Read Online I Can Hear You Whisper by Lydia Denworth - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lydia Denworth
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âdutyâ? For these, he reasoned that if he had been taught to understand Latin in his native language of French, so should the deaf be taught in theirs. He had seen the way they gestured to each other and communicated among themselves. So, the story goes, Epée turned to sign language and thus began the education of the deaf.
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My stack of books on deaf history grew, and in every book I read, the story of Epée and the twin sisters appeared. The details varied and were occasionally embellished. Sometimes it was day, sometimes night; sometimes not just dark but stormy. Sometimes the events took place in the French countryside. Often, Epée is described as âinventingâ sign language, though that is an exaggeration. Whether the meeting took place on a dark night, that dramatic bit of storytelling symbolizes the significance of the event: movement from darkness into light. The story is really a folktale of the origin of a culture, according to Carol Padden and Tom Humphries, who together have written several books on Deaf history and culture. âIt has come to symbolize, in its retelling through the centuries, the transition from a world in which deaf people live alone or in small isolated communities to a world in which they have a rich community and language.â
Since the time of the ancient Greeks, when feats of memory and oratory represented the height of intellectual achievement, the deaf had been considered ineducable. Aristotle believed that they were incapable of learning and of reasoned thinking. If you could not use your voice, he argued, you could not develop cognitive abilities. Beyond an inability to hear or speak, the âdeaf and dumbâ or âdeaf-mutesâ as they were then called, were often thought to have a third problem: mental retardation. In nearly every language, the word âdumbâ connotes lack of intelligence. And who could prove otherwise? Imagine the frustration of all those trapped minds. It was this barrier to communication that ledSamuel Johnson to call deafness âone of the most desperate of human calamities.â
At home, with family and those close to them, most deaf people used natural gestures, âhome signs,â to communicate basic needs and wants. If they were fortunate enough to have other deaf people nearby, they sometimes had a wider repertoire of gestures, but they were effectively barred from the rest of society. Helen Keller famously said that being blind cut you off from things, but being deaf cut you off from people. For her, deafness was the greater affliction. The wild and uncouth behavior of those who couldnât communicate could beindistinguishable from that of the mentally ill. Well into the twentieth century, the deaf were still sometimes put in mental health institutions.
The first to attempt to teach a deaf person any kind of language was not actually Epée butPedro Ponce de León, a Spanish Benedictine monk born about 1520. In Spainâs aristocratic families, there was a higher than average incidence of deafness, most likely the result of intermarrying. In several cases, considerable estates were at risk, because the law of the time prevented the âdeaf and dumbâ from owning property or writing wills. But if a deaf person could be taught to speak, the law could be nullified. Lack of speech rather than hearing was the decisive factor. Such families had a lot at stake. For his part, Ponce de León didnât want to save the fortunes of his students; he wanted to save their souls. If you couldnât make confession, you couldnât be saved.
And so the deaf had to be taught to speak. Extensive details of Ponce de Leónâs methods havenât survived, but it appears he first taught pupils to associate written words with objects and ideas, and then moved to articulation of those words. He used some gestures and developed a manual alphabet. The records
 â¢Â â¢Â â¢Â
My stack of books on deaf history grew, and in every book I read, the story of Epée and the twin sisters appeared. The details varied and were occasionally embellished. Sometimes it was day, sometimes night; sometimes not just dark but stormy. Sometimes the events took place in the French countryside. Often, Epée is described as âinventingâ sign language, though that is an exaggeration. Whether the meeting took place on a dark night, that dramatic bit of storytelling symbolizes the significance of the event: movement from darkness into light. The story is really a folktale of the origin of a culture, according to Carol Padden and Tom Humphries, who together have written several books on Deaf history and culture. âIt has come to symbolize, in its retelling through the centuries, the transition from a world in which deaf people live alone or in small isolated communities to a world in which they have a rich community and language.â
Since the time of the ancient Greeks, when feats of memory and oratory represented the height of intellectual achievement, the deaf had been considered ineducable. Aristotle believed that they were incapable of learning and of reasoned thinking. If you could not use your voice, he argued, you could not develop cognitive abilities. Beyond an inability to hear or speak, the âdeaf and dumbâ or âdeaf-mutesâ as they were then called, were often thought to have a third problem: mental retardation. In nearly every language, the word âdumbâ connotes lack of intelligence. And who could prove otherwise? Imagine the frustration of all those trapped minds. It was this barrier to communication that ledSamuel Johnson to call deafness âone of the most desperate of human calamities.â
At home, with family and those close to them, most deaf people used natural gestures, âhome signs,â to communicate basic needs and wants. If they were fortunate enough to have other deaf people nearby, they sometimes had a wider repertoire of gestures, but they were effectively barred from the rest of society. Helen Keller famously said that being blind cut you off from things, but being deaf cut you off from people. For her, deafness was the greater affliction. The wild and uncouth behavior of those who couldnât communicate could beindistinguishable from that of the mentally ill. Well into the twentieth century, the deaf were still sometimes put in mental health institutions.
The first to attempt to teach a deaf person any kind of language was not actually Epée butPedro Ponce de León, a Spanish Benedictine monk born about 1520. In Spainâs aristocratic families, there was a higher than average incidence of deafness, most likely the result of intermarrying. In several cases, considerable estates were at risk, because the law of the time prevented the âdeaf and dumbâ from owning property or writing wills. But if a deaf person could be taught to speak, the law could be nullified. Lack of speech rather than hearing was the decisive factor. Such families had a lot at stake. For his part, Ponce de León didnât want to save the fortunes of his students; he wanted to save their souls. If you couldnât make confession, you couldnât be saved.
And so the deaf had to be taught to speak. Extensive details of Ponce de Leónâs methods havenât survived, but it appears he first taught pupils to associate written words with objects and ideas, and then moved to articulation of those words. He used some gestures and developed a manual alphabet. The records
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