17 St Michael's Place

Mary Hare (1865-1945)

Although the life and work of Mary Adelaide Hare has been thoroughly documented elsewhere, her contribution to education is far too important to omit entirely here. My brief account below serves merely as an introduction to the wealth of material already in the public domain.

Teaching was in the family. Three of her older sisters ran a private school for girls from the family home in Upper Norwood, near Croydon. And this is where, having graduated with flying colours from a training course in the oral method of teaching, Mary Hare launched a class for a small number of deaf and dumb children. The class and her reputation quickly grew and, In 1895, she established the Oral School for the Deaf and Dumb at 17 St Michael's Place. Here it thrived for more than five years before relocating to two further addresses in Hove over the next 15 years.

Oralism means teaching children who have been born deaf to speak rather than relying on sign language. It had taken off in 1880, following an International Congress on Education of the Deaf that had been planned by a faction intent on banning teaching through sign language altogether.  They succeeded. The UK government accepted all the recommendations of the Conference, which led to a long period in which signing was supressed, with oralism predominating in deaf education. 

The main arguments favouring education through speech rather than sign language were – as they remain to this day albeit significantly less polarised - that it facilitates communication in a predominantly hearing world and enhances access to education, particularly through reading. Mary Hare was committed to giving deaf children a full education rather than simply sheltering them in asylums as had been the prevailing practice. Her teaching principles were guided by the pioneering work of Revd Thomas Arnold*, in particular his book "Education of the Deaf Mutes" published in 1888.

In essence, Hare's policy was that lip reading, speaking and reading should be relevant to activity, that all lessons irrespective of subject were language lessons in which to practice lip reading and speaking whole sentences, with activity to reinforce the learning. The principles took a while to become firmly rooted but she persevered in making them known, using "Good Speech is a means to Further Education" as her principal motto.

After two decades in Brighton and Hove, the school relocated to Burgess Hill where Hare remained at the helm until her death in 1945. Four years later, it moved yet again to Newbury, Berkshire. Now called the Mary Hare School, it has grown to become the UK's largest non-maintained school for profoundly deaf children and young people from reception age to sixth form. Most pupils proceed either to college or university, and the school also provides professional courses in deaf education for adults.

Whilst immersion in the English language remains the cornerstone of all teaching and learning at the Mary Hare School, there is now a more lenient approach to signing outside the classroom.

"My efforts on behalf of the Deaf have been my greatest joy in life," states Mary Hare in her will. If only she knew the extent to which her enlightened legacy has evolved. . .

Footnote

*A quarter of a century earlier, Arnold had abandoned Anglicanism for Nonconformity, thereby disqualifying himself from the otherwise guaranteed headship of the recently founded Institution for the Deaf and Dumb at Brighton.

Postscript

Frustratingly, Mary Hare's five plus years in Brighton fall between the 1891 and the 1901 censuses. As a learning support tutor myself, however, a project centred on the education and welfare of children with various disabilities in pre-First World War Brighton is firmly on my to-do list. By then, with any luck, at least a smidgen of detail about those who worked alongside Mary Hare at 17 St Michael's Place will have emerged. Any information or leads about staff and/or pupils appreciated, needless to say!