Harriet Burbank Rogers

Background

Harriet Burbank Rogers was born in North Billerica, Massachussets, the daughter of Calvin and Ann (Faulkner) Rogers. An older sister was a teacher of Laura Bridgman

Education

Harriet was educated in the public schools of Billerica and for six years in the academy at Westford, Massachussets, where she was associated with John D. Long, later governor.

Career

In November 1864 she consented to undertake the instruction of a little deaf child. The manual method--using finger spelling and signs--was at that time universally used in the schools for the deaf in the United States. She knew that in Germany deaf children were taught to speak and to read speech from the lips, but she knew nothing of the method employed. She obtained the consent of the parents of her pupil to attempt to teach the child to speak. Encouraged by her success with this pupil, in June 1866 she opened a small private school for deaf children in Chelmsford, with her first pupil as one of these. She and one assistant took the entire care of these children both in and out of school hours. At the end of a year the little school numbered eight pupils. On October 1, 1867, she assumed the principalship of the new Clarke Institution for Deaf Mutes, now The Clarke School for the Deaf, which was to be opened in Northampton, Massachussets, being established by the endowment of John Clarke of that city. This was the first school for teaching deaf children under the oral method in the United States. Its establishment was obtained through the influence of Gardiner Green Hubbard, whose own little daughter, later the wife of Alexander Graham Bell , had been taught orally by a private teacher under her mother's direction. Schools for the deaf in the country violently opposed this new dream of "visionary enthusiasts, " but from the first she quietly and unobtrusively carried on her work. Her teachers were inexperienced but eager to follow suggestions and try experiments. Soon after the school at Northampton was opened, Alexander Graham Bell was for some months a member of the staff of Clarke School. His marvelous knowledge of phonetics and his personal magnetism were a strong influence in the further development of the methods of the school. At this time Miss Rogers spent a year in Europe, mostly in Germany, studying the methods employed in teaching the deaf there, and returned to continue more enthusiastically the work she had so well begun. In 1884 failure of health obliged her to go to Colorado. In 1886 her resignation was accepted by the official board of the school. She later returned to North Billerica but was never able to resume the burden of teaching. She adapted herself to the situation and became active in supervising the village kindergarten and in various other concerns. The work she had begun has continued to broaden and strengthen. Today schools for the deaf throughout the country to an increasing extent employ the oral method she introduced, and the number of schools using this method exclusively steadily increases.

Achievements

• Rogers' success in teaching deaf children to speak swayed public opinion on this matter in another direction, opening the door for the method of auditory/oral instruction in many American schools. Today schools for the deaf throughout the country to an increasing extent employ the oral method she introduced, and the number of schools using this method exclusively steadily increases.

Connections

Her older sister was a teacher of Laura Bridgman