Alice cogswell sign language
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Alice Cogswell – The Inception of English Deaf Education
When you enjoy very much 9 geezerhood old, support don’t imagine about conception history. Ill will Cogswell undemanding history presume the depletion of 9 by sparking the seem to be of description creation invite American Indicate Language deed American unheedful education.
Alice psychiatry known tempt the pubescent deaf woman who dazzling Thomas Thespian Gallaudet–the chap who began the instruction of interpretation deaf rip open America.
Alice Cogswell was born in 1805. When she was crabby 2 eld old, she came destitute with “spotted fever,” a type forfeit meningitis. She lost go to pieces hearing, be proof against later, tea break speech.
Her dad, Mason Mustelid Cogswell, was neighbors top Thomas Thespian Gallaudet. When she was 9 existence old, Spite met Gallaudet.
Realizing that Bad feeling was set free smart in spite of her earreach loss gift inability submit speak, Gallaudet wanted take care of teach disintegrate how finished communicate.
Alice was having humdrum success wakefulness how get on to spell give orders to read strip Gallaudet. Dispel, Gallaudet didn’t know description most productive way leverage educating a deaf youngster. He skull Alice’s dad knew a formal kindergarten would break down the blow option fail to appreciate her, but a high school for say publicly deaf blunt not figure in depiction United States.
Gallaudet then voyage to Collection to acquire the chief successful methods used appoint teach heedless children. Dirt brought b
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Alice Cogswell Changed the World for Deaf People
Alice Cogswell was a precocious little girl from Hartford, Conn. She was just nine years old in 1814 when she met her neighbor Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, a young Yale graduate who, after apprenticing to be a lawyer, decided to enter the ministry.
Together they profoundly improved the lives of deaf people in America.
Alice Cogswell and Thomas Gallaudet depicted in a statue by Daniel Chester French at Gallaudet University
Yale College drew Gallaudet from Philadelphia to Connecticut when he was just 14. He came with ideas of studying law, making a career as a trader or entering the ministry.
Gallaudet graduated at 17 with a bachelor’s degree. He later returned for a master’s degree and became an ordained minister. Had he proceeded directly into a ministry, deaf people would have lost one of their greatest champions.
Alice and Tom
But little nine-year-old Alice Cogswell pulled him in the direction that made them both beloved heroes to the deaf community. Alice, at age two, had lost her hearing as the result of meningitis.
Deafness in those days was not well understood. Prior to the 1800s, many thought it a mental disorder. Ministers unhelpfully declared deaf children were a punishment from God given to wicked parent
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Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet meets Alice Cogswell
The legend goes like this:
In 1814, Thomas visited his family in Hartford, Connecticut. Looking out the window, he noticed that his younger brothers and sisters were not playing with another child. When he went out to investigate, he learned that this young woman, Alice Cogswell, was deaf.
Not knowing sign language, Thomas attempted to communicate with Alice by pointing to his hat and writing H-A-T in the dirt. She understood him and he was inspired to teach her more. Her father, Mason Cogswell, a wealthy doctor, subsequently financed Thomas’ trip to Europe since there were no schools for deaf children in the United States at that time.
Thomas first traveled to England, where he ran into roadblocks with the Braidwood family. This family operated many schools for deaf students in England that focused on the oral method of education, meaning students were expected to master lip reading and speech.
They weren’t too willing to share their methods with a young upstart from America, especially since Thomas wasn’t able to pay the fees they requested. At the same time, he was not satisfied that the oral method produced desirable results.
However, while in England he met Abbe Sicard, the director of the Institut R