Legacy Behind Asl Essay

Legacy Behind ASL Imagine how communication is done between those people who do not have the ability to hear or speak. Of course, there must be some ways of communication that are convenient for the deaf people to communicate. The founder of the American Sign Language , Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, discovered the new way of communicating between the deaf people. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was inspired by a young deaf girl named Alice Cogswell, which was his next door neighbor. His neighbor, Dr. Mason Cogswell was a prominent Hartford physician, he was concerned about proper education for his nine years old deaf daughter. Dr. Mason Cogswell’s idea motivated Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet to travel around Europe to study methods for teaching deaf students

Gallaudet traveled to Europe seeking of the best educational methods for teaching deaf children. Gallaudet did not really like England’s system, because “it didn't encourage the use of manual communication, that is, sign language” (The History Behind DPN: What Happened…). Since Gallaudet did not like the way it was in England, then he went to France. Finally he met educators from the Paris School for the Deaf who agreed to share information about sign language and how to educate deaf children. Gallaudet convinced one of the French educators, Laurent Clerc, to return with him to the United States and in 1817, they co-founded the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, the nation's first school for deaf children. Forty years later, in 1857, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet's youngest child, Edward Miner Gallaudet, came to Washington, D.C., where he established a school for deaf children, and the school’s board renamed it the American School for Deaf. The school flourished and in 1864, a collegiate division was added—and so began the world's only university for deaf and hard of hearing students(The History Behind DPN: What Happened…). Although the formation of the deaf school was complicated, but under the hardships Thomas Gallaudet and his son,

Edward became a teacher at the American School for the Deaf in Hartford. Edward always wanted to establish a deaf college and in 1857, Edward was asked to be the superintendent of the Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind in Washington, D.C. “Edward presented his idea for a deaf college to Congress and they passed legislation in 1864 permitting the Columbia Institute to issue college degrees. In 1864 the Columbia Institute's college division opened” (Reeve). This was the first college for the deaf, and students from the school can have college degrees from then on. In 1893 the college was renamed Gallaudet College to honor Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet. In 1986 the school was renamed Gallaudet University. Gallaudet University is known today for being the first and only deaf university in the world. When Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was still alive, he believed that “every deaf child has different needs in order to achieve the proper education, and all children deserve an accurate and meaningful education no matter what problems they have to overcome” (Historical Blog: Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet). Fortunately, he achieved his belief, and deaf children are able to have the opportunity to learn. Thomas Gallaudet left such a big influence in the deaf