Pedro Ponce de León

Pedro Ponce de León ( * 1516 in Sahagún, León Province; † August 29, 1584 in Oña, Burgos, Castile and León) was a Spanish Benedictine monk. He was the initiator of the spoken language education for the deaf in Spain.

Before him, the Benedictine monk Vicente de Santo Domingo had ceased in the third year of life painter Juan Fernández de Navarrete (1526-1579) taught and supported.

Life

Ponce de Leon was probably the son of the Spanish sailor and explorer Juan Ponce de León ( 1460-1521 ). Ponce de Leon came on 3 November 1526 in the Benedictine Order in the monastery of Sahagún, where he lived for several years as a monk in the monastery until he moved to San Salvador Oña, where he remained until his death.

There he founded a school for the deaf. His pupils were mostly children of wealthy Spanish aristocrats who could afford private tuition. In addition to that, under Spanish law those dominated neither speech nor writing, were not allowed to act as heirs. Around 1530, he taught the deaf sons Pedro and Francisco Juan Fernández de Velasco y Tovar in reading, writing, numeracy and speaking.

In the 16th century in Europe, the opinion was prevalent that the deaf are not educable. As a Benedictine monk, however, Ponce de León followed the Benedictine Rule, according to which all people should be treated exactly the same and with respect.

Ponce de León was apparently able to teach the sons of Juan Fernández de Velasco y Tovar successfully and thus gave an early proof that read Dove, write, think and talk.

Work

Ponce scored his first success with Gaspard Burgos, a deaf man who was not included in the Benedictine Order because of his difficulty with the spoken language. Thanks to the guidance of Ponce learned to speak Burgos, was able to take his monastic vows and later write several books.

His work with deaf children focused on learning a comprehensible pronunciation. It also taught them to write and to communicate with simple gestures. His method consisted of finger spelling, writing and speaking, where one can assume because of the book by Bonet, he used a manual alphabet for spelling and stylized characters. This alphabet may be based on the monastic sign language, who used the monks because of the vow of silence.

With the exception of a short incomplete recording, the one in 1986 held in Madrid in the Archivo Histórico Nacional, there is of him and his successor, Manuel Ramírez de Carrión no writings on the method used. 1620 was described by Juan Pablo Bonet, Secretary of Juan Fernández de Velasco y Tovar, in his book " Reducción de las letras y arte para enseñar a ablar going Mudos " the first time the so-called finger spelling for communication for the hearing impaired.