Click here to watch this 22 minute drama, called Confession.
I urge everybody to watch, regardless of how they stand on speech versus sign. The ideas and opinions reflected by Alexander Graham Bell are real and based on documentary evidence. The impact on deaf kids and deaf adults is real, including the firing of deaf teachers, the association of oralism with impaired literacy, and the advantage of a primary language in infancy with improved literacy.
Enjoy, and think about why deaf people were not allowed to have a say in their own educational future, and why Mabel Bell was treated as a child by her own husband. It's what we call paternalism, prevalent in Victorian times. Women,minorities, etc. were all regarded as child-like: to be helped, but not to be listened to. The word of the day was assimiliation. Freed slaves had to be integrated into society. Native Americans were easier to wipe out if we wiped out their culture by forcing ours onto them.
Bell also was a pioneer of eugenics, and eugenics laws were passed in America (and some are still on the books to this day) until WWII and the events in Nazi Germany made eugenics a radioactive concept. Even so, it took a while for American laws to change.
To this day, there is no solid assurance that deaf people have a voice in their own education rights, although we fight, empowered by new technology, and research supporting our stance. The fear oralists spread to parents of deaf is that somehow, other deaf people will teach their children to be deaf rather than successful pseudo-hearing people.
We have 300 deaf lawyers in America. We have deaf doctors in America. We have deaf professionals in every field. We have deaf writers, scientists, college presidents. They succeeded by using their talents, not by fitting themselves in a box somebody else had designed for them. Many speak. Many sign. Many do both.
There are also many successful hearing people: doctors, lawyers, actors, other professionals, whom Bell fought to ban being born-- for they are the children of deaf parents, as Bell himself was (but his mother was deaf, and his dad a speech therapist.) If you want to know more about what it is like to grow up with deaf parents, contact CODA International, or take a look at their archives of scholarship essays.