"The history of deaf education begins in Spain, for the teaching of deaf children is widely believed to have originated there, and events there led to the spread of this instruction throughout the world [...] The period under consideration here was a time of experimentation in which a colorful cast of characters—among them a Benedictine monk, a secretive schoolteacher turned tutor to the aristocracy, an ambitious secretary to a noble household, a scholarly ex-Jesuit in exile, an intellectual abbé inspired by the philosophy of the European Enlightenment, a liberal lawyer, an award-winning deaf artist—all set aside other pursuits to dedicate themselves to instructing deaf students. In so doing, they laid the foundation for the professionalization of deaf education." From Susan J. Plann's A Silent Minority: Deaf Education in Spain, 1550-1835, available in full at the recently discovered (by me) University of California Press's Online Publications List.

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