A Place of Their Own: Creating the Deaf Community in America

This is an excellent history for deaf education in the United States. It is a readable and insightful treasure of names, dates and institutions, developed against the broader canvas of world deaf education. The volume documents the development of social and political factors involved in the position of the deaf population within the broader general population in Europe and the United States. These two scholars develop the story chronologically and thematically from the 1500s, paralleling the stages of social and industrial development in western society. They portray the attitudes and approaches to the deaf community and shine their specific spotlight on the growing consciousness of the deaf as a coherent community over the last 200 years. The Deaf were seen often as disabled and less able to learn, or were made to learn speech to enhance their interaction with the hearing community and their usefulness to the dominant hearing culture. As educational movements they contrast the development of methods in Europe and the New World. Notably, two streams focus on methods using sign language or oral-only approaches meant to establish oral fluency and lip-reading among the deaf. Sign language was initially developed in France and introduced in the American territories and modified for English. The authors detail the progress of sign language from France and its broader development in Britain by the Frenchman Clerc and its intentional crossing of the Atlantic in early institutions established in the US. This method was an early success and continued in the US. A new approach gradually gained dominance in Europe, however, focused on bringing the deaf to competency in oral speech and "speech-reading" to participate in broader society. Though this approach did not exhibit notable practical results, it came to be advocated by hearing persons involved in deaf education, and became a great adversary of sign language as a medium of communication. Advocates of the "oralism" approach wanted to enable deaf persons to "become normal" and fully participate in the broader society. In contrast, there was a strong early development and management of deaf association and services by deaf persons for themselves. Gallaudet University, whose press published the book, has a laudable history of practical deaf education and deaf advocacy in the United States. As an institution of the District of Columbia it was directly administered by Congress. The oralism movement was more popular in certain circles, notable in Nebraska, where for a period, sign language education was actually prohibited by law in any state educational institution. In Europe oralism prevailed until more recently. Gallaudet is named after a member of the venerable family who pioneered deaf education in the United States. This university is now a world leader in resources and education for the Deaf community.

As a student of American Sign Language and the Deaf community I have read many books on the subject. A Place of Their Own: Creating the Deaf Comminity in America is an excellent book in which to find details that you just don't find in many other places. It covers Deaf history, the people and places that influenced the Deaf community and the reasons for the importance of the Deaf community. This isn't a book that promotes or promises a "Utopian Deafland" it gives a realistic look at the the lives of Deaf people throughout history. As a textbook, this is an excellent learning tool for anyone. It belongs in the home of every Deaf person, every person with a Deaf family member and the home of every person that knows anyone who is Deaf. It would be a nice thing for any hearing person that doesn't know any Deaf people to help create an understanting of a community they are not likely familiar with. An excellent and easy read. I highly recommend it.

There are not a lot of resources on the history of Deaf culture but this one does the trick. Taking you from Biblical referances to present day, it is easy to read, yet thought provoking. I highly recommend it. I only give it 4 stars because, again, this is a one of a kind in its field and I hope some day there will be a more variety and a better comparison between texts.

For a long time I have been searching for such book like this! It is excellent resources for the people, who are interested to learn American Sign Language, to become aware of richly deaf cultural/social history. The authors know where to find such wealthy of information, yet their writings are brevity along with several examples of where the deaf people have been interacted in order to preserve their cultural-linguistic connections. I highly recommended this book to the education and medical personnel to see how the deaf people are evidently happy with their livings without being heavily corrected on their hearing loss.

A Place of Their Own is quite a good book, really, and the authors are qualified to write on their subject matter. In regards to other reviews of this book: Sorry, but the ones accusing God of schizophrenia are not the authors, but trinitarian Christians. After all, it is trinitarian Christianity which insists that God has three distinct personalities. One of them died and was resurrected by the other. One of them prays to the other and begs the other to be saved. One of them sends another to people, one walks around on earth while the other stays in heaven. The third, I suppose, just kind of flies around being misty and mysterious. Then of course, they will insist that they really don't worship three gods, but one. They further insult the mercy of God by implying that he sent someone else (his son/his self) to die for our sins, and as long as we accept that we are saved. Tell me, why would god require a blood sacrifice as the price of salvation? We can't just repent to God and be forgiven? Someone else has to die for something I did? And let's not even get into the fact that all of humanity is supposed to be stained for something done by someone else eons ago, ...or that accepting that someone else has already paid for my sins means PARTY TIME! I can do whatever I want. A Place of Their Own is a highly readable, accessible work that presents its topic in a clear format. It isn't too long and is a good introduction to the topic. VanCleve and Crouch did a great job.