ASSAROTTI, OTTAVIO GIOVAMBATTISTA. — Piarist, born in Genoa on 25 October 1753 and died there on 24 January 1829. Having entered the Congregation of the Pious Schools, he devoted himself zealously and successfully to the teaching of physics, philosophy, and theology. But his principal work, through which he deserves an honoured place in the history of pedagogy, was that undertaken for the education of the deaf-mute. Animated by a profound spirit of Christian charity and reflecting that the mind apprehends and intuits things through an active inner act, A. turned to their education with results that, for those times, were satisfactory. He was in contact with Sicard and, naturally, also with the other founders of institutions for the deaf-mute in Italy, who went to Genoa to learn about the one he had founded. Napoleon and Vittorio Emanuele I supported A.’s work, enabling him in Genoa to keep his institution in operation.
It cannot be said that A. had a preordained and fixed method, and when asked the reason for it he could reply that his method was to have none; not in the sense that he had or prescribed no rule or law for his educational work, but rather in the sense that he applied a particular method—and, one might say, a particular treatment—to each individual case. Indeed, he adhered now to natural mimicry, now to conventional mimicry, and sometimes attempted also the utterance of articulated speech or writing. The fact is that A., as one critic says of his method, followed the rigorous order of the genesis and concatenation of ideas, both in imparting knowledge and in linguistic instruction. In the latter, anticipating the celebrated Rosminian theory of the degrees and orders of intellections in the child’s mental development, he proceeded from an extremely elementary idea in order gradually to raise the entire linguistic edifice, moving on to a new form of language only when the first had been thoroughly understood and assimilated. A. was concerned with resolving the theoretical problem of language acquisition into the more properly educational problem of awakening and enriching the spiritual life of the deaf-mute. For this purpose he also employed games, work, and religious practices. Enrico Mayer, who in 1823 visited the Institute of Genoa and spent time with A. himself, complained in his account of the visit to Vieusseux that the education A. provided to the deaf-mute was too theoretical. It would have been better, Mayer thought, to develop in them practical aptitudes, as these might be more suited to this kind of disabled person: « Why — says Mayer — not make them good artisans instead of superficial men of letters? ». The means of communication used by A. were natural mimicry, a system of mimicry invented by him, dactylology, writing, and articulated speech. The latter was for those who had already spoken.