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Education Of The Deaf And Dumb

Creator: n/a
Date: April 1834
Publication: North American Review
Source: Available at selected libraries


Introduction

This article from The North American Review outlines the European origins of deaf education, especially during the eighteenth century. The excerpt stresses the traditional prejudices against deaf people as well as the general goals of those who promoted the earliest efforts in deaf education in the United States.


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ART. II. -- Education of the Deaf and Dumb.

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1. De l'Education des Sourds-muets de naissance, par M. Degerando, Membre de l'Institut de France, Administrateur de l'Institut Royal des Sourds-muets, etc. etc. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris. 1827.

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2. Troisieme Circulaire de I'lnstitut Royal, des Sourds-muets de Paris, à toutes les Institutions de Sourds-muets de l'Europe, de l'Amerique, et de l'Asie; -- Paris, Septembre, 1832.

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3. Reports of the American Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, first to seventeenth inclusive. Hartford.

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4. Reports of the New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, fifth to fourteenth, inclusive. New York.

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5. Encyclopedia Americana, Vol. IV. Article, Dumb and Deaf. Philadelphia, 1830.

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'FRANCE,' says the distinguished author of the work first cited above, 'we confess it with regret, with surprise, -- has been last to see the public attention directed to the art of instructing the deaf and dumb.' With equal surprise, if not with equal regret, we may observe of our own country, that, while this interesting art has been actually in practice among us for nearly twenty years; in the hands, too, of men distinguished for their ability; nothing has yet appeared to shed light upon its principles, or to gratify the public curiosity with regard to its processes. Hardly has, here and there, a feeble attempt been made to prepare a series of the simplest elementary school exercises; and nowhere do we find even the shadow of a systematic course of instruction, or of a nomenclature reduced to logical method, having its foundation in the connexion between derivative ideas, and the primitive ones of which they are composed, or from which they are abstracted.

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But if, in this respect, our own country be still deficient, the labors of foreign writers have been so assiduous and so well directed, as to leave nothing, at least in mere theory, to be desired. Prolific Germany has produced her fifty writers on this single subject, considered in one or another of its aspects. France has more than retrieved the ground which she had lost; and from apathy, has passed almost to enthusiasm. Her rapid advances have left all competition far behind, and placed her decidedly at the head of the science and of the art. To her we owe the work of Degerando, the only complete treatise which the world has yet seen, on the education of the deaf and dumb, -- a treatise, which, however particular systems may vary from it in their practical details, embraces those great fundamental principles, which, having their origin in the very nature of things, must lie at the foundation of all. Spain, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Prussia, Switzerland, England, have all contributed their share to the common stock of improvement.

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Still, though we have in this country done nothing toward perfecting the theory of this noble art, and little toward reducing to system the details of its practice, we have done that which, to the eye of philanthropy, may seem of much higher importance. We have shown ourselves not insensible to the claim, which this remarkable portion of the human family have upon our sympathy and liberality. We have established institutions, which, though of less than twenty years' standing, occupy an elevated rank as well in character as in number. And though, in our extended country, the number of the deaf and dumb is great, and their wants inadequately supplied by the existing provision for their education, still the heart of the philanthropist is gladdened, whether he contemplates what has already been effected, or the disposition which manifests itself among our countrymen, to prosecute to its accomplishment whatever yet remains undone.

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Lamentable as the natural condition of the deaf and dumb evidently is, we have no satisfactory evidence, that, so lately as the commencement of the sixteenth century, the idea had ever occurred to any individual in any country, that this condition might be ameliorated by education. To impart instruction to a person affected by constitutional deafness, seemed an undertaking so palpably impossible, that its practicability was never even proposed as a problem, much less was it made a subject of examination and discussion. The speaking world had all acquired language through the medium of sound, and knowledge through the medium of language. The belief was therefore universally prevalent, that language could only be acquired through the ear, and was, consequently, in the nature of things, beyond the reach of the deaf and dumb. This pernicious prejudice had its origin in the highest antiquity. It has the express sanction of Aristotle, who, at a stroke of the pen, condemns the deaf and dumb to total and irremediable ignorance.

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Prejudices still more severe than this, of a kind, too, to bring down upon the heads of their unfortunate objects evils, which nature, unindulgent as in their sad case she evidently is, would have spared them, have extensively prevailed at different times and in different places; nor are we permitted to say, that they are even yet entirely dissipated. Among some nations of antiquity, the deaf and dumb were regarded as beings laboring under the curse of Heaven. By the Romans, they were considered, if not as affected by positive idiocy, as at least deficient in intellect; and were, consequently, by the code of Justinian, abridged of their civil rights. The Abbé de l'Epée (1) asserts that, in some barbarous countries, the deaf and dumb are even now regarded as monsters, and put to death at three years old or later, probably as soon as the fact of their calamity can be satisfactorily ascertained. The benevolent Abbé further tells us, that very respectable ecclesiastics of his own time openly condemned his undertaking; and that, too, on theological grounds. Parents, he remarks again, hold themselves disgraced by the fact of having a deaf and dumb child, and therefore conceal it with care from the eyes of the world, and confine it in some obscure retreat. Condillac denies to the deaf and dumb the faculty of memory, and, as a necessary consequence, the power of reasoning. Even among ourselves, how often do we observe a species of contempt for this unhappy portion of our brethren, or an absolute aversion towards them, which neither philosophy will warrant, nor enlightened benevolence approve!


(1) Institution des sourds et muets. Paris, 1776.

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