Residential Schools, History of

The American Asylum for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut was the first residential school in America established by Thomas H. Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc. A group of civic leaders in Hartford concluded that there was a need to provide education to deaf children in America and sent Gallaudet abroad in 1815 to learn about the techniques of teaching deaf students. During his travels, he was serendipitously led to National Institute for Deaf-Mutes in Paris where he met Clerc, a rising young teacher at the Paris school. The unique partnership between Gallaudet and Clerc helped to quickly usher the dawn of the education of deaf students in America and to establish the kind of foundation that enabled deaf education to spread in step with the population ...