It’s time to put together my 08-09 curricula for the kids, and in doing that I made my annual visit to the education section of my local public library (the 370’s per Dewey Decimal, FYI) to borrow a couple books I always find helpful in that process.
While there I came upon Educating Deaf Students: From Research to Practice (Marschark, Lang & Albertini; Oxford University Press, 2002), and of course I had to take it home, because, well, it looked interesting. Not a topic I have any real pressing need to master, any more than one needs to master, say, knitting, or Latin, but a subject about which I know very little and think it would be neat to learn a little more. As it happens I’m only on page 31 and holding, so I can’t tell you whether the book is any good, though it looks promising.
I’ve never seen the topic of educating deaf people show up in a regular history book, so I wanted to share a few interesting bits from this book:
“Saint Augustine’s descriptions of a conversation between hearing and deaf persons suggest that such communication [via a form of sign language] was commonplace. This may indicated that converastion among deaf people in late ancient Roman society was not only familiar, but that deaf people were not as isolated as some have surmised.” (p. 18)
“In the late 1400’s, Agricola described a deaf person who had been taught to read and write.” (p.19)
The book goes on to list four distinguished renaissance artists, one of whom studied history and the scriptures in a monastary, and was known to have communicated using signs with his parish priest, who had no difficulty understanding. And then we learn about the work of the spanish benedictine monk, Pedro Ponce de Leon:
“It was in 1578 that Ponce de Leon described how he had taught the congenitally deaf sons of great lords and other notables to read and write, attain a knowledge of Latin and Greek, study natural philosophy (science) and history, and to pray. Ponce de Leon’s students included the deaf brothers Pedro and Francisco de Velasco, and the congenitally deaf Fray Gaspar, who later became a priest.” (p. 20)
The history continues into the modern era (shifting to England and then the United States), for those who are interested in learning more.
I wish bits of information like this were included in more general-purpose works of history. I do realize, of course, that editors have a need to pare down and pick and choose what makes the final cut in a history text. On the other hand, I think these little reports really add to our understanding of life in ancient Rome or renaissance Europe.
***
Curiously, the authors observed about the middle ages: ” . . . we find little biographical informtion that might help us understand how deaf people lived. It seems likely, however, that the Dark Ages were especially dark for deaf persons.” (p. 18)
I’m not entirely convinced myself of that conclusion — what evidence the authors offer supports the ‘little information’ assertion and not the ‘especially dark’ assumption. I tend to be more optimistic than not, I suppose because of the reports from the eras immediately before and after. But since neither of us have any information, there’s no telling what the real story is.