Carl Oscar Malm

Carl Oscar Malm, also known as C. O. Malm and Carl Oskar Malm (12 February 1826 – 8 June 1863) was Finland's first teacher of the deaf, founder of the first school for the deaf in the country, and the father of Finnish Sign Language.

Life

Upbringing and education Malm was born on 12 January 1826 in Eura, Finland, to a well-off and educated family. His parents were Anders Gustaf Malm, a military officer and city treasurer, and Katarina Juliana Tandefelt. Malm was deaf either from birth or a very young age. Two years later, Malm returned home having studied a number of subjects, learning written Swedish to an "unusually" high level, and becoming the school's top student. He would later learn to read Finnish, German, and French. Malm found an early passion for education. He was appointed assistant teacher at the school in 1843, gaining his first experience as an educator.

First schools for the deaf In 1845, Malm went to Porvoo. He began tutoring two deaf boys, David Fredrik Hirn and Sten Sirén, in Koivisto in early 1846. Later that year, with the assistance and support of role model Ossian Edmund Borg, son of the founder of the Manilla School, Malm opened a private school for the deaf, with Hirn and Sirén being the first two students. The school was opened in his father's house at Kankurinkuja 5 and was the first school for the deaf in Finland. Malm knew there must be more potential deaf students, so he placed an advertisement for the school in the newspaper and later requested the Diocese of Porvoo to determine the number of deaf people in the country: 1,466, with 602 under the age of 20. In contrast to the oralism commonly used in deaf education at the time, his school focused primarily on sign language and written Swedish (see manualism). It was also noted that education for the deaf existed in Finland for some time before such education was available in Washington, D.C.

The deaf school in Porvoo, the only one in Swedish-speaking Finland, was eventually closed in 1993 due to a lack of students.