May 24, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



405 



day to a friend, and noted the time when the reading began, and 

 also the time when the book was closed. I then made a calcu- 

 lation of the number of words read, and I found that ino7-e -djords 

 had been read in an hour and a half than a hearing child hears 

 in the course of a day. 



Other experiments have convinced me that the speed of silent 

 reading, at least for those who know the language, averages from 

 three hundred to even four hundred words a minute. I say, then, 

 there is hope for the deaf, by putting books before them and ac- 

 customing them to form the habit of reading. 



I would urge upon all superintendents and principals of schools 

 for the deaf the importance of introducing reading as a regular 

 school exercise, for the purpose of teaching language. I would 

 introduce into the very youngest classes the practice of reading, 

 regardless of the fad that the children may not understand the 

 meaning of the words on the printed page before them. By this 

 practice a repetition of words to the eye would be secured, which 

 could not probably be obtained in any other way, and reading 

 would co-operate with the regular instruction of the schoolroom to 

 bring about a gradual comprehension of language. 



I would place in the hands of the youngest pupils, in printed 

 form, the stories that hearing children love to hear, and require 

 them to read those stories, whether they understand them or not, 

 without giving them any explanation of the meaning. Then, after 

 their allotted task is completed, I would give them a reward. 



I would show them a picture, or act the story out in natural pan- 

 tomime. I do not hold, with many of my friends, that signs have 

 not their use. I believe that signs, like pictures, are capable of 

 being used so as actually to facilitate the acquisition of our lan- 

 guage by the deaf. The proper use of signs is to illustrate lan- 

 guage, fiot to take its place. 



I do not know, however, if you will applaud me when I say that 

 I do not here allude to the sign-language. There is the same- dis- 

 tinction between pantomime and the sign-language that there is 

 between pictures and the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Egyptian hiero- 

 glyphics consist of abbreviated conventionalized pictures, just as 

 the sign-language consists of abbreviated conventionalized panto- 

 mime. No one will deny that the exhibition of a picture may add 

 interest to the story that we tell a child. It illustrates the lan- 

 guage, and it may be of invaluable assistance to him in realizing 

 our meaning ; but is that any reason why we should teach him 

 English through Egyptian hieroglyphics .' 



The moment you teach one language through another, the pupil 

 thinks in the language of communication, and acquires the other 

 as a foreign tongue, just as the hearing children in our public 

 schools continue to think exclusively in English, however many 

 languages may be included in their curriculum of studies. The 

 natural method demands that you shall teach a language by using 

 it for the communication of thought without translation into any 

 other tongue. If you want your child to learn German or French, 

 the English language is an obstacle in the way, and retards his 

 mastery of the foreign tongue, just as the use of the sign-language 

 in our institutions retards the acquisition of English. If you send 

 your child to Germany or France, or so surround him with Ger- 

 man or French speaking people that communication is carried on 

 exclusively in one or the other of these languages, he acquires the 

 French or German as a native tongue. 



I have no doubt that all things have a use, and even the sign- 

 language may have a use in missionary work among the adult 

 deaf; but I do not think it should have a place in the school, or 

 be used in the instruction of the young, for it comes between the 

 de?f child's mind and the EngHsh language he is striving to 

 master. 



If words are impressed upon the memory by frequency of repe- 

 tition, then the duller a pupil is, the more necessary is that repeti- 

 tion, and the more harmful the sign-language. 



But I am wandering from the subject. If we make a deaf child, 

 perforce, as a regular school exercise, read, not a few paragraphs, 

 but pages upon pages of a book, he will obtain that repetition to 

 the eye which the teacher cannot give him by writing or by the 

 manual alphabet. Let the pupil spend half an hour or an hour a 

 day in reading (or spelling upon his fingers) the language that 

 describes a fascinating tale. Do not show him a picture, do not 



make him a sign, do not give him any explanation of the meaning 

 until he has finished his allotted task. Then let the story be acted 

 out, and let pictures be freely used, till he gets the meaning, not 

 necessarily of the individual words and phrases, but of the story as 

 a whole. He learns thus that the printed language in the book 

 expresses a pantomime, or a series of pictures ; that it represents^ 

 indeed, a narrative that absorbs and fascinates him. 



Now, when he is called upon to go through his next daily task, h& 

 knows that the language expresses a story of some kind that will 

 interest him, and all the time he is reading or spelling his mind 

 is being exercised. Curiosity compels him to speculate, and he 

 wonders what sort of a pantomime will be acted out, what sort of 

 pictures will be shown him. He frames in his mind an hypotlieti- 

 ir«/j'/(?ry, which may or may not be right, but the pantomime or 

 pictures will ultimately correct it. He is deriving ideas of some sort 

 directly from the printed words. This is the sort of exercise that 

 the child needs. This is the kind of mental operation that goes 

 on in the mind of the hearing child when he sits on his father's- 

 knee, and listens to the story of adventure or to the fairy-tale. In 

 both cases the comprehension of the language is imperfect ; in both 

 cases errors are corrected and interest aroused by the exhibition 

 of pictures, or by the use of dramatic gestures and natural pan- 

 tomime. 



I therefore strongly recommend the introduction of reading as a 

 school exercise, — the introduction of interesting stories expressed 

 in ordinary language, idiomatic phrases and all, not language stilted 

 in expression, containing sentences exclusively arranged upon sim- 

 ple grammatical models. If the pupil is to make progress in his. 

 knowledge of ordinary language, the language must be above him^ 

 and not degraded to an unnatural level. Teachers may say, " Why 

 use idiomatic phrases that cannot possibly be explained to the deaf 

 child .' " But he never can come to understand them until he has 

 seen them, any more than the hearing child can understand them 

 until he has heard them. The hearing child learns to understand 

 by hearing, and the deaf child will come to know by seeing. Fre- 

 quency of repetition will impress the idiomatic phrases on his mind,- 

 and much reading will bring about this frequent repetition in ever- 

 varying contexts. 



I may allude here to an experiment that I made upon myself, 

 which has an important bearing on this whole subject. I obtained 

 a work upon the education of the deaf, written in the Spanish 

 language (of which language I knew nothing). I determined to 

 ascertain how far I would come to understand the language by 

 forcing myself to read the book. I read very carefully thirty or 

 forty pages, and could make but little of it. The Latin roots 

 helped a little, and I understood a few technical words here and 

 there, but that was all. I refused at first the aid of a dictionary' 

 for a dictionary stops the current of thought. I read thirty or forty 

 pages, and then paused. 



Now, a number of words had occurred so frequently that I re- 

 membered them, though I knew not their meaning. These words- 

 I sought in the dictionary, and then I resumed my reading. I 

 found that these words formed the key to the next thirty or forty 

 pages, and that the meaning of many expressions that would other- 

 wise have been obscure became manifest. New words also ex- 

 plained themselves by the context. 



Every now and then, after reading a few pages, I resorted to 

 the dictionary, and sought the meaning of those unknown words- 

 that I could remember without looking at the book. I then turned 

 back to the beginning and read the whole a second time, and 

 I was delighted to find that a very great portion of the meaning 

 of that book revealed itself to me. Indeed, I felt convinced, that,- 

 if I wanted to comprehend the Spanish language, all I had to- 

 do was to read, and read, and read, and I should come to under- 

 stand it. 



The application to the deaf is obvious. The methodical instruc- 

 tion in the schoolroom, and the efforts of the teacher, take the 

 place of the dictionary to the deaf child, and reading, reading,- 

 reading, with a desire to understand, will give that frequency of 

 repetition to the eye that is essential to the mastery of language. 

 To express the theory in a single sentence, / would have a deaf 

 child read books in order to learn the language, instead of learn- 

 ing the language in order to read books. 



