf person to learn a language they cannot hear. It is while he is at school that he meets two of his closest friends, Pierrot Janty and Claude Walton.

After reading Deaf Again I learned a lot of new things about Deaf culture and was drawn in by the story of Mark Drolsbaugh. "The hardest fight a man has to fight is to live in a world where every single day someone is trying to make you someone you do not want to be" e.e cummings. I was brought into the book immediately from this quote and realized how difficult it must have been for Mark to find his identity. He was trying to hang on to his hearing in fear of going deaf as if there was something wrong or not proper with being deaf. It took him a long time, twenty-three years to realize that the Deaf culture is receiving and it was there for him to embrace the entire time. It would be difficult to be able to hear and then slowly

Have you ever felt like there was nothing that you can do for your child? In this book, Deaf Like Me, by Thomas S. Spradley and James P. Spradley, I can see the journey that Lynn’s parents took to get her help. (Spradley & Spradley, 1978). This book was an excellent read. I really liked the way that they described the ways they tried to help Lynn to understand the world around her. The book, is a great asset for any family that might be unexpectedly put into a situation that they know nothing about such as a deaf child.

In Mark Drolsbaugh’s educational and witty autobiography “Deaf Again”, he describes his journey as a child born to deaf parents, losing his own hearing in his childhood, and navigating both hearing and deaf worlds while trying to discover his identity.

     Born hearing to deaf, signing parents, Mark gradually lost his hearing. Despite the fact that his deaf parents preferred sign communication, Mark was raised and educated without the use of sign language. His parents and grandparents were concerned that sign might interfere with speech and restrict his educational achievement. Although Mark became increasingly hard-of-hearing, he worked hard to "pass" as a hearing person. This ambition, he later discovered, actually constricted his development and limited the depth of relationships with family and friends. During these long years, he just "didn?t know what (he) was missing." When he later learned ASL, chose to mix with deaf people, and learned to

Mark Drolsbaugh’s Deaf Again book gives a detailed account of his experience with becoming deaf in both a hearing and deaf world. It includes the awkwardness and un-comfortability he felt in hearing environments, within is personal family dynamic and in deaf safe havens where he learned to adjust, and grow for the betterment of him learning ASL and in general, becoming emerged within Deaf culture. Drolsbaugh starts the book off by introducing how life for deaf people, even when giving birth, can be a struggle (due to society not being well informed on how to effectively communicate and treat Deaf individuals). Drolsbaugh’s mother, Sherry, wasn’t properly given epidural while giving birth to him, and as she made noises to best express that something was wrong, the nurse brushed it off. Once Mark was born, and Sherry got up the needle wasn’t in her back but on the bed. Looking at how communication issues can lead to negative results, throughout the rest of the book Drolsbaugh sheds light on this phenomenon, specifically focusing on the educational environment and the interactions between and among hearing and deaf communities.

Clec was from the Paris Institution for the Deaf and had been deaf since infancy. He bought to the United States a nonverbal form of communication known as French sign language.