The Spanish National Deaf School: Portraits from the Nineteenth Century

3. The Teacher’s Noble Work: Francisco Fernández Villabrille

64 3 The Teacher’s Noble Work: Francisco Fernández Villabrille This is the teacher’s noble work: to light the sacred fire of the intellect, where there is no more than a material existence, ruled virtually by the arousal of the senses. —Francisco Fernández Villabrille, 1845 If eloquent men believe they can express with sounds ideas that are very distant from the realm of the senses, why should deaf-mutes not have the right to express them in signs? —Francisco Fernández Villabrille, 1854 My whole life belongs to this school. —Francisco Fernández Villabrille, 1857 Francisco Fernández Villabrille arrived at the Madrid deaf school in 1835, when the establishment was at a turning point in its history. For years, the school had suffered from mismanagement and neglect, but now the newly appointed associate director, Juan Manuel Ballesteros, was struggling to revitalize instruction and restore order among the students. In this climate of renewal and reform, Villabrille plunged into the responsibilities of his new position, and despite his lowly rank of student observer, the twenty-fouryear -old was soon penning his thoughts on deaf education. In July of 1836, he presented the school’s governing board with a theoretical paper on deaf education. The following month, when he had been on the job less than one year, he was named professor of drawing, replacing Roberto Prádez, the veteran deaf artist who had held the position for three decades.1 (Villabrille’s credentials for the post of art teacher, if any, are not known.) Francisco Fernández Villabrille 65 Villabrille quickly earned Ballesteros’s confidence, and the associate director came to rely more and more on the energetic newcomer, bypassing the school’s elderly senior professor, Antonio Ugena. In the years to come, Villabrille and Ballesteros would collaborate in numerous endeavors , including the Curso elemental de instruccion de sordo-mudos (1846) and a manual for blind students (1847).2 Instruction of blind pupils in Madrid had begun at Ballesteros’s initiative, but it was not long before the talented and industrious Villabrille took over the actual teaching; eventually , the blind children of the asylum of Santa Catalina de los Donados also joined his classes at the Madrid school.3 In 1848, Villabrille succeeded Ugena as first professor.4 At this point, he was charged with teaching language (all aspects) and religion, preparing students for their first confession and communion, and devising exercises for their public examinations. As first professor, he also served as court interpreter whenever a deaf person required such assistance. Over the years, Villabrille would be joined in his efforts at the deaf school by two family members. In the early 1840s, his wife, María del Carmen Gutiérrez, began teaching deaf and blind girls. Her work complemented that of her husband, who, in addition to promoting the education of deaf and blind children, also advocated the instruction of women—just as well, since he and María del Carmen had two daughters, Antonia and Dolores Villabrille y Gutiérrez.5 Don Francisco’s views on women’s education and their position in the family were in keeping with the conventional wisdom of his day: Women should be taught if for no other reason because it fell to them to provide their children’s first lessons, and “along a path strewn with dangers, who,” he asked, “would let himself be led by a blind person?”6 Thus women required instruction so they could better fulfill their familiar role as wives and mothers. Yet Villabrille’s own wife must have challenged these traditional views on a daily basis, moving beyond the narrow, societally prescribed sphere of wife and mother to labor alongside him in the teaching of deaf and blind girls. In 1848, Don Francisco’s brother Miguel, nearly twenty years his junior , was admitted as a teacher trainee.7 The younger Villabrille, like his brother before him, quickly gained the confidence of Associate Director Ballesteros. Eventually Francisco would see Miguel become the school’s second professor, second in rank only to his older brother. Over the years, Villabrille gained an intimate knowledge of deaf men and women, a knowledge that led him to view them as a “people” (pueblo) 66 Francisco Fernández Villabrille with a language of their own.8 An anecdote Villabrille recorded in 1851 provided insight into his thoughts about this “people.” The story concerned a twenty-two-year...