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Gerrit Van Asch, oral Teacher of the Deaf

By H Dominic W Stiles, on 11 October 2013

Gerrit van Asch (1837-1908) was born in Holland.  He was trained in the ‘German’ or ‘Oral’ method by David Hirsch, Principal of the Rotterdam Deaf School and was one of his first assistants.  Hirsch (1813-95), who had been inspired in his teaching by Friedrich Moritz Hill (1805-75), founded the Rotterdam School in 1853 (Stevens, 1921, p.42).

Moritz Hill’s guidelines can be summarised in the sentence: ‘Teaching of spoken language is in everything.’  He wanted deaf children to be introduced to language by the ‘natural method’ – that is in the same way as hearing children learn to speak, by constant daily use, associated with proper objects and actions.  Therefore, speech in his opinion had tp be taught before reading and writing aand had to be used from the very beginning as the basis for teaching and communication.  Natural gestures were not discouraged but needed to be replaced by speech as soon as possible. (Markides 1983)

Gerrit van Asch came to Manchester and opend a school there in 1858 or 1859, tutoring the child of a wealthy Jewish merchant.  This marked the revival of teaching speech to Deaf children in Britain, and can be regarded as the first oral school in Britain (Stevens, p.43).

In 1862 van Asch opened a private school for deaf children in London, and in 1880 he was taken to New Zealand by their government to open an oral school there, the Sumner School for the Deaf (see Markides p.17, Stevens p.43).  He remained there until he retired in 1906 (Stevens).

I am guessing these pictures are from circa 1900 though they are to be found in the 1921 book by Stevens.

van AschAndreas Markides, The speech of hearing-impaired children. 1983. RNID UTC BTT

Stevens, J.E., Course of Lessons for Deaf Children, Wellington, 1921.  RNID Historical Books, RNID WTH BVR L

http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Cyc03Cycl-t1-body1-d3-d19-d16.html

http://www.vanasch.school.nz/history-timeline.php

[Page updated 1/12/2015]

 

 

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