About this item
A comprehensive history of deafness, signed languages, and the unresolved struggles of the Deaf to be taught in their unspoken tongue Partially deaf due to a childhood illness, Gerald Shea is no stranger to the search for communicative grace and clarity. In this eloquent and thoroughly researched book, he uncovers the centuries-long struggle of the Deaf to be taught in sign language - the only language that renders them complete, fully communicative human beings. Shea explores the history of the deeply biased attitudes toward the Deaf in Europe and America, which illogically forced them to be taught in a language they could neither hear nor speak. As even A.G. Bell, a fervent oralist, admitted, sign language is "the quickest method of reaching the mind of a deaf child." Shea's research exposes a persistent but misguided determination among hearing educators to teach the Deaf orally, making the very faculty they lacked the principal instrument of their instruction. To forbid their education in sign language - the "language of light" - is to deny the Deaf their human rights, he concludes.
About the Author
Gerald Shea has lived most of his life in New York and in Paris, and practiced law in both cities for many years with Debevoise & Plimpton as a member of the New York and Paris bars. While at Phillips Academy he studied with Dudley Fitts, and at Yale with Maynard Mack and Robert Penn Warren. At Columbia Law School, he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and was awarded the Jerome Michael Scholarship for academic excellence, and clerked for Professor Julius Goebel, Jr., the preeminent legal historian of our time. He has published internationally in legal and financial journals but this is his first work for a general audience. He and his wife, Claire de Gramont, live in Paris and and spend summers on the North Shore of Massachusetts.
