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History Through Deaf Eyes – The Influence of Alexander Graham Bell. Most Americans know Alexander Graham Bell as an inventor of the telephone. But few know that the central interest of his life was education for deaf children or that he was one of the strongest proponents of oralism in the United States. Bell and his father before him studied ...
- Controversy
- Ancestry
- Marriage
- Prevention
- Legacy
Everyone knows about Alexander Graham Bell and his invention of the telephone. Many people do not know that he was also a deaf educator, and his methods (and reasons behind those methods) continue to cause controversy in the Deaf community.
Bell's father, Alexander Melville Bell, was a teacher of the deaf. His method of teaching the deaf was coined \"Visible Speech.\" Bell's grandfather was a famous elocution teacher and is thought to be the model for George Bernard Shaw's character Prof. Henry Higgins in Pygmalion. The younger Bell taught deaf students at schools for the deaf (a scho...
Although he married a deaf woman, a former speech pupil, Mabel Hubbard, Bell strongly opposed intermarriage among congenitally deaf people. Bell feared \"contamination\" of the human race by the propagation of deaf people even though most deaf people statistically are born to hearing parents.
Suggestions were made to enact legislation to prevent the intermarriage of deaf-mute people or forbidding marriage between families that have more than one deaf-mute member. His preventative strategies for deaf marriage included removing barriers to communication and interaction with the hearing world.
In some respects, Alexander Graham Bell changed the way we look at education for the deaf for the better. Oral methods, the desegregation of education, and facilitating communication between deaf and hearing persons are a positive outcome. Some historians point to this as his legacy just as much as his inventions. However, his reasons behind those ...
- Bell Taught Sign Language & Visible Speech to the Deaf Community. Alexander Graham Bell’s father developed an early phonetic alphabet called visible speech.
- Bell Was a Talented Teacher of Deaf Children. His exceptional understanding of human physiology and experience working with the deaf community made Alexander Graham Bell both technically skilled and powerfully compassionate.
- Bell Invented the Phonautograph to Assist the Deaf Community. In addition to his pursuit of broadening educational opportunities for the deaf, Alexander Graham Bell was interested in developing technology to assist the deaf community.
- Bell Founded an Advocacy Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Alexander Graham Bell created the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf (AAPTSD) in 1890.
Bell was also deeply affected by his mother's gradual deafness (she began to lose her hearing when he was 12), and learned a manual finger language so he could sit at her side and tap out silently the conversations swirling around the family parlor. [23]
May 22, 2019 · His mother and wife were both deaf. While Bell is best known as one of the inventors of the telephone, he had a deep knowledge of the science of sound and made important contributions to the detection of hearing loss. Among his 30 patented inventions, Bell created the audiometer, which he used to test the hearing of hundreds of people ...
Oct 13, 2023 · Deeply affected by his mother’s progressive deafness, which began when he was 12, Bell learned finger language to communicate with her. He also devised a method of speaking into her forehead, allowing her to hear him clearer. This profound connection with his mother’s hearing loss ignited his passion for studying acoustics.
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Jul 18, 2017 · Bell’s mother was deaf, and Bell’s father and grandfather, also named Alexander Bell, were elocutionists specializing in voice presentation, delivery, and other aspects of speech teaching. Bell’s two siblings succumbed to tuberculosis causing Melville Bell in 1870 to relocate the family to Brantford, Ontario, a supposedly more healthful climate to protect his sole surviving child.
