Assimilation Through Spoken English
If speech is better for hearing people than barbaric signs, it is better for the deaf: being the fittest, it has survived.
Emma Garrett, Oral Educator, Home for Training in Speech of Deaf Children Before They Are of School Age, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Oral educators warned that deaf people had become "Foreigners among their own countrymen." They charged that the use of sign language encouraged deaf people to form a community apart, with its own organizations, newspapers, cultural practices and beliefs. Oralists hoped that a purely oral education would lead to greater assimilation, better mastery of spoken English, and increased work opportunities.