DEAF AND DUMB 



709 



li is t> tin- 19th century tlmt tin- honourable 

 di-iinctinii lielon;:- nf li.ixin^' done go much for the 

 deaf ami iliiuili. This has not been by inventing 

 the art of i caching, or by raining up the earliest 

 labourers in tliis lirlil of usefulness, but by founding 

 ami -u|iporting public institutions for this purpose. 

 De 1'Epee, when he opened his school in 1703, had 

 iin foreknowledge of toe work he was oonune&einffi 

 A> his labours inerca.-ed, he invited others to his 

 assistance, and they were thus enabled to carry 

 the light of instruction elsewhere, and to keep it 

 nli\e when he was no more. His death took place 

 in ITS!), ami his assistant, Sicard, succeeded him. 

 Four \cars afterwards, the school was taken over 

 by the French government, and now exists as the 

 Institution Nationale of I'aiis. A pupil of this 

 institution, M. Laurent Clerc, went in 1816 to the 

 I'nited States with Mr Thoniiis Hopkins Gallaudet 

 (1787-1851), the founder and first principal of the 

 American asylum, who in the New World became, 

 like De 1'Epee, ' the father of the deaf and dumb.' 



There is some diversity of opinion as to which is 

 the test kind of school for the deaf the boarding 

 or the day school. And with this question is 

 involved, to some extent, the question of systems 

 of instruction. Until the introduction of the oral 

 system from Rotterdam in 1867, and the establish- 

 ment in 1874 of the classes for the deaf in the 

 ordinary schools by the School Board for London, 

 all the institutions in Great Britain were board- 

 ing-schools. Of the two systems by congre- 

 gation or by separation the former, the boarding- 

 school system, is upheld by its advocates for its 

 advantages of continuous teaching, influence, and 

 di-cipline. These they hold to be of special neces- 

 sity lor the deaf, and not to be attainable, gener- 

 ally, under the day-school system. The latter 

 system is accepted by some, but only as a necessity 

 not the best to be hoped for, but the best which 

 can be got. Others defend separation, and oppose 

 congregation altogether, on the ground that with 

 the oral system it is the best, absolutely ; that the 

 pupils, being taught to speak in order to prepare 

 them for the world, ought to live in the world, and 

 so to bring into constant exercise and practice what 

 they have been taught. Living at home or boarding 

 out in families is therefore advocated and adopted, 

 on this ground, in London and in vaiious large 

 towns on the Continent, though in many places 

 where the oral system finds its strongest supporters 

 the boarding school is still retained. The possible 

 danger to life and limb in passing through crowded 

 streets alone, has combined with other reasons to 

 produce in London the establishment of homes for 

 deaf children where they are boarded, lodged, and 

 cared for, and receive their education in a con- 

 veniently adjacent school-board class. These 

 homes, now occupying seven separate houses, were 

 established by the It&v. Dr William Stainer. They 

 are largely made use of by Boards of Guardians 

 and others, and are called by the founder's name. 



The mental condition of the deaf and dumb is so 

 peculiar so entirely unlike that of any other 

 branch of the human family that it is extremely 

 dillieult. without very close thought, to obtain an 

 accurate conception of it. While almost every one 

 will readily admit that there is a wide difference 

 between a deaf and a hearing child, very few, who 

 have not had their attention specially drawn to the 

 subject, possess any adequate notion of the differ- 

 ence, or could tell wherein it consist*. Sometimes 

 the deaf are compared with the blind, though there 

 exists no proper ground of comparison Between 

 them. Except that the blind are more depcmli -nl 

 than the deaf and dumb, the relative disadvantages 

 of the two classes do not admit of a moment's com- 

 parison. The blind can be talked with and read 

 to, and are thus placed in direct intercourse with 



the \vorlil Hi-omul tin-in : domestic convene, literary 

 pleasures, political excitement, intellectual research, 

 are all within their reach. The )>orn deaf are 

 utterly excluded from every one of them;. The two 

 alllii-tions are so essentially dissimilar, that they 

 an only he considered and spoken of together by 

 way of contrast. Each of ttiein affects uoth the 

 physical and the mental constitution ; but blind- 

 n. >-. which is a greater physical affliction, falls leas 

 severely on the mind ; while the effect of deafness 

 is the extreme reverse of this it touches only one 

 bodily organ, and that not visibly, but the calamity 

 which befalls the mind is one of the most desperate 

 in 'the catalogue of human woes.' The depriva- 

 tion under which the born-deaf labour is not merely, 

 or so much, the exclusion of sound, as it is the com- 

 plete exclusion of all that information and instruc- 

 tion which are conveyed to our minds, and all the 

 ideas which are suggested to them, by means of 

 sound ; as it is through sound alone, in the first 

 instance, that we all Team language, the medium 

 of all knowledge. The deaf know almost nothing, 

 because they near nothing. We, who do hear, 

 acquire knowledge through the medium of lan- 

 guage through the sounds we hear, and the words 

 we read every hour. But as regards the congeni- 

 tally deaf, speech tells them nothing, because they 

 cannot hear ; and books teach them nothing, 

 because they cannot read ; so that their original 

 condition is far worse than that of persons who 

 'can neither read nor write' (one of our most 

 common expressions for extreme ignorance ) ; it is 

 that of persons who can neither read, nor write, 

 nor hear, nor speak ; who cannot ask you for 

 information when they want it, and could not 

 understand you if you wished to give it to them. 

 Your difficulty is to understand their difficulty ; and 

 the difficulty which first meets the teacher is, how 

 to simplify and dilute his instructions down to 

 their capacity for receiving them. 



A class thus cut off from all communication 

 through the ear, can only be addressed through the 

 eve ( 1 ) by means of objects, or representations of 

 them, or by the visible language of pictures, signs, 

 and gestures ; (2) the finger-alphal>et (or Dactylo- 

 logy) and writing, which make them acquainted 

 with our own written language ; or (3) articulation 

 and reading on the lips, which introduce them to 

 the use of sfwken language. The education of the 

 deaf and dumb must be twofold you must awaken 

 and inform their minds by giving them ideas and 

 knowledge, and you must cultivate them by means 

 of language. W v here the oral system is employed, 

 the deaf child is taught by spoken language as 

 other children are. ^ here the combined system is 

 in use, a knowledge of things is conveyed by the 

 use of signs ; but to this must be added a know- 

 ledge of words. These pupils are therefore taught, 

 from the first, that words convey the same ideas 

 to our mimls as pictures and signs do to theirs ; 

 they are therefore required to change signs for 

 words until the written or printed character is as 

 readily understood as the picture or the sign. 

 This, of course, is a long process, as it has to be 

 repeated with every word, rvalues of visible object* 

 (nouns), of visible qualities (adjectives), and of 

 visible actions (verbs), are gradually taught, and 

 are readily acquired ; but the syntax of language, 

 abstract and metaphorical terms, a copious iliction. 

 idiomatic phraseology, the nice distinctions In-tween 

 words called synonymous, and those which are 

 identical in form but of different signification 

 these are far more difficult of attainment ; they can 

 only be mastered through indomitable perseverance 

 and application on the part of the pupil, in addi- 

 tion to the utmost skill and ingenuity of the 

 teacher. The wonder, therefore, surely is, seeing 

 the point of starting, that this degree of advance' 



