Was Alexander Graham Bell Anti-Deaf?

Abstract

Was Alexander Graham Bell Anti-Deaf? Kanika Agarwal The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell's Quest to End Deafness. Katie Booth. Simon & Schuster, 2021. 416 pp. $30.00 (paper). Deaf people who use sign language as a mode of communication have often suffered due to restrictions regarding the use of sign languages during their school years. Part of this legacy of suffering is often attributed to the infamous Milan Conference of 1880 and the voting members who were present there, Alexander Graham Bell being the most prominent among them. Katie Booth, author of The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell's Quest to End Deafness, explains these historical circumstances and the incidents in Bell's life that led him to believe that oral education would benefit deaf children. The book is an eye-opener for the people who have always considered Bell the enemy of sign language. It illuminates the dilemma of how and why oral education gained momentum during Bell's time. It also prompts readers to reconsider conventional wisdom and ask if Bell really was an anti-deaf person. The Invention of Miracles is a biography in which Booth aims to fairly judge Alexander Graham Bell's oralism-tinged views on deaf education while maintaining her own clear stance of advocacy of sign language and its importance to the Deaf community. It is a must-read for people juggling oralism and signed approaches as they try to understand their impact on the education of deaf children. The book begins with Bell's personal life and the surroundings in which he grew up. While it is well known that Bell's mother and wife were deaf, few people know that Bell's father developed a unique alphabet system capable of representing almost any sound in the world. He called it Visible Speech. The method consisted of attributing a written system of codes to every type of sound ever heard. It was not only intended to be a new system for speech, but a unique code system for speech that Bell's father hoped could gain worldwide acceptance with time, much as the Latin alphabet, which is used to represent English, had done. Bell's father trained him on this method, and together they believed that they could use it to effectively develop speech skills among deaf children. Cued Speech and sign writing were not methods used in deaf education in those times. It is a topic worth debating if the ideas of cued speech and sign writing emerged from the system invented by Bell's father. The first part of Booth's book describes how the Visual Speech system was developed, refined, and adapted for deaf children. The system was concurrent with efforts by Deaf experts like William Turner, Thomas Gallaudet, Laurent Clerc, and others to bring sign language to the fore in deaf education. Since the use of sign [End Page 372] language and other visual modalities was gaining momentum in those times, Bell's oral approach was seen in a very critical light by promoters of sign language. Thus, within the education system for deaf children arose two contradictory directions—the oral approach and the signed approach. The second half of the book illuminates Bell's professional life revolving around inventions, patents, and his quest for fame as a scientist. Booth also explains how Bell's passion for teaching deaf children brought him back into oral education for deaf children with a bang—as a now famous scientist. This section also introduces other luminaries contemporary with Bell who worked on developing oralist skills among deaf and deafblind children, thereby giving Bell the confidence to advocate oralism: For example, Laura Bridgeman, a deafblind girl, started speaking following training in her school. This acted as a catalyst for Bell in promoting speech for the deafblind that only intensified when Bell started training Hellen Keller for development of her speech. Miracles intricately weaves Bell's personal and professional lives, throwing a light on his beliefs, his passions, his professional viewpoints, and his personal life with two deaf women—his mother and his wife. One aspect shows how hard Bell worked on developing...