La creatività al servizio dell'inclusione: il caso della nascita della lingua dei segni

In 1753 Charles-Michel L'Épée used to live in Paris. He is a then-unknown priest who met by chance two deaf sisters who proved to be able to "converse" with him through visual-gestural communication. For the time, it was quite a rare event. The deaf mostly lives a life of isolation, not being provided with any education. L'Épée, in the meantime, had been informed by the two young women's mother that their institute, where they were enrolled, was not working anymore. For this reason, he decided to be personally in charge of their education. This is a crucial moment in the history of the sciences of language and education. After centuries, where deafness had been considered a condition of ineluctable inferiority, L'Épée has been able to show that it is, on the contrary, a circumstance suitable for words to show that there is a key to entering the faculty of language and to the alternative intelligence to. More precisely, he designs a method of education for deafness, which values its natural language, well known as sign language. It was a valuable alternative that was as creative as inclusive. Here we owe the beginning of deafness to cultural history.