abstract: Historically, music and the experiences of deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals have been intertwined in one manner or another. However, music has never ignited as much hope for the “improvement” of the Deaf experience as during the American oralist movement (ca. 1880-1960) which prioritized lip-reading and speaking over the use of sign language. While it is acknowledged that the oralist movement failed to provide the best possible education to many American DHH students and devastated many within the Deaf community, music scholars have continued to cite publications by oralist educators as rationales for the continued development of music programs for DHH students. This document is an attempt to reframe the role of music during the American oralist movement with a historical account of ways music was recruited as a tool for teaching vocal articulation at schools for the deaf from 1900 to 1960. During this time period, music was recruited simply as a utility to overcome disability and as an aid for assimilating into the hearing world rather than as the rich experiential phenomenon it could have been for the DHH community. My goal is to add this important caveat to the received history of early institutional music education for DHH students. Primary sources include articles published between 1900 and 1956 in The Volta Review, a journal founded by the oralist leader Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922). / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Music 2017

Aktuelle Debatten in der Hörgeschädigtenpädagogik beschäftigen sich vor allem mit den Fragen der Sprachbildung hörgeschädigter Kinder im Rahmen der schulischen Inklusion. Übersehen wird dabei oft, dass dieser Diskurs nicht neu ist, sondern bereits historische Vorläufer hat. Ziel dieser Untersuchung ist deshalb, Veränderungsprozesse von Elementarbildung und Sprachbildung hörgeschädigter Kinder im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert vor dem Hintergrund einer sich etablierenden Volksschulbildung zu analysieren, um den schulstrukturellen Wandel und seine Auswirkungen nachzuzeichnen. Auf der Grundlage einer quellenkritischen Rekonstruktion wurden dafür ideen-, sozial- und institutions-geschichtliche Ereignisse und Diskurse im Sinne des kritisch-konstruktiven Ansatzes von Klafki (1971) analysiert. Im Fokus standen dabei die konkreten Auswirkungen (national-) sprachlicher und bildungspolitischer Konzepte auf den Unterricht am Berliner Königlichen Taubstummeninstitut und auf die ländliche Schulpraxis in der Provinz Brandenburg. Die Analysen zeigen, dass die sprachphilosophischen Diskurse in dieser Zeit Fehlannahmen über die Funktion und Bedeutung von Laut- und Gebärdensprachen enthielten, die die Sprachbildungskonzepte für gehörlose Menschen maßgeblich prägten. Außerdem führte die Verallgemeinerungsbewegung, in deren Rahmen zunehmend gehörlose Menschen auch in Volksschulen unterrichtet wurden, dazu dass die ausschließliche Förderung der Lautsprache propagiert wurde. Zweisprachige Bildungskonzepte, mit der Gebärdensprache als festem Bestandteil, wurden aufgegeben. Die besonderen Bedürfnisse gehörloser Menschen wurden weder an allgemeinen Schulen noch an Taubstummeninstituten berücksichtigt und der Zugang zu Bildung setzte damit in der Folgezeit eine einseitige Anpassungsleistung gehörloser Menschen voraus. / Current debates in deaf education are primarily concerned with questions of language education of hearing impaired children as part of school inclusion. It is often overlooked in this context that this discourse is not new, but already has historical antecedents. The aim of this study is therefore to analyse the changing processes of elementary education and language education of hearing impaired children in the 18th and 19th centuries against the background of the on-going establishment of elementary education, in order to reconstruct the structural change of the culture of schooling and its impact. To this end, historical ideas, social and institutional discourses and events were analysed in terms of the critical and constructive approach of Klafki (1971) on the basis of a source-critical reconstruction. The focus was on the specific impact of (national) linguistic and educational approaches to teaching at the Berlin Royal Institute of Deaf and Dumb and the rural school practice in the province of Brandenburg. The analyses show that the discourses on linguistic philosophy at this time contained misperceptions concerning the function and meaning of spoken and signed languages that significantly shaped approaches to language education for deaf people. Furthermore, the movement towards generalisation, in the framework of which deaf people were increasingly also taught in elementary schools, led to the exclusive propagation of the promotion of oral language. Bilingual education concepts, with sign language as an integral part, were abandoned. The special needs of deaf people were not taken into consideration in either public schools or in deaf and dumb institutions, and access to education in the subsequent period thus presupposed a successful unilateral adaptation of deaf people.