''DEAF AND DUMB:' 113 



means of what lie does understand ; simple language is used to 

 make complex language more clear; but whatever is done is done 

 by means of language, either spoken or written, so that what he 

 writes or speaks is his own thought unhindered by mental trans- 

 lation. 



There are cases which both these methods fail to teach, very 

 moderate successes under both methods, and, besides, some very 

 brilliant examples of highly educated, cultured, deaf ladies and 

 gentlemen who have so far mastered the difficulties which beset 

 them that they are able to take their places in life almost as 

 though one sense were not lacking. The representatives of this 

 last class who are personally known to me were all but one edu- 

 cated by the oral method. This one exception is a very warm 

 advocate of the oral method, in spite of the fact that he was edu- 

 cated under the combined system. 



The large number of average cases the deaf people who are 

 neither brilliant scholars nor apparent failures are generally ad- 

 vocates of the system under which they were educated. The com- 

 bined-method pupil claims that he enjoys life better because he 

 has his signs by means of which he can take pleasure in the com- 

 pany of his deaf friends, and the oral-method pupil claims that 

 with his speech and lip-reading he can accommodate himself to his 

 environment in the speaking world ; and that, if his speech is not 

 understood, his written English is just as good as his brother's of 

 the combined method. 



And so it goes. Each thinks his own way the best. 



A WRITER iu Blackwood's Magazine, on the philosophy of blunders com- 

 mitted by persons under examination, assumes that the questions asked by 

 the examiner are intended t awaken a recollection or to develop a kind of 

 process of reasoning in the candidate. If the reasoning fails at any point 

 or from any cause, a blunder appears in the answer. Some of the blunders 

 cited by the writer, particularly in the scientific examinations, betray great 

 confusion of mind, and are hardly accountable except on the supposition 

 of inexact teaching or too hasty cramming. What did the pupil mean who 

 answered tbat during summer " the weather is getting gradually warmer, 

 caused by the rotation of the sun " ; or that one who said that " the Tropic 

 of Cancer is the meridian which passes round the earth midway between 

 the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn" ? Various pupils answered ques- 

 tions about the tides by saying that they were " caused by evaporation," 

 "by prevailhig winds," ''by different oceans meeting each other," " by the 

 undercurrents meeting," " by the waves of the Atlantic pushing the surface 

 waters westward," or other phrases, all betraying a confused recollection of 

 some of the words they have read in the text-books, without the most re- 

 mote conception of their meaning or their relation to the subject. Such 

 obvious ilhistrations of the faults of defective teaching bear their own 

 comments. 



VOL. L. n Ik 



