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I would love to know why there was an expectation for deaf children to speak?

Andrea Shettle Many reasons. One is the assumption that speaking and lipreading is superior to signed languages, and another is the mistaken belief that signed langu…moreMany reasons. One is the assumption that speaking and lipreading is superior to signed languages, and another is the mistaken belief that signed languages are not real languages. There is a long history of non-disabled people looking down on people with disabilities and viewing them as innately inferior. Thus anything that makes you look "different" from the "norm" was viewed as inferior, including signed languages. Also people have a tendency to assume that someone who behaves and looks "normal" is therefore "functioning well". This assumption may be oblivious to the reality that a deaf person, or a person with disabilities in general, may be paying a very high price for conformity to social norms and "looking normal". For example, a deaf person may seem to function well in conversations, perhaps not because of having learned to lipread well (some deaf people do but others do not) but because they have learned to fake comprehension--ie make others think they have understood when they haven't. So the deaf person who seems to "function well" in communication might actually be feeling overwhelmed and alienated. But because they seem outwardly, to the uninformed hearing observer, to be "doing well" in the "real world" of hearing people (as if the deaf world were not just as real!) they assume that this is proof that teaching deaf children to speak while rejecting sign language is beneficial for them.(less)

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