However, Gallaudet's wish to become a professional minister was put aside when he met Alice Cogswell, on 25 May, the nine-year-old deaf daughter of a neighbor, Dr. Mason Cogswell.[8] On that day, as he observed her playing he wanted to teach her, and started to teach Alice what different objects were and their names, teaching her words by writing them with a stick in the dirt, and by drawing pictures of them as well. Then Cogswell asked Gallaudet to travel to Europe to study methods for teaching deaf students, especially those of the Braidwood family in England. Gallaudet found the Braidwoods unwilling to share knowledge of their oral communication method and himself financially limited. At the same time, he also was not satisfied that the oral method produced desirable results.
While still in Great Britain, he met Abbé Sicard, head of the Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets à Paris, and two of its deaf faculty members, Laurent Clerc and Jean Massieu. Sicard invited Gallaudet to Paris to study the school's method of teaching the deaf using manual communication. Impressed with the manual method, Gallaudet studied teaching methodology under Sicard, learning sign language from Massieu and Clerc, who were both highly educated graduates of the school.
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