Deaf History Greek Era

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Deaf HistoryGreek Era   

• TutorialSocial Aspects of Deaf CultureSign
  Language Interpreter Training ProgramKirkwood
  Community College 

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• Objectives
• Identify important events and people and
  ideologies in the development of Oral education
  for the deaf given information contained in the
  tutorial.
• Identify important events and people and
  ideologies in the development of manual education
  for the Deaf given information contained in the
  tutorial.

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• Vocabulary
• Manualism - education of the deaf using sign
  language, and the manual alphabet
• 2. Oralism - education of the deaf using speech
  and lip-reading

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• Deaf - a cultural and linguistic identity
  acquired by many deaf person which is viewed as a
  desirable and valued state-of-being.
• 4. deaf a term used to describe the inability
  to hear normal speech patterns and general sounds
  within the environment.

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5. Residential Institution - state school for
the deaf, state funded schools serving a regional
or statewide population of Deaf and
hard-of-hearing children. 6. Language - a
systematic form of communication which enables
its users to talk about anything, anywhere,
according to a system of grammatical rules which
are learned and internalized.  
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• American Sign Language - a natural,
  visual-gestural language  which is indigenous to
  North America with specific grammatical and
  linguistic properties.
• Congenital Deafness - deafness which is present
  at birth.

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• Deaf Community a community made up of Deaf and
  non-deaf people who share the goal of furthering
  the goals and interests of Deaf people and work
  collaboratively to that end.
• Hearing a term used within the Deaf Community
  to refer to non-deaf people who are basically
  misinformed or uninformed about the Deaf
  experience.

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• Pre-lingual deafness - the significant loss of
  hearing which occurs after birth, but prior to
  the time an infant acquires oral/aural language
  competence.  This is usually considered to be
  before the age of three.
• Post-lingual deafness -  the significant loss of
  hearing which occurs during adolescence, after
  oral/aural language competence has been acquired.
  

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Greek Era 300-500 B.C.
All text is taken from the Encyclopedia of
Deafness, Gallaudet Press
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    Plato reported that Socrates considered
thought as the conversation of the soul, and
speech as audible thought.  The physiological
process of hearing occurred as sound came by air
through the ears, and then traveled by blood to
the brain and finally to the soul.  In the
Eastern Christianity, the monk Meletius relied on
previous philosophy and theology when he wrote
that communication between souls was possible
only through speech and hearing.
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Plato
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Around 355 B.C., Aristotle, who believed that
speech was the distinctive characteristic of
humans, wrote that for any being to have voice,
it must have lungs and a pharynx.  One born deaf
can make sounds, but cannot articulate, an
acquired skill.  He wondered if hearing and voice
came from a single source.  He made the odd
observation that deaf people speak through their
nostrils.  Aristotle's beliefs influenced
theories of speech for hundreds of years,
especially his description of speech as the
result of the soul acting on bodily parts.   
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Aristotle
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This belief was the foundation of the Stoic
doctrine that the logos, the rational principle
of life, was the source of speech. In the fifth
century B.C., Greek Hippocratic physicians
emphasized the connection between deafness and
speechlessness  their statements were to be
repeated for almost 2000 years.  The writings
differentiate between loss of voice and loss of
speech, placing the origin of speech in the
head.  People make sounds because they have lungs
with windpipes attached sounds are then shaped
by the lips, tongue, palate, and teeth.  But if
the tongue does not properly articulate the air
coming out of the lung through the windpipe into
the mouth, the person cannot speak properly.  The
proof, it was said, was that people born deaf 
never learn to articulate, and so, although they
have voice, that is, can make noises, they have
no speech.  
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Hippocrates
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Questions3. What was the greatest concern
about the phenomenon of deafness?4. Were their
concerns related to disability or culture?
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Answers
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• From philosophers, law givers, and physicians.
• Prevalent thoughts about deafness were that it
  was a disability.
• That deafness meant lack of a soul or a severe
  defect in the soul.
• Disability.