Laurent Clerc

Laurent Clerc

Introduction

Laurent Clerc is one of the most important figures in American deaf cultural history. He has a remarkable contribution to the deaf culture. Clerc has been training deaf people throughout his life; he has also been a professor at different universities and institutions. The paper discusses a comprehensive biography of Laurent Clerc and his contribution to the deaf culture.

Discussion

Laurent Clerc was born as Louis Laurent Marie Clerc on 26th December 1785 at La Balme les-Caves in the Isère and died on 18th July 1869 at Hartford in Connecticut in the United States. He is the pioneer of Deaf Education in America. His father, Joseph Francowas Clerc was born in 1747 and died in 1816 in La Balme. He was a notary tax collector and also a mayor of the village from 1780 to 1814. Clerc became deaf in his childhood (Marshall, 4) and his deafness was attributed to a fall into the fire at his family's home. This also destroyed his sense of smell. A stroke of fingers against cheek represented the scar that became his name in sign language.

At the age of 12, Clerc entered the national school for deaf students in Paris. His teacher was Jean Massieu, a deaf man and former student of the school's director Abbé Roch Ambroise Sicard. Clerc quickly learned sign language and was recognized as one of the school's outstanding students. In 1805, he became a tutor at the school, and a year later he was appointed as a teacher. In 1815, Sicard traveled to England to demonstrate French methods for teaching deaf children, in which emphasis was placed on signing, reading, and writing, and Clerc was among those selected to accompany him (Clerc, a.1).

When Clerc was in London the Rev; Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, a minister from the United States who had been engaged by Mason Fitch Cogswell, a prominent Connecticut doctor and father of a deaf daughter, attended one of Sicard's demonstrations. Gallaudet was overwhelmed by the study methods of teaching deaf students in Europe and bringing these methods back to the United States. He was impressed by the eloquence and sagacity of Clerc's written and signed responses at the demonstration. He traveled to the Paris school in spring 1816, and Clerc became Gallaudet's teacher.

The two men communicated through gestures, written French, and perhaps a smattering of English that Clerc had studied in preparation for his trip to England. They agreed that Clerc would come to the United States to help Gallaudet set up a school for deaf students. A contract dated June 13, 1816, specified that Clerc would teach grammar, language, arithmetic, geography, history, and religion, and that, in Protestant New England, he would be able to practice his Catholic faith and not be forced to teach anything that conflicted with it (Carroll, 25-90).

Within days of signing the contract, the two men boarded the Mary Augusta and sailed for the United States. After a voyage of 52 days during which Gallaudet continued to teach Clerc English and Clerc continued to ...