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Monday, December 19, 2011

Fw: H-ASIA: Missons and Disabilities (Blind and Deaf) in China

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Conlon" <conlon@U.WASHINGTON.EDU>
To: <H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2011 10:32 PM
Subject: H-ASIA: Missons and Disabilities (Blind and Deaf) in China


> H-ASIA
> December 19, 2011
>
> Missions and Disabilities (Blind and Deaf) in China
> **********************************************************************
> From: Tom Oey <oeytg@yahoo.com>
>
> Dear List Members,
>
> At a recent conference "Religion and Charity" held at Shanghai
> University in October 2011, Peter Ng presented a paper on a person
> who conducts ministry to the Blind in Hong Kong.
>
> I was privileged to serve as co-editor of Bible Lessons for the Deaf
> at the Baptist Sunday School Board (now Lifeway Christian Resources),
> Nashville, Tennessee in 1993 and 1994. I learned some American Sign
> Language at that time and have kept up with some of my writers over
> the years. I was saddened to learn of the recent passing of the
> editor for the last 20 years, Daniel Johnson, a Deaf person who was
> the pastor of a Deaf congregation in Wilson, North Carolina. In 2006
> Daniel sent me a draft proposal for his DMin thesis at Samford
> University. He also sent me a paper "Deaf Education in China
> 'History, Current Issues and Emerging Deaf Voices' " by Richard R.
> Lytle, PhD, Katheryn E. Johnson, PhD and Yang Jun Hui, MA which I
> assume is also dated around 2006.
>
> The paper traces the history of Deaf education in China from the 19th
> century up to the present day. One of the debatable issues is the use
> of the "oral education method" versus the "sign language" method. The
> "sign language" method dating back to Thomas Gallaudet and a French
> Deaf priest, Laurent Clerc, whom he brought to America in the early
> 19th century, is often preferred by Deaf culture advocates; however
> the oral method, since Alexander Graham Bell, which emphasize
> abilities in the hearing language, was adopted by missionaries in
> China after a 1880 conference held in Milan, Italy. The oral method
> was used by Rev. and Mrs. C.R. Mills in Dengzhou, Shandong, China at
> a school established in 1887. The sign language method was used by a
> French Catholic school for the Deaf established in Shgnah in 1897,
> and "In 1914 the first School for the Deaf founded by Chinese was
> established in Hangzhou by a man with a Deaf son...Many of these
> early Deaf schools had strong Christian missionary orientations."
>
> I notice the paper says nothing about the pre-history of Deaf
> missions in China. Samuel Robbins Brown, the first full-time director
> of the Morrison Education Society in Macau and Hong Kong from 1839 to
> 1847, had been an instructor at the School for the Deaf and Dumb in
> New York City from 1832 to 1835. Henry Winter Syle (1846-1890), was
> the son of E.W. Syle (1817-1890), an Episcopal missionary to China
> and Japan. Henry W. Syle was born in Shanghai and subsequently became
> the first ordained Deaf minister in the United States, in the
> Episcopal denomination. It is for this reason that the papers of
> Henry W. Syle and his father E.W. Syle are found at Gallaudet
> University. In 2007 and 2008, I did some research on the papers of
> the E.W. Syle at Gallaudet University, a university for the Deaf in
> Washington DC, regarding the correspondence of E.W. Syle and John
> Liggins, who was the first Protestant missionary to enter Japan in
> 1859, and I was privileged to have some interactions with the Deaf
> archivists there.
>
> Thomas G. Oey, Ph.D., Independent Scholar
>
> Email: oeytg@yahoo.com,
> Mail Forwarding Address: 5 Lian Ge Dong Lu, Shaoxing 312000
> Zhejiang, CHINA
> Phone: 86.575.8681.0057
>
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