Deaf Identity and Social Images in Nineteenth-Century France

C H A P T E R 3

49 C H A P T E R 3 5 Learning the Language of Deaf People: Auguste Bébian, Educational Opportunity, and the Controversy over Spoken Language, 1800 to 1840 Today we are beginning to look at the instruction of deaf people as possible, but we can say that it is not as easy or as difficult as one or another [person] believes.1 During the first decades of the nineteenth century, the education of deaf children in Paris and in the provinces continued to be a great experiment in philanthropy, language acquisition, and moral education . Different educators and public officials held a variety of viewpoints on this topic. Some, like Abbé Sicard and Dr. Itard (the school’s physician), were entirely convinced of the effectiveness of their methods; others were driven by the challenge of social improvement for an outcast group, as seen in the case of Roch-Ambroise Auguste Bébian. Still other people like the Baron de Gérando worried about social order and assimilation of the deaf minority group. This was an especially contentious period in deaf education—one that, in some ways, paralleled the political unrest of the early nineteenth century.2 One of the key players in the controversies was the hearing educator Auguste Bébian (1789–1839).3 Bébian became involved with deaf education by chance, but he dedicated the rest of his life to the educational advancement of deaf children. He tried to create an alternative image of deaf people. For him, they possessed their own legitimate language, but they needed a way to interact successfully with the hearing majority. Bébian realized that the cultural worlds of the deaf and the hearing had to intersect in some way; but social images about deaf people ’s economic and intellectual poverty stifled Bébian’s efforts. In the larger historical picture, he broke new ground because he promoted equality when others were focused on difference and inferiority. To his credit, Bébian’s legacy is evident in the success of some of his students— Ferdinand Berthier, Alphonse Lenoir, and Claudius Forestier—who became the first generation of French deaf leaders.4 During the early 1800s, however, it was difficult to promote equality for a minority group like the deaf community when the overarching reality in France always came back to cultural inequality and social poverty.5 Bébian’s ideas provoked important questions, but any solutions that offered improved education and economic opportunity were mired in controversy. Abbé Sicard was once again in control of the Paris Deaf Institute when his godson, Auguste Bébian, arrived in Paris in 1802.6 Bébian was only twelve years old, the same age of many of the deaf children who were beginning their course of study at the Paris Institute. On his arrival, Bébian studied at the Lycée Charlemagne, but the Paris Institute became his home turf, and the deaf children at the school readily welcomed him into their social network. Bébian was young enough to gain fluency in the sign language of these deaf students, but he was not so old that he had any cultural notions about its validity. The students at the Paris Deaf Institute became his natural companions. This cultural immersion put him at odds with the experiments of Itard, who looked at the deaf pupils as “guinea pigs” for his theories about deafness.7 The friendship that grew between Bébian and Laurent Clerc (1785–1869) marked a crucial juncture not only for the future of the deaf community but also for the study of sign language. Bébian, the hearing boy, became a pupil of Clerc, the gifted deaf student and up-andcoming deaf intellectual, although the two probably did not think about their friendship in these terms. They shared somewhat of a common provincial heritage, for both came from middle-class families in the Dauphiné, a region in southeastern France. Clerc arrived in Paris during Sicard’s forced hiding from political authorities in 1797.8 His first teacher 50 Deaf Identity and Social Images in Nineteenth-Century France was Jean Massieu, Sicard’s star pupil, and for whom Clerc held the highest esteem.9 By the time of Bébian’s arrival, Clerc was an old hand inside the Paris Institute, but he clearly remained open to new friendships. Although Clerc was probably Bébian’s master teacher...