Honoring Harlan Lane

On July 13, 2019, we lost a great friend to and advocate for the Deaf Community. At the time of his passing, Harlan Lane was 82 years old. His contributions date back decades, but are still relevant today. If only we would tap into the wealth of historical knowledge of the foundations of both signed languages and American Sign Language, Deaf culture and the very definition of what it means to live as a Deaf person in America today.

I first became aware of his work in the early 1990s, when I was in an ASL interpreter education program. Back then, we used his newly written books, When the Mind hears and The Mask of Benevolence as reference works for writing our research papers. There was so much knowledge and wisdom in them, but as a college student with a full time job, I had little time to read them cover to cover.

I recently rediscovered these works last fall, and ordered the paperback copies. Reading for pleasure this time, I had a much different appreciation for Lane’s prolific research and writing style. When the Mind Hears is an complete history of the founding of both the language and the culture - written through the eyes of Laurent Clerc, a Deaf Frenchman who traveled to Hartford, CT at the behest of Thomas Gallaudet, an American Protestant Minister who sought to start the first school for the Deaf in America shortly after the turn of turn of the 19th century.

Some of the gems I gleaned from re-reading the book:

1. ASL developed due to the faith of many men, including Spanish monks, French priests and an American Protestant minister. This is sadly ironic because as I write this, the Deaf Community is one of the largest mission fields here in the United States.

2. There was a very intentional effort by Clerc and Gallaudet to ensure that America had one signed language, and not one that varied by state or then U.S. territory. Of course regional variation exists, but ASL is still one language.

3. The group of men who founded the first school for the Deaf in Hartford, CT (now known as the American School for the Deaf) worked to secure both private and public funding (from several states) before public education existed in the country.

4. Famous men who were considered “fathers of their fields,” did much more harm than good to the American Deaf Community throughout history. Examples are: Dr. Jean-Marc Itard, regarded as the founder of Otology, but whose experiments on deaf children were torturous. Others included Horace Mann, Dr. Samuel Gribley Howe, and Alexander Graham Bell.

His book The Mask of Benevolence built on the foundation and plainly explained the differences between the Pathological and Cultural perspectives on Deafness, and why he clearly advocated for the latter. He was passionately opposed to the implantation of young children with cochlear implants. In the preface to the second edition, Lane quotes a former secretary-general of the United nations: “ For me and my colleagues, Deaf people are not a disability group [but] a linguistic minority. And I understand that recognizing Deaf People as a linguistic minority goes hand in hand with respect for the Deaf Community.”

Harlan Lane, your contributions in support of the Deaf Community are many. You had a great impact on me and you educated and inspired my generation of interpreters, those of us who came up in the 1980s and 1990s, about the Community we sought to serve. You will be sorely missed, but we will work to continue the forward momentum and progress that you achieved. Rest in peace.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/28/obituaries/harlan-lane-dead.html