Forging Deaf Education in Nineteenth-Century France: Biographical Sketches of Bébian, Sicard, Massieu, and Clerc

Jean Massieu

Jean Massieu 101 I think it also worthwhile to mention the Abbé Sicard’s report, made as a member of the committee charged with reviewing Chateaubriand’s Génie du christianisme and read at the meeting of the French language and literature section of the Institut de France, January 23, 1811. Here are titles held by the Abbé Sicard: Priest of the Congregation of Priests of Christian Doctrine Honorary Canon of Notre Dame de Paris Director and Instructor in Chief of the School for the Deaf Administrator of the Quinze-Vingts and of the Working Blind Member of the Institute of France (Académie Française) Vice President of the Royal Academic Society of Sciences of Paris Member of the Academies of Madrid, Lucca, Livorno, Troyes, Nancy, etc. Chevalier of the Legion of Honor after the first Restoration of 1814 The orders of Saint Vladimir (Russia),Wasa (Sweden),and Saint Michael (France).  chapter sixteen  Jean Massieu Jean Massieu was born in 1772 in the village of Semens,near Cadillac,in the Department of the Gironde, of poor, ill-fated parents. They had in their care five other children afflicted with the same infirmity.Jean spent his early years tending sheep.He counted them on his fingers,and when the number exceeded ten, he made a mark on his staff and began again. Jean often related to his father his desire to go to school to learn to read and write alongside his little friends.The father,by way of signs,tried to make him understand that his condition prohibited it.The poor child pleaded to have his ears unplugged the way one would uncork a bottle, thinking that such a simple act could solve the problem. Seeing that he was getting nowhere, he made off with a book and headed for school. What could the teacher do for the intruder who rummaged through the book and moved his lips in imitation of the others? 102 Forging Deaf Education The boy tried to form the letters by dint of will, but soon groaned hopelessly at his failure. A fortunate event was to dry the tears of this poor deaf and speechless boy, however. A charitable citizen of the community , Monsieur de Puymaurin, was touched by his plight and took him to the Deaf Institute of Bordeaux, where the Abbé Sicard had been appointed director by Monseigneur de Cicé, archbishop of the diocese. The boy was admitted at the age of thirteen. His rapid progress validated the favorable opinion his benefactor had formed of him. Immediately following the death of the Abbé de l’Épée, the director of the Paris school, Sicard, was transferred to the capital and took his favorite student with him, with great expectations for his future. In his new position, and thanks to the successes of his student, Sicard consistently enjoyed favorable public opinion. Sicard was appointed First Instructor by Louis XVI on April 4, 1790, was confirmed by the Constituent Assembly on July 21, 1791, by the National Convention on the January 7, 1795 (at a salary of 1,200 francs, which was rather good for the times), and by the minister of the interior, Lucien Bonaparte, on September 22, 1800. His success filled him with such joy that Massieu couldn’t help but share his most personal thoughts with those around him. “I shall be able,”he said in signs,“to see to the needs of my mother in her old age.” He could never forget his family, to whom he sent unfailingly a goodly part of his savings.“To give to one’s parents is to return to them what one has received from them,” was the only reply he uttered when the matter was mentioned to him. His strange testimony at court following a theft of which he had been the intended victim created quite a stir.This is what occurred, according to the translation of an account of an English newspaper,along with the reflections of the editor: Among the many interesting events that characterize our times, the testimony of Jean Massieu, a deaf boy of eighteen years of age, is not one of the least extraordinary. This young man, a student of the Abbé Sicard, who is the successor to the Abbé de l’Épée in the difficult task of promoting education for Jean Massieu 103 the deaf, pleaded his case in open...