![The French pioneer in deaf education, Abbé de l'Eppé, demonstrates the teaching of deaf children in front of the French King Louis XVI.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/unterricht-fur-gehorlose-kinder-vor-dem-franzosischen-konig-ludwig-xvi-300x225.jpg)
Switzerland's role in deaf education
Around 400 years ago, scholars began to address the education of deaf people and developed sign language for the first time. Switzerland played an interesting, complex and perhaps outsized role in this process.
Those who are born deaf all become senseless and incapable of reason.
![The ABC of the Deaf by Juan Pablo Bonet, 1620.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/das-gehorlosen-abc-von-juan-pablo-bonet-1620-300x112.jpg)
A Swiss Godfather of Deaf Education
![Johann Konrad Ammann in a painting by Friedrich Wettstein. The painting was destroyed on 1 April 1944 by American bombs dropped on the Museum Allerheiligen Schaffhausen.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/johann-konrad-ammann-251x300.jpg)
I first put his hand on my larynx. Then I put his hand to his own throat and, by means of signs, urged him to produce the same shaking of the larynx that he had perceived in me. It is usually possible to elicit a sound from the student on the first try. Now I teach him to form the mouth opening in such a way that it is necessary for speaking the individual vowels.
![Title page of Surdus loquens by Johann Konrad Ammann, 1692.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/titelseite-des-surdus-loquens-von-johann-konrad-ammann-1692-202x300.jpg)
The Debate moves to Paris and Leipzig
![The French Sign Language Alphabet with a portrait by Charles-Michel de L'Épée.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/das-franzosische-gebardensprachenalphabet-220x300.jpg)
Religion and humanity inspire me with such a great interest in a truly destitute class of persons who, though similar to ourselves, are reduced, as it were, to the condition of animals so long as no attempts are made to rescue them from the darkness surrounding them, that I consider it an absolute obligation to make every effort to bring about their release from these shadows.
Zurich scholars settle the dispute
![Deaf actors and actresses of the "Hackney Mission to the Deaf and Dumb" perform plays. Woodcut from 1884 (detail).](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/hackney-mission-to-the-deaf-and-dumb-300x290.jpg)