Alexander Graham Bell and the Deaf community

Book Review of The Invention of Miracles: Language, power and Alexander Graham Bell’s Quest to end Deafness by Katie Booth. I mentioned in the last blog how this book had made a great impact on me enough that it earned its own post! Here are my thoughts:

Whoa! This book was such a powerful read about a controversial person in the deaf community, Alexander Graham Bell. I didn’t know about the release of this book back in April 2021, but had spotted it in the bookstore. Only because the cover had “The Quest to end Deafness” on it grabbing my interest. I knew of Bell, learned that his name was an adversary in the deaf community while I was at college. Many of you only know him as the inventor of telephone but he also had worked as a teacher for the deaf.

I picked up the book and read the prologue. Right away, I was drawn into it with the author growing up with deaf grandparents whose lives had been impacted by Bell’s oralism. The local library finally had this book available so I read it and boy, was I glued to EVERY page! I had figured that I’d be skimming through some parts since it had explained Bell’s invention of the telephone. I’m not the one for science, but the author did an amazing job of explaining.

The book was very complicated. Like I mentioned, I only knew that Bell wasn’t liked in the deaf community but never really knew the depth of where it stemmed from. I knew he pushed for oralism. The book is 400+ pages long, divided into 3 parts. The first two was about Bell’s romance with his (deaf!) wife, his invention and brief stories about his work with the deaf. The last part focused greatly on the deaf.

At first, I respected his hard work for inventing the telephone. He was a smart man. Later on, when I read about his time with educating the deaf on how to speak… my mind frame of Bell shifted quickly. He advocated greatly for the oralism method, wanting sign language and deafness to be eliminated. It was his goal to teach the deaf people to forget that they are deaf.

There were several excerpts from the book that parallel so much to today’s world. I didn’t realize that even in the 1880’s that deaf people were being asked “did you ever try to learn to hear by the motions of the lips?” Which is equivalent to “can you lipread?”. I’m still asked that TODAY in 2021! The implication of Bell’s oralism probably gave hearing people that exception that deaf people are able to lipread.

As I was reading this book, there were several descriptions of speech lessons…bringing up memories of my own speech lessons during my childhood. I have NEVER enjoyed speech. I disliked it so much. Just like the students in the book struggling to make specific sounds, I had some difficulty with specific letters such as “k”, “c”, “p”, etc. I remember being frustrated but had to internalize that anger until I was home. I didn’t like how speech lessons also took my time away from the classroom. I felt like I was missing out on what was going on with my classmates. This was an argument used by the pro-ASL advocates against Bell’s oralism, that teaching the deaf oralism took their time away from their general studies.

I was interested to see so many similarities or connection with Mystic Oral School (MOS). If you recall, I wrote a blog about the school here. It was Bell’s oralism method that was taught at MOS. During Bell’s era, they struggled with many oral deaf students signing in secret which were many stories I heard from MOS alumni. How they would secretly sign with their friends in the dorms or at home. It seemed to be a reoccurrence for sign language to be snuck in among the oral deaf students. The book mentioned Bell advocating against ‘signing schools’ to receive public funds. I remember reading court papers from when Bell came to Hartford, CT to support MOS getting funds they needed.

Bell is a very complicated person. He was smart but unwilling to listen to the deaf voices. He knew that he wasn’t liked by many. It continued to be his goal to eliminate deafness/sign language. It was implied that Bell had a little soft side towards his deaf students, as it mentioned in the book that he helped them in finding jobs, paid for their education and bought them clothes. Yet, he still believed that ASL shouldn’t be taught. I also mentioned earlier that Bell even had a deaf wife. He also had a deaf mother, who he used sign language with at home during his childhood. His wife had been one of his former students who he taught oralism to, so his wife knew how to lip read him/spoke well. She became the example of his oralism success. Bell’s wife also had a strong dislike towards teachers of the deaf because they often looked at their students as ‘cases’ which is exactly what Bell did, especially with Helen Keller!

One part of the book that made me angry was Bell’s involvement with eugenics committee on passing sterilization laws. Indiana had been the first state to pass the law in 1907. This law inspired Nazi Germany to adopt and establish their version, resulting in 40% of German deaf being sterilized. I had no idea the connection. Many don’t realize that Holocaust targeted deaf (and disabled) among the Jews. The sterilization program they adopted from the United States eventually turned into ‘T4 program’ which was a euthanasia program. This had upset me so much that I had to put the book down briefly because I was recalling a video I watched last year of a German deaf woman who had been sterilized. She shared her sadness of never being able to conceive.

This book was excellent written, very well researched and put together perfectly. The author had really dug in the archives. It was a book full of history but so powerful that it will spark dialogues about one’s personal experience as a deaf person in today’s world. It brought out so many emotions for me. I thought about my childhood that had been shaped by Bell’s oralism. I learned how to speak/lipread first until learning sign language 3 years later when I moved to a new school that combined use of speech/ASL. I felt like I spent the majority of my childhood being embarrassed of my own deafness. There were a few incidents when I’d tell my family to stop signing in public when people were staring. I always apologized for being deaf when hearing people tried to talk to me unaware of my deafness.

How people perceived the deaf people was definitely influenced by Bell. Oralism still exists today, not as popular as it was during Bell’s era. We still face discrimination especially with jobs and accessibility challenges. Many hearing parents still aren’t receiving the resources when they give birth to a deaf child resulting in language depravation. The majority of doctors today are in favor of cochlear implants. The issue is that it’s implied that it’s a cure, instead of an assistance tool.

I thought so much after reading this book. How my life would have been different if Bell had listened to the needs of the deaf people. If he had worked with them, how much more successful would we have been today? Would we still be facing discrimination? People’s opinions of us might’ve been different? After all, Bell was a smart man and could’ve achieved a lot if he had collaborated with the deaf community. In the end, he only ended up causing great harm on the deaf community. I’m so grateful that the deaf people during Bell’s era had persevered and allowed us the freedom to use sign language today!

Don’t wait on picking up this book like I did, it’s so worth the read!