Sicard
NAME:
Sicard, Roch-Ambroise Cucurron
ACHIEVEMENTS:
Pioneer in teaching the deaf
NICKNAME/ALIAS:
None
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:
September 1742, Fousseret, near Toulouse, France
DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH AND AGE AT DEATH:
20 September 1822, Paris, France. Aged 80
DISCIPLINE:
Priest
FIELD:
Education of the deaf
LANGUAGE:
French
PARENTS:
Father: Unknown
Mother: Unknown
SIBLINGS:
Unknown
SPOUSE:
None
CHILDREN:
None
EDUCATION:
Unknown
MAJOR WORK:
1789: "Memoir on the Art of Teaching Deaf-Mutes from Birth"
1808-14: "Theory of Signs for the Instruction of Deaf-Mutes"
LIFE AND TIMES:
Sicard studied for the priesthood and took his vows in 1765. He was ordained five years later and given a post at the cathedral in Bordeaux. In 1785 the archbishop of Bordeaux, who had visited the pioneering school for the deaf run by <succeeded> L'Epee* in Paris, decided that there should be a similar establishment in Bordeaux.
He selected Sicard to run the school and sent him to Paris to study L'Epee's methods. Sicard was in Paris for about a year during which time he attended L'Epee's public demonstrations and observed his classes.
On his return, a school for deaf-mutes was opened in Bordeaux in February 1786. While in Paris, Sicard had corresponded with a local schoolteacher in Bordeaux and had instructed him on L'Epee's method. When he opened the school in Bordeaux, Sicard employed the teacher in hisnew school and confined himself to publicising their work at demonstrations once a week and writing papers.
He was nominally in charge of religious
instruction at the school but spent little time there because he had been appointed vicar general of Condom and canon of Bordeaux, and was also a corresponding member of the Paris and Toulouse academies and the Royal Literary Society of Bayeux.
At the end of 1788 L'Epee died and the successor nominated by L'Epee was appointed principal of the school in Paris. Sicard did not accept this and wrote a paper in which he proposed himself as a candidate and suggested that there should be a public contest
to decide who should be given the post. Each contestant was to present a pupil and explain the method of instruction he used.
Sicard won the contest and he took over the Paris school in 1790. Finding it was in desperate need of funds, he appeared before the National Assembly with deaf-mute Jean Massieu. Massieu, now an assistant teacher, had been the star pupil of the school. The Assembly was greatly moved by Massieu's plea for funding and the following year a bill was passed which made the school a national establishment and provided scholarships and staff salaries.
When the French monarchy was overthrown in 1792, Sicard was arrested because he had not taken a new oath of civil allegiance. He was seized at the school by sixty armed citizens and marched at the point of a sabre through the streets before being imprisoned in a crowded cellar.
Massieu addressed the Assembly on behalf all his pupils, pleading for Sicard's release. This which was granted by the Assembly but ignored by the Revolutionary Commune. On Sicard's carriage journey across Paris to St Germain des Pres where he was to be executed, the revolutionary guards purposely left the doors open and Sicard's four companions were slaughtered by a frenzied mob.
Sicard took refuge in the abbey but the mob burst in and Sicard only escaped being butchered to death at the very last minute when he was protected by one of his would-be murderers, who turned out to know about his work with the deaf. The next day his execution was delayed until four pm and he managed to get a message to the Assembly who ordered the Commune to release him. Their order did not arrive until 6 pm but Sicard's execution had been delayed by a heavy rainstorm and he was escorted out of prison by the man who had saved him.
He went into hiding and a year later he was again arrested and imprisoned briefly before being released. When the Ecole Normale was founded by the National Convention in 1794, the leading intellectuals of the time were appointed to the staff and Sicard was given a job. A year later, he was appointed to the section on grammar in the newly founded National Institute of Sciences and Arts and worked on the new French dictionary.
In 1797 a campaign was launched by the revolutionary government against Catholics and conservatives. Sicard had not hidden his monarchical sympathies and was also the editor of a journal which supported the authority of the pope over that of the state. He was ordered into exile in Guiana but instead went into hiding on the outskirts of Paris. During this time, he wrote two books on educating the deaf.
Pleas by his friends for Sicard's release were not effective but in December 1799, a month after Napoleon had taken supreme power, he and his wife attended the national theatre where a play about a play about L'Epee was being staged and members of the audience stood up and shouted for Sicard's release. Further pressure came from the faithful Massieu who had organised a dinner with Napoleon's brother.
A month later Sicard was reinstated as director of the deaf school at a ceremony where the public were admitted and Sicard was crowned with a wreath of flowers. The school was badly impoverished and had also been ordered to stop any religious observances. Sicard won back support and vital funds by continuing with his policy of demonstrating his pupil's achievements to gain support.
He was reinstated as a member of boards which administered the education of the deaf and was made overseer of all the asylums in Paris.
Napoleon did not particularly like him and refused him any further ecclesiastical advancement. When the monarchy was restored to France in 1814, Sicard received the Legion of Honour and was made honorary canon at Notre Dame.
In 1815, after Napoleon escaped from Elba, Sicard and Massieu fled to England accompanied by another ex-pupil, Laurent Clerc, who introduced Sicard to the American educator <influenced> Thomas Gallaudet*.
Sicard returned to Paris after Napoleon's defeat. Special demonstrations at the school were put on when foreign dignitaries visited Paris. In his last years he was badly in debt. When he died, his body lay in Notre Dame so that people could file past in tribute.
ASSESSMENT: Sicard was an early pioneer of teaching deaf-mutes who did much to spread the method of sign language.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS:
None
ONELINER: R-A C Sicard, early pioneer teacher of the deaf
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Lane, Harlan, A History of the Deaf, When the Mind Hears, Penguin Books,
London, 1984