to obscure her difference by forcing her to speak and act like a normal hearing person.
Mabel was educated at home by her mother who concentrated on giving Mabel speech and
lipreading skills. A teacher was hired to continue Mrs. Hubbard’s instruction and teach Mabel reading
as well (Bishundayal, 2002; Toward, 1996). The family’s wealth allowed them to hire someone to help
with teaching Mabel. In the context of the history of deaf education, private schools such as the
Clarke School for the Deaf had a purist orientation towards oralism while public schools (including
state-funded schools for the deaf) were more moderate, if not practical about language issues.
Wealthy parents were likely to enroll their deaf children in private schools thus reinforcing the cycle of
oralism.
Interestingly, Mabel's father, Hubbard, did visit the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and
Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons in Hartford (now known as the American School for the Deaf
or ASD) and other schools of a similar kind. He “had met children weirdly silent – their only means of
communication by strange baffling gestures. He could not bear to think of Mabel being brought up
like that, condemned to a life of isolation, cut off from family and friends” (Toward, 1996, p. 2). The
feelings that Hubbard had are understandable as society was predominantly speaking, which to a
great extent is still true. Mabel’s parents’ rejection of the idea of sending Mabel to ASD to be “with
other, mainly indigent, deaf children, who used a gross, material language of the hands” (Lane, 1984,
p. 315) reflects the social bias of that time. Mabel’s mother’s reasoning confirms society’s influence
over the family as follows:
The language used in institutions of the deaf is not the language of the hearing among whom
they are to live. For developing the mental faculties, for enriching the mind with knowledge and
thought the sign language may have been a success, but for fitting the deaf for daily
intercourse with the hearing it has been an entire failure. (Bell, 1898, pp. 37-38)
Mabel’s parents (circa 1890) Mabel at age 4 or 5 (1862)
Source: Toward, 1996 Source: Bishundayal, 2002
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The Power of ASL
3
Summer 2017 – Issue 6