The Historical Study of the Shift to the Oral Method in the Day School for the Deaf in the Early 20thCentury America: Its Educational and Social Meaning

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This study discusses how the oral-method had influence on the development of the American deaf day schools which were prevailed nationwide during the last quarter of the 19th century and early 20th centuries. The following are clarified: first, the success of learning by the oral method presupposed that middle class parents of deaf children who preferred the oral method supported home education or school involvement, secondly, the wide application of the oral method raised the possibility that deaf children at risk such as subnormality or indigence suffered easily from the pooracademic performance, and thirdly, the growing interest in the identification and classification of children’s mental ability in the public schools contributed to those in the deaf day schools and the adoption of detailed criteria of the oral method to deaf children.