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The business of life: educating Catholic deaf children in late nineteenth-century England

Mangion, Carmen M. (2012) The business of life: educating Catholic deaf children in late nineteenth-century England. History of Education 41 (5), ISSN 0046-760X.

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Abstract

Much of the debates in late nineteenth-century Britain regarding the education of deaf children revolved around communication. For many Victorians, sign language was unacceptable; many proponents of oralism attempted to ‘normalise’the hearing impaired by replacing deaf methods of communication with spoken language and lipreading. While debates on language were raging in late nineteenth-century England, another facet of normalisation, that of occupational training,was being developed at St John’s Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, the only Catholic deaf school in England. This school not only functioned to develop the Catholic faith of the deaf, but also expected to improve the social and economic status of deaf Catholics. Elementary education, and particularly occupational training, was meant to transform the deaf child into a faith-filled, respectable, working-class citizen. This essay aims at moving the normalisation debates away from language skills and towards this alternative mode of integration.

Metadata

Item Type: Article
Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Catholic, deaf, special education, education, gender
School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies
Depositing User: Carmen Mangion
Date Deposited: 07 Dec 2012 11:58
Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 16:57
URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/4912

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