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school for the deaf where he taught many more people sign language. He developed a teaching method after the girls taught him the signs they created. He would sign a sentence and his student would write it in French. Many people heard about his success in teaching Deaf people. One of l’Épée’s famous quotes is “the education of deaf mutes must teach them through the eye of what other people acquire through the ear.”

l’Épée established 21 schools throughout his years, and two years after his death, the National Assembly declared that Deaf people have rights!

After l’Épée died, Abbé Roch-Ambroise Cucurron Sicard became his successor. Sicard was also a Catholic priest, which is why they both have Abbé before their names. He was originally a principal of a deaf school in Bordeaux, France, but moved to Paris to take over l’Épée’s practice. Sicard was so inspired by Deaf people and Abbé Charles-Michel de l’Épée that he made it his goal to bring Deaf Education to the rest of the world. He hired two graduates from the school to come back to help teach, Laurent Clerc and Jean Massieu.

Sicard met Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, an American from Connecticut, in England. Gallaudet was inspired to teach the Deaf after meeting a deaf girl and writing the letters H-A-T in the dirt to tell her the thing on his head was a hat. The girl’s father was a wealthy doctor and paid Gallaudet to travel to Europe to learn more about Deaf education. He first went to England, where he found mostly oralism, a form a deaf education where lip reading and speech is used, very ineffective and limiting.