It was not until the 1960s that any serious consideration was given to the status of ASL as a natural language, following the work of William Stokoe (1960). Before that, it was 200 The Study of Language genuinely believed by many well-intentioned teachers that the use of sign language by deaf children, perhaps because it was considered too “easy,” actually inhibited the acquisition of the English language. Since spoken English was what those teachers believed the children really needed, a teaching method generally known as oralism dominated deaf education during most of the twentieth century. This method required that the students practice English speech sounds and develop lip-reading skills. Despite its resounding lack of success, the method was never seriously challenged, perhaps because of an insidious belief among many during this period that, in educational terms, most deaf children could not achieve very much anyway.

Whatever the reasons, the method produced few students who could speak intelligible English (less than 10 percent) and even fewer who could lip-read (around 4 percent). While oralism was failing, the use of ASL was surreptitiously flourishing. Many deaf children of hearing parents actually acquired the banned language at schools for the deaf, not from the teachers, but from other children. Since only one in ten deaf children had deaf parents from whom they acquired sign language, it would seem that the cultural transmission of ASL has been mostly carried out from child to child.