chronicle has not been genial to those with disabilities . hoi polloi with untypical development or needs have beensterilized , institutionalized , jailed — even kill , sometimes due to a desire for a " better " race of people and sometimes out of simple fear and ignorance .
But inthis episode of Stuff You miss In History Class , hosts Tracy V. Wilson and Holly Frey tell us a straight and perhaps lesser - known storey about disability in history . On Martha ’s Vineyard in the 18th one C , a racy deaf biotic community existed . And alternatively of marginalize or ostracizing citizenry with irregular sense of hearing , the intact community learned and became facile in a sharedsign language , something that has also bump in other geographically isolated residential district around the world .
The residential area developed when the descendants of three different families — from a interchangeable part in the Weald of Kent , in Britain — eventually settled in Martha ’s Vineyard . All three family appear to have a gene marked for hearing loss . And by the early 1700s , the deaf population start growing . Estimates vary widely on how many deaf residents were in Martha ’s Vineyard , but " anywhere from one deaf person for every 155 hearing masses , to one in 25 in 1854 " were give , allot to Tracy .
And recollect that it was n’t entirely clear at the time why deafness was so prominent in the community ; the gene bound off some family member or even multiple generations . " Today , we see this as how recessionary genes function , but to the great unwashed who were living at the fourth dimension , it seemed simultaneously inherited and random , " explains Tracy .
A shared sign linguistic process soon modernize , one that was n’t just share among indifferent hoi polloi . The entire residential district , hearing and deaf alike , became fluent . Interestingly , the instruction of this spoken communication did n’t come from school — it was parent using it in the abode , disregarding of whether a indifferent soul was in the family line .
The islanders ' house language was n’t the American Sign Language ( ASL ) that we see today , although there are some similar signs and element . Those similarity might be because when the first school for the deaf open in Hartford , Connecticut , in 1817 , Martha ’s Vineyard child took many of the blank — and that was where interchangeable ASL was originate .
It ’s authoritative to keep in mind , however , that the history of the island ’s deal sign language are from hearing people . While there are pictures paint of a perfectly classless society where limit on a deaf universe do n’t exist , there ’s short to confirm that deaf people felt sure-footed and contentedness in the community .
To learn more about the partake sign language of Martha ’s Vineyard — and some ways it was incorporate into the regional spirit — control outthis episode of Stuff You Missed in story Classwith Holly and Tracy .
