Generally prior to the onset of organized education of the deaf, deaf people were regarded as uneducable and equalized them to idiots. Laurent Clerc became the most recognizable figure that shaped the education of the deaf in the United States as the exemplary personification of educability and high intellect of a person who could not hear since birth or during the early toddlerhood, nor speak and, despite these, acquired excellent command of spoken languages at the ages way beyond the prime age of natural language acquisition.