Pedro Ponce de León
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Pedro Ponce de León (* 1516 in Sahagún , Province of León ; † probably on August 29, 1584 in Oña , Burgos , Castile and León ) was a Spanish Benedictine monk . He is considered to be the initiator of speech education for the deaf in Spain.
Before him, the Benedictine monk Vicente de Santo Domingo had taught and promoted the painter Juan Fernández de Navarrete (1526–1579), who was silenced at the age of three .
Life
Ponce de Leon was probably the son of the Spanish navigator and explorer Juan Ponce de León (1460-1521). Ponce de Leon entered the Benedictine order in the monastery of Sahagún on November 3, 1526, where he lived as a monk for several years until he moved to the monastery of San Salvador in Oña, where he stayed until his death.
There he founded a school for the deaf. His students were mostly children of wealthy Spanish aristocrats who could afford private tutoring. In addition, according to Spanish law, people who spoke neither language nor writing were not allowed to appear as heirs. Around 1530 he taught the deaf sons Pedro and Francisco of Juan Fernández de Velasco y Tovar in reading, writing, arithmetic and speaking.
In the 16th century, the prevailing opinion in Europe was that the deaf were not capable of education. As a Benedictine monk, however, Ponce de León followed the Benedictine Rule, according to which all people should be treated equally and with respect.
Ponce de León was apparently able to successfully teach the sons of Juan Fernández de Velasco y Tovar and thus provided early evidence that pigeons can read, write, think and talk.
plant
Ponce achieved his first successes with Gaspard Burgos, a deaf man who was not accepted into the Benedictine order because of his difficulties with the spoken language. Thanks to Ponce's guidance, Burgos learned to speak, was able to take his monastic vows and later write numerous books.
His work with deaf children has focused on learning intelligible pronunciation. It also taught her to write and to communicate with simple gestures. His method included finger spelling , writing, and speaking, based on Bonet's book one can assume that he used a finger alphabet for spelling and stylized characters. This alphabet may have been based on the monastic sign language used by the monks because of the vow of silence.
With the exception of a short, incomplete record that was found in 1986 in the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid , there are no writings on the method used by him and his successor Manuel Ramírez de Carrión . In 1620 Juan Pablo Bonet , the secretary of Juan Fernández de Velasco y Tovar, described the so-called finger alphabet for communication for the hearing impaired in his book "Reducción de las letras y arte para enseñar a ablar los mudos" .
literature
- Marilyn Daniels: Benedictine Roots in the Development of Deaf Education: Listening with the Heart . Bergin & Garvey, Westport, Connecticut 1997, ISBN 0-89789-500-2 .
- Antonio Gascón Ricao y José Gabriel Storch de Gracia y Asensio: Historia de la educación de los sordos en España y su influencia en Europa y América . Editorial universitaria Ramón Areces, Colección "Por más señas", Madrid 2004, ISBN 84-8004-671-6 .
Notes and individual references
- ↑ Other sources give birth years between 1510 and 1520
- ↑ Fray Ponce de León por Enrique Pardo Asensio on ceipponcedeleon.centros.educa.jcyl.es (PDF; 136 kB)
- ↑ Enciclopedia Católica: Fray Vicente de Santo Domingo
- ^ Marilyn Daniels: Benedictine Roots in the Development of Deaf Education: Listening with the Heart . Bergin & Garvey, Westport, Connecticut, 1997, ISBN 0-89789-500-2 .
- ↑ Agnes Villwock: Monastic sign languages and use of sign language in the monastery. DAS ZEICHEN 91/2012 Journal for Language and Culture of the Deaf ( Memento of the original from November 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ponce de León, Pedro |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Spanish Benedictine monk |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1516 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Sahagún , León Province |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 29, 1584 |
| Place of death | Oña , Burgos , Castile and León |