The perils of assimilation in modern France: the deaf community, social status, and educational opportunity, 1815-1870

Journal of Social History, Fall, 1995 by Anne T. Quartaro

"The deaf and others who are disabled serve as a foil for the nondisabled in society. By portraying the disabled as different, odd, or not quite normal and by routinely putting them in an inferior position, the nondisabled assert their moral superiority. The nondisabled also expect the disabled to agree. They expect the disabled to mourn their losses ... If the disabled do not mourn their losses, then they threaten the security and superiority of the nondisabled ..."

Paul Higgins, Outsiders in a Hearing World.(1)

In 1990, the United States Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act which, for the first time, affirmed the right of all Americans, regardless of their physical status, to equal access in employment, education, and leisure activities. Ideally, this legislation strives for an integrated national community with the benevolent purpose to end discrimination against "disabled" people. From the perspective of the nondisabled community, this new legal framework is the outcome of a progressive and decent society which wants to assimilate its former "outsider groups." For the American deaf community, however, this milestone legislation poses some special problems as the deaf seek to define their minority culture in the midst of the majority, hearing community. The history of the deaf community both in the United States and Europe has revolved around "the preservation of [sign] language, policies for educating deaf children, and maintenance of their social and political organizations."(2) Today just as over a century ago, these goals have been difficult to explain to a hearing community which is predominantly focused on national integration. The history of the deaf community often shows us that there are genuine perils for "outsiders" like the deaf who have little control over their own place in society.(3)

With the advent of modern-day society in the early nineteenth century, many outsider groups like the deaf, the aged, and the indigent found that their social status and economic condition depended on the attitudes and policies of those "knowledgeable leaders" in their society who defined the terms of social integration. In modern French history, the sometimes violent conflict between "outsiders" and "insiders" has long fascinated historians. One classic study which inspired this avenue of research was Louis Chevalier's Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes. Chevalier argued that the society and culture of the lower classes threatened the "civilized" middle class in France during the 1830s.(4) These threats engendered more social control from the center to "contain" those people who were different. Recently, John Merriman and Rachel Fuchs have more closely examined the lives of people who functioned at the margins of society.(5) These studies provide us with some useful information about outsider groups and allow us to interpret, in a broader historical context, those events that affected the French deaf community in the early nineteenth century.(6) Only a few researchers, particularly Harlan Lane and Christian Cuxac, have focused on the deaf and the circumstances that surround their interaction with the dominant, hearing population.(7) While Lane's study captures the frustrations and challenges of the deaf community in France and America during the first half of the nineteenth century, his "story" permits fictional description if the historical evidence is wanting. Cuxac is more conventional in his study of deaf education, but he treats many of the language issues in the first half of the nineteenth century in a social and political vacuum.

In the following discussion, I will build upon the most instructive elements of Lane and Cuxac's work in order to evaluate some of the social, economic, and educational issues facing the deaf in France between 1815 and 1870. First, I will briefly consider the role of the Deaf Institute in Paris as a state-sponsored institution serving both social welfare and educational purposes. Second, I will introduce two important contributors to deaf education, Louis-Pierre Paulmier and Roch-Ambroise Bebian, who as professors at the Deaf Institute in the early 1820s advocated the use of sign language even as hearing people remained skeptical about its application. Third, I will evaluate some educational reforms proposed during the Second Empire that would have integrated deaf children into the public primary schools. By connecting these events in mid-nineteenth century France, we will discover how the majority, hearing community perceived the deaf, and what measures they were willing to adopt to assimilate deaf people into French society. We will also discover what role, if any, deaf people themselves played in determining their place in the national community. Although I have focused in this particular study on several notable leaders for the deaf community, it is my larger purpose to encourage more historical debate about the emergence of the deaf as their own cultural group during the course of the nineteenth century.(8)