Oralism

Oralism is a philosophy of deaf education which asserts that instruction of students should primarily or exclusively be through the use of lip reading and spoken language (usually along with speech therapy). This philosophy has been locked for centuries in an emotional debate that continues to this day with the alternate philosophy of manualism.

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The manualists claim that the oralists neglect the psycho-social development of deaf children in their zeal for training in articulation which requires long, tedious practice leaving them with no time or energy to advance academically and socially. This leaves them with inadequate skills and often with poor speaking ability despite the great effort invested since the oral method works best with children who have lost hearing after already having learned to speak. Manualists feel nothing is more important that giving deaf children a visual-motor language they can truly master so as to enable their intellect and humanity to develop normally and that to not respect the whole child treats them as only a broken set of ears and is tantamount to neglect or even abuse.

Deaf education: redirect Deaf culture...

Lip reading: Lip reading is a technique of understanding spoken language without hearing its sounds. Practitioners learn the phonemes associated with the shape and attitude of the mouth and infer words from what they view....

Speech therapy: Speech therapy is the corrective or rehabilitative treatment of physical and/or cognitive deficits/disorders resulting in difficulty with verbal communication. This includes both speech (articulation, intonation, rate, intensity) and language (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, b...