DEAF AND DUMB 



711 



more tliaii eight or ten), teachers trained H|>ecially 

 to the work, and tin; exclusion of signs and the 

 Miitiiiiitl ali-hal-ei are held to he indispensable. 

 Tin- growth uml decadence of the sign system i- 

 lii>i-iiii-. It mine iu after 1780. It then took hold 

 and urcxv, and maintained it* ascendency for nearly 

 a hundred years, when the reaction began which 

 has marked our own times. Before 1700 there were 

 n<> public schools; all teaching was individual and 

 jirivate, and it was oral. .After 17M, when De 

 I'Epee had a school of sixty children and no 

 aistants, it is no wonder that In* gave his pre- 

 ference to signs, whereby tlie pupils coulil help to 

 teach each other, and he could address them all at 

 once. So speech was abandoned, except in some 

 favourable cases as an accomplishment ; signs be- 

 came the language of deaf-mutes, teachers were 

 few and inadequate, a large proportion of them 



Two-handed Alphabet. 



were deaf themselves, teaching deteriorated, and 

 interest languished. Meanwhile, the best men did 

 the best that was possible with an imperfect instru- 

 ment. The sign system was such an instrument, 

 and what w;is within its capabilities they did 

 devotedly and did well. But with the suj>erior 

 instrument, the oral system, applied with the same 

 energy and /eal, higher results nave been reached, 

 notably, in many instances, by the same men. 



Though they have worked on each method as it 

 came before them, there never was in the minds of 

 the most experienced teachers any doubt as to the 

 superiority or speech over signs. The question wa.- 

 never, which system is the best? but which system 

 is the most practicable in large schools? It is 

 obviously better that deaf persons should use the 

 speech common to everybody than the language of 

 nobody hut themselves. Until seventeen hundred 

 people go out of their way to learn the language 

 of one, the deaf minority must stand isolated in the 

 world, shut up with each other. Though such as 

 have learned to speak may not, with all their 



efforts, Hiicceed in rising to the level of thowe that 



heai-, yet the efforts made are themselves improving, 

 and habitual practice j* still more HO; whereat 

 the practice of signing is distinctly lowering ami 



hindering. Those taught by signs think in 

 those taught by speech think in words. The mix- 

 ture of the two is injurious ; translation from sign* 

 to words produces confusion ; sign* invert language, 

 and when the two systems are placed together 

 signs become the dominant power, and speech the 

 leaver one ; then comes in a combined system in 

 which the oral system stands degraded, of which it 

 has been said, to degrade it is to kill it. Natural 

 signs the signs which all hearing iersoiiB under- 

 standare allowed to be used for purposes of ex 

 planation, and some authorities permit the use of 

 the manual alphabet as well, because what is con- 

 \e\cd by the manual alphal>et is identical with 

 language, and not, like conventional signs, an 

 imperfect sul>stitute for it. But the inflexible 

 advocates of the pure oral system condemn and 

 exclude signs and the manual alphabet altogether. 

 Signs, they say, are at best but a ' baby language,' 

 wedded to which the mind cannot grow, and with 

 which, alone, intellectual maturity can never be 

 attained. 



Excellent work for the deaf and dumb has been 

 done in the United States. The institutions there 

 are munificently supported by grants from the 

 states, and are admirably managed. The staff of 

 teachers is numerous, able, and efficient, and a 

 high degree of success is attained where the work 

 is carried on under advantages which are unknown 

 in the schools of Great Britain. At Washington a 

 college was established in 1864, under the presi- 

 dency of Dr E. M. Gallaudet, the youngest son of 

 the founder of the American Asylum. It is em- 

 powered by the United States government to confer 

 degrees, and has expressed this power by conferring 

 the title of Doctor upon four prominent experts in 

 Great Britain Messrs Charles Baker and D. Bux- 

 ton in 1870, and R. Elliott and W. Stainer in 1887. 

 The same honour was conferred in 1880 upon Pro- 

 fessor A. Graham Bell. The inventor of the tele- 

 phone, he is also well known by his interest in the 

 education of the deaf on the oral system, of which 

 he is one of the most eminent and influential 

 advocates. That advocacy is mainly based on 

 educational grounds, but also as a check to the 

 evils arising from the congregation of the deaf and 

 dumb together in institutions their general asso- 

 ciation with each other, their frequent intermar- 

 riages, the consequent excess in the births of deaf- 

 mute children, and the danger, by no means vision- 

 ary, he insists, of ' the formation of a deaf variety 

 of the human race.' In New York the Rev. Dr 

 Thomas H. Gallaudet, vicar of St Anne's, in 1852 

 started services in his church in the sign language, 

 and in 1872 organised a mission to promote the 

 temporal and spiritual welfare of adult deaf-mutes 

 in other cities of the Union. In London St 

 Saviour's church was built to meet the same neces- 

 sity, and religious services have h. en conducted 

 there by successive chaplains. Another clergyman 

 and several laymen conduct similar services in 

 various parts of the metropolis. In Liverpool, Man- 

 chester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dublin, al-> in 

 Birmingham, and the large manufacturing towns 

 of Yorkshire, special funds are raised, ami special 

 agents employed, to promote in like manner the 

 social and religious benefit of the deaf and dumb. 



The contentions between the rival systems have been 

 carried on with much vigour and spirit in numerous 

 aiticlos, reports, and pamphlet* ; and education has been 

 promoted by the publication of lesson-books such as those 

 of Dr Harvey P. Peel of New York, and of Moritz Hill of 

 Weissenfels (trans, by Stainer). See* besides the report 

 of the Royal Commission above mentioned, the Manual 



