Abbé Charles-Michel de l'Épée,
(born November 25, 1712, Versailles; died
December 23, 1789,
Paris
) was a philanthropic
educator of 18th century France
who has
become known as the "Father of the Deaf."
Overview
Was born to a wealthy family in
Versailles, the seat of political power in what
was then the most powerful
kingdom of
Europe. He trained as a
Catholic priest but was denied
ordination, as a result of his refusal to
denounce
Jansenism, a popular French
heresy of the time. He then studied
law, but
soon after joining the
Bar was
finally ordained as an
Abbé - only to be
denied a license to officiate.
Épée turned his attention toward charitable services for the poor,
and on one foray into the slums of Paris he had a chance encounter
with two young deaf sisters who communicated using a
sign language. Épée decided to dedicate
himself to the education and
salvation of
the deaf, and in 1760 he founded a shelter which he ran with his
own private income. In line with emerging philosophical thought of
the time, Épée came to believe that deaf people were capable of
language, and concluded that they should be
able to receive the
sacraments and thus
avoid going to
hell. He began to develop a
system of instruction of the
French
language and
religion. In the early
1760s, his shelter became
the world's first
free school for the deaf, open to the public.
Though Épée's original interest was in
religious education, his
public advocacy and development of a kind of
"
Signed French" enabled deaf
people to legally defend themselves in court for the first
time.
Abbé de l'Épée died at the beginning of the
French Revolution in (1789), and his tomb
is in the
Saint Roch church in Paris. Two
years after his death, the
National
Assembly recognised him as a "Benefactor of Humanity" and
declared that deaf people had rights according to the
Declaration
of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. In 1791, the "
Institution
Nationale des Sourds-Muets à Paris", which Épée had founded,
began to receive government funding. It was later renamed the
"Institut St. Jacques" and then renamed again to its present name:
"
Institut
National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris". His methods of education
have spread around the world, and the Abbé de l'Épée is seen today
as one of the founding fathers of
deaf
education.
After his death, he was succeeded by the
Abbe Sicard who became the
new head of the school.
The Instructional Method of Signs ("signes
méthodiques")
His educational method emphasised using gestures or hand-signs,
based on the principle that "the education of deaf mutes must teach
them through the eye what other people acquire through the ear". He
recognised that there was already a signing deaf community in
Paris, but saw their language (now known as
Old French Sign Language) as
primitive. Although he advised his (hearing) teachers to learn the
signs ("
lexicon") for use in instructing
their deaf students, he didn't use their language in the classroom.
Instead he developed an idiosyncratic gestural system using some of
this lexicon, combined with other invented signs to represent all
the verb endings, articles, prepositions, and auxiliary verbs of
the
French language.
In English, Épée's system has been known as "Methodical Signs" and
"Old Signed French" but is perhaps better translated by the phrase
"systematised signs". While Épée's system laid the philosophical
groundwork for the later developments of
Manually Coded Languages such as
Signed English, it differed somewhat
in execution. For example, the word
croire ("believe") was
signed using five separate signs — four with the meanings "know",
"feel", "say", "not see" and one that marked the word as a
verb (Lane, 1980:122). The word
indéchiffrable
("unintelligible") was also produced with a chain of 5 signs:
interior-understand-possible-adjective-not. However, like Manually
Coded Languages, Épée's system was cumbersome and unnatural to deaf
signers. A Deaf pupil of the school (and later teacher)
Laurent Clerc wrote that the deaf never used
the
signes méthodiques for communication outside the
classroom, preferring their own community language (
French Sign Language).
Although Épée reportedly had great success with this educational
method, his successes were questioned by critics who thought his
students were aping his gestures rather than understanding the
meaning.
Épée, to a lesser degree, also used speech and lip-reading with his
pupils.
Educational legacy
What distinguished Épée from educators of the deaf before him, and
ensured his place in history, is that he allowed his methods and
classrooms to be available to the public and other educators. As a
result of his openness as much as his successes, his methods would
become so influential that their mark is still apparent in deaf
education today. Épée also established teacher-training programs
for foreigners who would take his methods back to their countries,
and who established numerous
deaf
schools around the world.
Laurent
Clerc, a deaf pupil of the Paris school, went on to co-found
the first school for the deaf in
North
America and took with him the sign language that formed the
basis of modern
American Sign
Language, including the signs of the
ASL alphabet.
Some deaf schools in Germany and England that were contemporaries
of the Abbé de l'Épée's Paris School used an 'oralist' approach
emphasising speech and lip-reading in contrast to his belief in
'manualism'. Their methods were closely-guarded secrets and they
saw Épée as a rival. The
oralism vs.
manualism debate still rages to this day.
Oralism is sometimes called the 'German method' and manualism the
'French method' in reference to those times.
The Paris school still exists, though it now uses
French Sign Language in class rather
than Épée's methodical signs.
Located in rue Saint-Jacques in Paris, it is
one of four national deaf schools - the others being in Metz
, Chambéry
, and Bordeaux
.
Myths about Épée
Even today Épée is commonly described as the inventor of
Sign Language, or as having 'taught the deaf
to sign'. In fact he was taught to sign by the deaf.
He is also wrongly cited as the inventor of the one-handed
manual alphabet. Épée had actually been
quite disdainful of the advocates of
fingerspelling, and had himself used a
different (two-handed) alphabet in instances where he felt it
necessary to use one.
Published works
References
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