By Brianne Burger
Before heading to the World Federation of the Deaf Congress in Madrid, Spain, I went to Paris, France to visit famous landmarks such as the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, and Versailles. On the third day, I decided to visit the Institution Nationale des Sourds a’ Paris, the Deaf institute where Laurent Clerc studied under the famous Abbe de l’Epee.
Obviously the school wasn’t listed in the Triple-A TourGuide of Paris, so we set about checking the Internet via my trusty Sidekick 3. Keywords on Google such as “Paris school for the deaf” or “Sourds Institution Paris” brought no success. Finally, I found a street named after Abbe de l’Epee and assumed the school would be on that road. The next morning in the chilly, rainy weather I set out in that direction, changing several metro trains before coming up into a quiet neighborhood that seemed like a much older part of Paris than the other areas I had explored.
After walking several blocks, I found Avenue St Jacques, which met Avenue Abbe de l’Epee at a corner of a large gray stone wall that seemed to stretch around the entire block between St Jacques, l’Epee and two other streets. I followed the wall to the next adjoining street where I found the gate open, wandered in, and saw the large grand statue of Abbe de l’Epee carefully placed in the middle of a courtyard surrounded by looming school buildings.
Statue of Abbe de l’Epee at Institution Nationale des Sourds a’ Paris.
A worker shouted and waved at me to first register at the office. I backtracked and entered a small office next to the gate entrance. What I saw was surprising, and yet not so surprising. I expected l’Epee’s school to employ a large number of deaf people, which was not the case.
When I tried to sign/gesture with the woman seated behind the desk that I wanted to take a small tour around the school grounds, she spoke back to me in French and knew very little sign language. She then gestured that I go to a room with a big “S” sign next to it and made the sign for “S” so I would know what to look for. It was there that I found the first deaf person in the school, a man studying abroad in France doing research on deaf history. He could not help me, so I left the room to take pictures of the Abbe de l’Epee statue.
Moments later, I met a Gallaudet student who was doing his summer internship at the school. He was able to take me for a short tour and explain the school’s makeup. We were led into a brand new building which had been donated by a French filmmaker, which revealed an old kiln through a glass floor from when the school first started.
We went into the back of the school which had many gardens and flowers. There, we asked a woman, who was leading a tour for two visiting interpreters, if we could see a statue of Laurent Clerc. The woman voiced to us that Laurent Clerc was just a student at this school and in the eyes of France, had achieved no major accomplishment other than leaving France.
To our shock and dismay, we also learned that the school does not provide college preparatory classes and is more of a vocational school, where students learn the basics such as French, math, etc, in lower school. When they get to what we call middle school in America, they take a series of tests and choose a vocational skill to study for the next three years. Upon graduation, they choose among fields such as carpentry or shoe-making, or accept government pensions. The government pension is larger than what they would make in a month working, so many do not work.
The educational system in France requires a series of tests, tougher than our SATs, to enter college. University study is free, but if people do not pass the tests, they cannot enter college. Deaf people in France agree that the tests are difficult to pass with only a vocational education, so many do not attend French Universities.
All of the teachers and staff at the school are hearing. It is estimated that maybe two deaf people work there either doing janitorial or ground work. We found a ceramic sign that listed all the major benefactors and famous teachers of the school. The sign also lists the year when the school turned Oral after the Milan Conference of 1880, and then the year the school turned back to sign language. The Oral part of the sign was bashed in, leaving a gaping hole. The French deaf people now cherish their sign language.
Founder: Abbe de l’Epee, 1712-1789.
Note the destroyed part of the sign on the year the institution became “orale”.
Laurent Clerc came to America and introduced the foundation of what would eventually become American Sign Language. With this language, the American deaf community was able to communicate with each other, just as he had communicated with his classmates in France under the teachings of Abbe de l’Epee. He along with Thomas Gallaudet also helped foster a community and educational system that included a deaf culture and sign language in America which has led to the rich history of deaf leaders today and still many more to come in the future.
Two questions remain in my mind after my visit to the school: why have the people of France not honored Laurent Clerc for his accomplishments in America or taken up the example set by his leadership to do the same in France? How can the Institution Nationale des Sourds a’ Paris hold an important place in the “origins” of modern deaf education and sign language, yet not be a model, world-class school for educating deaf children?
Brianne Burger works for Gallaudet University on a nationally funded project by the U.S. Department of Education. She can be found often around DC, Boston or NYC, participating in international committees or just having fun with her two dogs and ever-supportive boyfriend!
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15 Comments
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Bonjour!
Jean Massieul’s first teacher was Abbé de l’Epée.
L’Abbé died before Laurent Clerc entered St. Jacques’s school.
Jean Massieu was Clerc’s teacher.
Salut.
Jean
I always wanted to go there someday and visit that school. Glad to hear that you went there and brought something to America so we can learn something from you. Thank you for sharing.
Utterly fascinating story. Disturbing as well. But I can also see a lot of similarities in what we’re struggling against. If you use France as an example, it almost seems like the rest of the world has no real expectation that deaf people can really achieve anything. Thus they’ve got their version of our SSI, almost nobody going to college, no deaf teachers, etc.
I might be wrong, but that’s how it SEEMS from this account. Sad. And also why we now have to fight harder than ever.
Chris,
Under the Socialist government, most deaf people live in a room studio (microwave, refrigerator,
and bed with only one window in an old apartment
building).Their salaries are incredibly low.
However, things may change soon under a new
conservative Sarkozy (recently elected). Sarkozy
whose brother owns a financial business in NYC is
a close friends of many Republicans in Congress
as well as of the Bush administration. Meaning?
We may see some deaf people being evicted and driven away into remote villages out of both
Paris and its suburbans. I think they may continue
collecting SSI for the time being. Bush also successfully helped Germany and Sweden remove SSI
– according to the 2005 G-8 Summit.
??? the French government is socialist?
Sweden isn’t a G8 member, and I don’t think they’ve done away with SSI. If they did, I don’t think you can attribute it to Bush’s influence… he’s hated over there.
Lastly, in your other post (#85996), isn’t FSL actually acronymized as LSF?
Nice entry, Brianna. I can understand why French does not view Laurent Clerc in the same light that we, the Americans, see.
I do not think it is necessary for France to honor Laurent Clerc mainly because they would say, “Not another American thing.”
I think the Milan Conference of 1880 left French Deaf Community in shambles for years.
R-
St. Jacques’s invited Gilbert Eastman, Jack Gannon, Loy Galloway, Albert Pimentel, and other deaf Giants to present a speech in honour of Laurent Clerc in the early 1990s — thanks to the DPN — prior to the first First International Deaf Way. The same group were invited to hang a huge plaque on the wall of Clerc’s birthplace home in La Balme, a suburban of Lyon in the south of France. The French deaf loved Eastman so much they invited him to teach ASL the next year. Prof. Eastman was again invited in the summer in the late 1990s to teach ASL at St. Jacques’ (five blocks from l’Université de Paris IV known as Le Sorbonne). I was staying there for two weeks to watch the progress of my three French friends when being taught ASL. Kudos to Eastman, a positive attitude toward FSL was spreading all the way from Paris to Nice, Cannes, Bordeaux, and Toulouse. Not to mention the rise of French actor Emmanuella Laborit who has tremendodusly restored a moral booster to the FSL. The International Deaf Way II also inf uenced the French deaf. So different from the 1970s-1980s where I witnessed Cued in French and from 1960s where everybody used speech-lipreading in Paris.
There, indeed, do exist a number of oralists in Marseilles, the southwest of France, where a number of deaf Arabic immigrants from Algiers, Morocco, Libya, Saudi Arabia settle.
It’s La Sorbonne, Miss French Expert Jean. Brianne, where exactly do you work? Do you mean that your program is federally funded?
And it’s INJS de Paris, not a Paris. By the way, don’t use an aigu accent for the word “a.” It’s a grave accent.
Nitpicking aside, excellent article.
WOW, thanks DeafDC.com for allowing Brianne Burger shares her trip in France! Sad to know that Triple A do not have Deaf info for any of us Deaf Travelers who are so deeply interested to go Deaf History in all over the world! I may be WRONG about AAA because I have not been a member for so long time! Wondering if AAA do have info about Deaf history included??
How much of the original INJS de Paris buildings still intact? How old is this school now?
GL is definitely right about the proper acronymn for the French Sign Language - LSF, not FSL. You, Jean Boutcher, ought to know better from your fluency in French written language.
Where do you, Jean, obtain info about Sweden and Germany taking away with the similar SSI programs for disabled people?
GWB snickered at many government entitlement programs back to his Yale MBA studies. His MBA professor was horrified about GWB’s lack of intellects and understandings toward less forunate people and their struggling liveihood.
The Iraqi war controvesty kinda cause such distractions for the GWB-Dicky’s domestic policies.
Merkel’s conservative Germany leadership probably was mainly responsible for abolishing the generous social entitlement programs, not GWB. Do you have any proofs about GWB’s influence on Germany and Sweden’s domestic programs?
Why Sweden should listen to GWB’s advice about the social entitlement programs?
Robert L. Mason (RLM)
I have visited your site 781-times
Brianne, I’m sorry to have to let you know that all of this is old news. This is well documented in “A Journey into Deaf-World” by R. Hoffmeister, Ben Bahan and Harlan Lane.
France went rigidly oral right after 1880 Milan, and this is why they’re not the leaders in Deaf education today. Unfortunately the baton has passed onto to United States, because we’re at least moving Deaf education forward with Bi-Bi movement, as well as advocacy work through NAD, etc.
The French Deaf still sign, of course, but their sign language is not allowed in classrooms. According to the book, there is some hope, though. A law was recently passed in France that allows parents of Deaf children to choose to have their children educated with both French Sign Language (LSF) and French, instead of only spoken French.
Of course, the question is: are parents taking advantage of the new law?
And are enough of them doing it to the point where they could take France in the right direction?
The education system in Europe is this way - you take a test (which you cannot repeat) and it decided you go to university or to vocational school. In the U.S., you can take the SAT GRE etc as many times as you can. Or go to college or go to vocational school/community college.
IIRC, Germany has an SSI system which companies paid because there is an affirmative action requirements that you have to employe PWDs or paid the fines.
For the President Bush, well, he got a MBA unlike Gore, who flunked or quit every grad programs he was admitted. And Bush got better grades than the rich John Kerry. And those entitlements programs costs money, mine and your tax dollars at work.
I just googled for deaf history and found this site: http://www.deaf-history.org.uk/ (unfortunately it’s a frames site and therefore inaccessible in a variety of ways, but still interesting). There’s also a site about Milan 1880 http://www.milan1880.com/Histo.....facts.html