Samuel Heinicke, the father of oralism, and Moritz Hill, a reformer of the oral method

Samuel Heinicke, who is often called the father of oralism, had different goals in his teaching. As with the Greek philosophers, he believed there was a connection between speech and thinking. Heinicke claimed that abstract thoughts could not be conveyed in sign language. According to him, learning spoken language was the only way for deaf people to find their place in society, and he also believed sign languages isolated them from other people. He thought that signing slowed down the learning of speech and that vision could not compensate for hearing because it was not reliable at communicating thoughts. Because of this, teaching students to speak was not enough; the tuition had to take place in spoken language. In addition, Heinicke believed that the intellectual level of deaf people was dependent on speech because everybody uses speech to think. The problem with this was that uneducated deaf people who were not part of the world of sound did not know the terms for matters and concepts. According to Heinicke, it was possible to teach deaf people to write, thereby enabling them to use ‘visual names’ but he did not consider this useful. He did not want to use writing as a teaching method because he believed that only things that were spoken aloud could be remembered. He considered signing to be a sub-human way of communicating.

Heinicke made two inventions related to teaching of speech. One of these was the ‘language machine’, a model of the tongue and throat that could be used to demonstrate how various sounds were produced. The machine could be both looked at and touched. A similar idea was later utilised in teaching with pupils touching their own throat and their teacher’s throat to understand how sounds were formed. In his other invention, Heinicke utilised the sense of taste with different flavours representing various letters. For example, the flavour of pure water signified the letter ‘a’, sugar water represented the letter ‘o’ and olive oil was the letter ‘u’. Liquid representing a certain letter was placed on a student’s tongue with a feather. These two methos helped students become aware of spoken language. According to Heinicke, they produced excellent results.

In the early 19th century, Abbé de l’Épée’s French teaching method, which utilised sign language, seemed to be gaining the upper hand. However, thanks to the influence of Friedrich Moritz Hill, the German oral method began to gain popularity once again. Hill acted as the head of the deaf teacher seminary and in 1840 published a book on teaching deaf children.

He believed that it was important to focus on the teaching of natural everyday language to deaf children, ensuring that speech became a part of their day-to-day lives. It was important that speech could be used to express thoughts. Hill’s basic idea was that deaf children should learn spoken language the way hearing children did — through tuition given in spoken language. He agreed with Heinicke that spoken language had to be used both in tuition and during leisure. As an educator and the head of the teacher seminary, Hill held sway and his thoughts spread far, all the way to the Nordic countries.