Pedro Ponce de León's teaching of the deaf
Enseñanza de sordos de Pedro Ponce de León
- Date
- c. 1545-1584 · confidence low
- Place
- Oña, Burgos, Castile and León, Spain
- Credited to
- Pedro Ponce de León, Benedictine monk
- Field
- Communication
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
At the Benedictine monastery of Oña, Pedro Ponce de León taught deaf children of noble families to speak, read and write using a manual alphabet, writing and pronunciation exercises. He is the first documented teacher of the deaf.
The documentation is indirect (testimonies by Ambrosio de Morales, 1575, and Francisco Vallés; Ponce's will, 1578) and his exact method does not survive. Girolamo Cardano had already argued around 1550 that deaf people could learn to read.
What it led to
- Juan Pablo Bonet's method (1620)
- oralist pedagogy of the deaf in Europe (Wallis, Amman)
- recognition that deaf people could receive formal education