Rogers, Harriet Burbank

▪ American educator

born April 12, 1834, North Billerica, Massachusetts, U.S.

died December 12, 1919, North Billerica

      educator and pioneer in the oral method of instruction of the deaf (deafness) in the United States.

      After graduating from Massachusetts State Normal School (now Framingham State College) in 1851, Rogers taught at several schools in Massachusetts. Her prominence as an American educator began in 1863, when she accepted a deaf girl for private instruction.

      Rogers had read about the use of oral teaching (a method involving the imitation of the instructor's breathing patterns and larynx vibrations) in German schools for the deaf, and—despite the general acceptance of sign language as the preferred instructional mode in the United States—she quite successfully employed the oral teaching method with her new student.

      In 1866 she cofounded a school for the deaf at Chelmsford, Massachusetts, and the next year was selected to direct the Clarke School for the Deaf (originally Clarke Institution for Deaf Mutes) in Northampton, Massachusetts, a position she held until she resigned in 1884. She remained firmly committed to oral teaching and lipreading despite the criticism of the manualists who promoted the exclusive use of manual alphabets and sign language. The Rogers position, however, was endorsed in 1886 by the convention of the American Instructors of the Deaf.

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