Laurent clerc biography deafness causes

♦ 1788

A disastrous year in France. In August, France declared financial bankruptcy. The Estates General, the legislative assembly representing the three French orders (clergy, nobility, and third-state) were convened in 1789. The winter of 1788-89 is particularly cold. The harvests were very bad and the people were hungry. 

♦ 1789

The Revolution breaks out in France, symbolized by the storming of the Bastille on July 14. It is the end of the Old Regime. The king is deposed. Joseph Clerc is ruined.  His son Laurent stays in the village and received no any education at all.

December 23, death of the Abbé de l’Épée. His funeral took place the next day in the Saint-Roch church where he officiated.

The Abbé Roch-Ambroise Sicard became his successor as head of the school for deaf-mutes.

♦ 1790

A former pupil of the Abbé de l’Épée, named Cyrille Michel, passes through La Balme. Hoping to be a tutor, he stopped at the Clerc’s. Their fortune gone, the family can’t afford to pay him, and he leaves for Moûtiers, a small city in the Alpes in the hope of creating a school for deaf children.

A doctor from the city of Lyon tried to “cure” Clerc of his deafness by injecting liquids into his ears.  Clerc would later write that he suffered mightily from the “treatment” and that the attempt was abandoned.

♦ 1792

August 26: Sicard was arrested by the revolutionaries. The students of his school mobilized on his behalf and succeeded in getting him released, enabling him to escape the tragic and bloody September massacres.

♦ 1793

January 21: King Louis XVI was guillotined. October 16: Queen Marie Antoinette was also guillotined. The city of Lyon wais bombed.

Beginning of the French revolutionary calendar, with the year beginning on September 22 and no longer on January 1. This calendar would eventually be abandoned in 1806.

Laurent Clerc expressed himself through family-created “home signs.”

♦ 1794

The “Institution Nationale des Jeunes Sourds de Paris” was

Would you believe that the first outstanding deaf teacher in America was a Frenchman? His name was Laurent Clerc. He became a friend of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and together they founded America’s first school for the deaf.

Laurent Clerc was born in a small village near Lyons, France, on December 26, 1785. He was born hearing, but when he was one year old, he fell into a fire. As a result, he lost both his hearing and his sense of smell. The right side of his face was badly burned, and was scarred for his whole life. However, in later years, the scars only made him look more distinguished. The sign for his name was even based on the scar.

At the age of 12, Laurent entered the Royal Institution for the Deaf in Paris where he excelled in his studies. After he graduated, the school asked him to stay on as an assistant teacher. He was a dedicated teacher; and consequently, was promoted to teach the highest class.

Meanwhile, in America, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was studying to be a minister when he met a young deaf girl, Alice Cogswell. He was upset to learn that there were no schools for the deaf in America. He was very concerned about the lack of educational opportunities for the deaf. Therefore, in 1815, Gallaudet sailed to London, England to seek ideas on how to teach deaf people. However, he was unable to get help and he became frustrated. While he was there, he met a French educator of the deaf who invited him to go to Paris to spend three months learning at the Royal Institution for the Deaf, the school where Laurent Clerc was teaching.

Gallaudet accepted the offer, and went to the Royal Institution for the Deaf, where Clerc became his Sign Language teacher. The two worked and studied well together. When the time came for Gallaudet to return to America, he asked Clerc to come with him. Clerc accepted on one condition: that he would stay in America only a short time.

The two men set sail on June 18, 1816. The voyage across

French-American educator (1785–1869)

For the Swiss sprinter, see Laurent Clerc (athlete).

Louis Laurent Marie Clerc (French:[lɔʁɑ̃klɛʁ]; 26 December 1785 – 18 July 1869) was a French teacher called "The Apostle of the Deaf in America" and was regarded as the most renowned deaf person in American deaf history. He was taught by Abbé Sicard and deaf educator Jean Massieu, at the Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets in Paris. With Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, he co-founded the first school for the deaf in North America, the Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, on April 15, 1817, in the old Bennet's City Hotel, Hartford, Connecticut. The school was subsequently renamed the American School for the Deaf and in 1821 moved to 139 Main Street, West Hartford. The school remains the oldest existing school for the deaf in North America.

Biography

Laurent Clerc was born December 26, 1785, in La Balme-les-Grottes, Isère, a village on the northeastern edge of Lyon to Joseph-François Clerc and Marie-Élisabeth Candy in the small village of La Balme, where his father was the mayor. Clerc's home was a typical bourgeois household. When he was one year old, Clerc fell from a chair into a fire, suffering a severe burn and obtained a permanent scar on the right side of his cheek. Clerc's family believed his deafness and inability to smell were caused by this accident, but Clerc later wrote that he was not certain of this and might have been born deaf and without the ability to smell. The facial scar later provided the basis for his name sign, performed with the manual alphabet for "U" (thumb out), with the pads of the two fingers stroked tw

Kyle Oien
June 8, 2016

Laurent Clerc

Laurent Clerc was born into an important and wealthy family in 1785. Clerc's father, Joseph Francis was the Royal Attorney, and Mayor of their town, La Balme-les Grottes (Canlas). His village is located near Lyon in southeastern France.

When Clerc was a young child of just one year, he "fell from his high chair into the kitchen fireplace" (Canlas). This left Clerc with severe burns on his face. His wounds Became infected causing a high fever. The fever left Clerc without hearing or smell. His name sign is derived from the scar that was left on his face from this accident (Lapiak). Clerc remained home, taking care of the farm animals and did not attend school until he was twelve.

Once he turned twelve his uncle and godfather enrolled him in the Institut National Des Jeune Sourds-Muets. This school was the first school that was made specifically for deaf children. Clerc immersed himself in his studies and excelled. Clerc eventually learned then mastered the art of French Sign Language. The school's philosophy was to teach the deaf children to talk as well as sign. One of his teachers, Abbe Maragon, became agitated with Clerc for not pronouncing words correctly and viciously struck him in the lower jaw, causing him to severely bite his tongue. Clerc angered and humiliated stopped taking speaking classes and swore never to speak again. From this experience Clerc created the belief that the best way to teach deaf students is to only use sign and not talking (Canlas).

Once he completed his training his teachers were impressed by his signing and asked him to stay on as an assistant teacher. "He was a dedicated teacher; and consequently, was promoted to teach the highest class" (Kononenko).

After 10 years of teaching clerc went to London England with Abbe Roch-Ambroise Sicard, the head of the school (Canlas), and Jean Massieu, a fellow teacher. In England Sicard and Clerc taught and demonstrated t