I have been reading "WHEN THE MIND HEARS by Harlan Lane. I see that Laurent Clerc made some comments about how hearing people behaved towards the deaf people in his day. It shows that hearing people have tendency to "control" deaf people for centuries.
Laurent Clerc made those comments about how hearing people behaved:
"I know what is going on. Important people , distinguished gentlemen, are repudiating the cause to which I have devoted my life. Endowed with the sacred trust of my people's welfare, they seek, without consulting us, to prevent our worship, marriage, and procreation, to stultify our education, and to banish our mother tongue simply because our way and our language are different from theirs."
"Meanwhile-language must come once again to my aid. It has always been my weapon to fight evil, my vessel to fill minds thirsting for knowledge, my lure to solicit relief. It must serve me grandly one last time and cast such a brilliant light on the history of present injustices that their perpetrators will cringe and their victims rally."
"I am impelled by the present threat to the well-being, dignity and freedom of my people to tell our story, one that I have lived almost from its beginning: how we gathered in France and in other European lands and then in America; how our language spread throughout Europe and crossed the Atlantic; the great struggle to create schools for us, in which it was my lot to play a leading role. It is a story of builders: of an abbe' rejected by the Church who established the education of an entire class rejected by society; of a deaf shepherd who achieved international acclaim by personifying what such an outcast class can achieve through education; of a frail New England pastor who channeled the love of a little deaf girl into a mighty force that has created a first college in the world for that class. It is also a tale of destroyers: of a zealous physician who put mock science ahead of true humanity; of a haughty nobleman who imposed his will on the deaf, knowing, he believed, what was best for them but knowing, in fact, none of them; of a professional reformer who sought to recast entire classes of society in his own image."
Also George Veditz did experience with AG Bell when he refused to donate to NAD.
Watch my video about Clerc's and Veditz's comments -
Thanks,
Paul
