First among them was Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard. In 1799, Itard was a 25-year-old physician in Paris when an 11- or 12-year-old boy emerged from the woods near the French town of Aveyron. The boy was unclothed, scarred, and covered with dirt; he did not walk, but ran; he knew none of the conventions of human civilization and did not speak. This boy became the focus of a great controversy in France between the "nativists," who believed that a person's potential was determined by genetic heritage and was therefore unalterable, and the "sensationalists," who believed that environmental input in the form of sensory experience could change a person's intellectual development. Who would venture to teach this "wild boy"—to civilize him?

Itard, who bore within him the optimistic legacy of the French Revolution, volunteered for the task. For five years, he and the boy, whom he named Victor, lived at the school for deaf children in Paris while he attempted to teach him. His greatest hope was that the boy would learn language, which Itard considered the hallmark of civilized society. Through daily, painstaking lessons, Itard rewarded Victor with small amounts of food when he accomplished a task. After nine months, Victor had accomplished Itard's first goals for him: He had developed normal eating, sleeping, and personal hygiene routines (Lane, 1976).

After five years, however, Itard considered his work a failure; although Victor could recognize some words in print and had acquired many of the behaviors of "civilization," his only words were lait and oh Dieu (French for "milk" and "oh God"). With great disappointment, Itard abandoned his work with Victor, who was cared for by the wife of a groundskeeper at the school for deaf children until his death at around the age of 40.

Although Itard felt he had failed because he had not made Victor "normal," others found both teaching techniques and encouragement in the changes that had occurred in Victor. Among those was Edouard Seguin, who became a student of Itard; he built on Itard's methods to form his own approach to teaching children that we would now say have mental retardation. Maria Montessori translated a book that Seguin wrote about his own methods and materials and made them the foundation of the Montessori method, first used with children with mental retardation. Montessori's teaching methods involve the development of the child's natural curiosity and the training of the senses through materials that are manipulable, three-dimensional, and concrete.

The ideas and methods of these great European teachers reached several Americans who were influential in setting up special education services in the United States. Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876) was a graduate of Harvard Medical School and a political reformer. He taught Laura Bridgeman, a young deaf and blind woman, and his teaching techniques became the foundation for the methods used at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts, the first school for students with disabilities in this country, which Howe helped to found.

Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787-1851) was a graduate of Yale and Andover Theological Seminary when he attempted to teach 9-year-old Alice Cogswell, the deaf daughter of a neighbor, some simple words and sentences (Moores, 2001). Gallaudet traveled to Europe to learn from teachers there and returned home with a teacher who was deaf himself, Laurent Clerc. Gallaudet then became the principal at the first school for deaf children in the United States, founded by Alice Cogswell's father and others. The first teacher at the school was Laurent Clerc. Clerc trained many of the teachers at the early schools for deaf children in this country. Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., was named for T.H. Gallaudet. The Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center at Gallaudet University has been named to acknowledge the early role of a deaf teacher in the education of deaf children.

Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) did not think of himself as the inventor of the telephone but as a teacher of children who were deaf. Bell came from a family of speech teachers, and his mother was deaf, so it was natural for him to use his skills to teach deaf children to speak. Bell's views on enhancing speech and residual hearing in deaf children are still alive today, exemplified by members of the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf, headquartered in Washington, D.C.

Anne Sullivan Macy (1866-1936), Helen Keller's beloved "Teacher," has been an inspiration to many entering the teaching profession. Sullivan, who had a serious vision impairment until her teenage years, attended the Perkins School for the Blind and was recommended to Helen Keller's mother through Alexander Graham Bell. Annie Sullivan carefully studied Dr. Howe's records from teaching Laura Bridgeman before she went to work for the Keller family. Those methods, and Annie Sullivan's intelligence, dedication, and ingenuity, helped Helen Keller to become the person that she was. The intricate and remarkable relationship between this teacher and her student is detailed in Joseph Lash's fascinating book, Helen and Teacher (1980).

For more information about these teachers, read:

• Carroll, C., & Lane, H. (1991). Laurent Clerc: The story of his early years. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press.
  
  
• Freeberg, E. (2001). The education of Laura Bridgeman: First deaf and blind person to learn language. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  
  
• Gerstein, M. (1998). The wild boy. New York: Frances Foster Books.
  
  
• Gerstein, M. (1998). Victor: A novel based on the life of Victor, the savage of Aveyron. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers.
  
  
• Gitter, E. (2001). The imprisoned guest: Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman, the original deaf-blind girl. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
  
  
• Itard, J.M.G. (1962). The wild boy of Aveyron. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
  
  
• Keller, H. (1954) The story of my life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
  
  
• Lane, H. (1979). Wild boy of Aveyron. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  
  
• Lash, J.P. (1980) Helen and Teacher: The story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy. New York: Delacorte Press.
  
  
• Montessori, M. (1966). The secret of childhood. Notre Dame, IN: Fides Publishers.
  
  
• Neimark, A.E. (1983) A deaf child listened: Thomas Gallaudet, pioneer in American education. New York: HarperCollins Juvenile Books.
  
  
• Standing, E.M. (1998). Maria Montessori: Her life and work. New York: Plume Books.
  
  

There is also a brief biography of Laurent Clerc at http://clerccenter.gallaudet.edu/Literacy/MSSDLRC/clerc/index.html/.

Helen Keller's archives are online at http://www.afb.org/.