I’m still reading the “first 50 years” history of Gallaudet, and I find it interesting to note that the oral/manual debate has been going on there since 1868. When Edward Miner Gallaudet convened the first National Conference of Principals of Institutions for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, he didn’t send invitations to some of the schools that had recently been established, which were oral schools. Some saw this as a snub to the oral methods, but Gallaudet said it was simply because they didn’t have principals yet, they were still too new. He said that his school should “provide for the instruction of speech of all pupils until it plainly appears that success is unlikely to crown their efforts.” So even though it may have seemed that he was anti-oral, he was encouraging the use of oral/aural instruction until it was deemed a failure.