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1805: First School for the Deaf in Spain, Madrid (ES)

1805: First School for the Deaf in Spain, Madrid (ES)

"The year 1805 marked the opening in Madrid of the Royal School for Deafmutes. Although this was Spain's first state-sponosored school for the deaf, instruction of the deaf had not originated there. In the mid-16th century, PedroPonce de Leon, a Benedicine monk, had taught the deaf sons and daughters of the Spanish nobility.

Nevertheless, in the decades preceding the Royal School's establishment, education of the deaf in Spain had apparently been limited to a few isolated experiments.

The product of one of those experiments was Spain's first deaf teacher of the deaf and a key figure in deaf education during the early 19th century: Roberto Francisco Prádez. It was to his efforts that the Royal School for Deafmutes owed much of its success, and at times during its precarioius first three decades, its very existence."

from: Plann, Susan. "Roberto Francisco Prádez: Spain's First Deaf Teacher of the Deaf." American Annals of the Deaf 137, no. 1 (1992): 48-55. 

Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/44400918.pdf?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

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