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Abstract

This paper examines the ways music has, historically, been used to treat two problems that cut across the boundaries of many areas of exceptionality: retarded speech development and impaired hearing. To support the hypothesis that music played an important role in hearing and speech development in early special classrooms, evidence is presented of actual nineteenth-century classroom practices. Pictures of classrooms in the first schools for the deaf in the United States show evidence of music activities and the presence of music instruments. Early diagnostic uses of music to determine hearing capacity and an analysis of texts written in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries covering the uses of music in the special classroom to develop speech are also presented.

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Music in Special Education Before 1930: Hearing and Speech Development

Abstract

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