Dr. Max Goldstein founded Central Institute for the Deaf
to teach deaf children to talk and to train teachers of the deaf. CID was designed to be a place where doctors, teachers and parents would work together to help deaf children learn to talk.
Dr. S. Richard Silverman, CID's director from 1947 to 1972, was a leader in the field of deaf education. He presided over an era of growth and expansion for the school, research and professional education programs.
History
In 1914,
Max Aaron Goldstein, MD, a St. Louis ear, nose and throat physician, set out to do what most people believed impossible: teach deaf children to talk. He received postgraduate medical training in Europe. In Vienna, he met a professor who was teaching profoundly deaf children to talk. This experience became the genesis for his dream to convince the world that congenitally deaf children could learn to speak intelligibly.
Dr. Goldstein began an aggressive campaign to pursue his dream when he opened Central Institute for the Deaf. His idea was to create a place where doctors and teachers would work together to improve on ways to help deaf children. At first, he devoted two rooms of his St. Louis medical office to educating deaf children and training teachers of the deaf. His services included oral deaf education for children, counseling, a hearing clinic, lipreading instruction and speech correction for children and adults. To his ongoing medical research, he added studies using early devices such as hearing tubes and ear trumpets within an oral deaf education setting.
Leaders from the academic, business and medical communities supported Dr. Goldstein’s dream. The first CID school was completed in 1916. By 1929, CID's reputation for success had led to burgeoning enrollment. A second building was added to house soundproof laboratories, school classrooms and facilities to help deaf adults. Teachers measured children's progress in response to new listening devices and educational strategies. Scientists came from throughout the world to study the anatomy of animals' ears, the science of hearing devices, techniques for diagnosing deafness, the sound of deaf children's voices and related topics.
In 1931, CID's Teacher Training College affiliated with nearby Washington University, becoming the country’s first deaf education teacher training program to affiliate with a university. By 1947, CID offered graduate programs in deaf education, communication sciences and a new profession, audiology. CID scientists were instrumental in developing this field.
From its founding, CID built an international reputation as a research and demonstration school. CID was the research home of the emerging field of audiology. CID’s parent-infant program, begun in 1958, was the first program of its kind and a model for programs throughout the world. In 1981, CID's landmark EPIC Study proved that highly individualized, ability-grouped auditory-oral deaf education significantly increased the achievement of deaf school children. In the 1980s and 1990s, CID educational researchers produced a variety of tests and curricula, including the TAGS, GAEL, SPINE, CID Phonetic Inventory, ESP and CID SPICE auditory learning curriculum. Many of these instruments are still used in schools across the country and worldwide.
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In 2000, CID completed a new campus. The state-of-art facilities feature a specially designed “quiet school,” built for the auditory-oral education of children who are deaf and hard of hearing, and state-of-the-art research laboratories in the Harold W. Siebens Hearing Research Center.
In February of 2003, CID entered into an historic agreement to formalize ties with Washington University, its School of Medicine and Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery. Under the terms of the agreement, Washington University School of Medicine assumed ownership and governance of several of CID's programs, creating
CID at Washington University School of Medicine. CID - Central Institute for the Deaf remains separate and financially independent from the University, which continues to operate CID-developed
research, adult clinic and
graduate education programs on the CID campus on Clayton Avenue in St. Louis, Missouri. At that time, the CID school created a new main entrance around the corner at
825 South Taylor Avenue.
Today, Central Institute for the Deaf and
CID at Washington University School of Medicine continue a unique combination of education, research and clinical and community service to benefit children and adults who are deaf and hard of hearing. Here, working audiologists, teachers and scientists serve as graduate program faculty and graduate students gain experience in real-world settings, including the CID school. Work continues on the most progressive and promising techniques and technologies. CID school children benefit from a state-of-the-art facilities and from a staff on the leading edge of knowledge in deaf education, pediatric audiology and rehabilitative techniques.