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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVI. No. 402 



viewed their surroundings, and noted the inmates making faces, 

 throwing their hands and arms up and down, forwards and side- 

 wajs, and they themselves utterh' oblivious to the meaning of 

 these pantomimes. The effect is as if a sane man were suddenly 

 put amidst a crowd of lunatics. Several highly educated teach- 

 ers, who were connected with a school for deaf-mutes where signs 

 were used, acknowledged to me the fact that there has never been 

 a congenital deaf-mute educated in this country by the sign- 

 language who could use the English language correctly. All those 

 who are paraded at exhibitions are semi-mutes, who had a fair 

 knowledge of language when they were brought to school. If 

 those advocates of the sign-language who claim that a succession 

 of gifted and philosophic men have improved the methods of 

 educating deaf-mutes would only have retained and cultivated the 

 speech of the semi- mutes intrusted to their care, they would have 

 merited claim for earnestness and sincerity of pui'pose; but these 

 are, and always have been, the very ones to fiercely combat every 

 honest attempt to improve the mental condition of this unfortu- 

 nate class. A very able opponent of the sign language very truly 

 said, "Biflerent views may be harmonized, but different motives 

 never." The sign- language obtained a foothold in this country 

 merely through accident. Its exponents have sprung from one 

 family here, who are so deeply indoctrinated with the fallacious 

 cult, that self-interest and obstinacy prompt them to make a com- 

 bined stand against reform. Nevertheless, since the Institution 

 for the Improved Instruction of Deaf- Mutes in this city, and the 

 Clark Institution at Northampton, Mass., came into existence 

 (now a matter af over twenty years) , where all the branches of 

 an education are imparted in articulated speech with success, the 

 sign-language began to decline. It is true, it dies hard; but the 

 sooner this end is obtained, the better it will be for all concerned. 

 Rest to its ashes! 



In the "Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences, "Professor 

 E, M. Gallaudet, Ph.D., LL.D., contributed an article on the lan- 

 guage of signs and the combined systems of instructing the deaf- 

 mutes. The greater part of the article is devoted to demon- 

 strating the fact that such a thing as a sign-language really exists, 

 and contains historical notes and narratives, evidently cited with 

 a view to proving its origin and varying fortunes. Remarkable 1 

 The learned professor might be surprised to find, on consulting 

 any competent lexicon, that there exists, besides, a language ex- 

 pressed with the eyes, one with flowers, one by means of music. 

 The click of the telegraph-instrument is a most useful mode of 

 communication. Thieves use a language expressed with the fin- 

 gers, eyes, and feet, etc. All of them have been and are made use 

 of by hearing people with more or less utility and practicability. 

 But articulate speech is pre-eminently the language of the human 

 race, alike for the hearing and the deaf. The various substitutes 

 which human ingenuity has invented are the outcome of peculiar 

 circumstances. The hearing child makes use of gestures before 

 it acquires speech, as a matter of necessity; the intelligence of the 

 child determines the exprestive value of the gesture; and the 

 same is true of the deaf-mutes. In suruming up the advantages 

 of the combined system, the writer says, — 



'' The experience of nearly a century and a half of practical 

 instruction of the deaf has established no conclus-ion more clearly 

 than that it is impossible to teach all deaf-mutes to speak. Some 

 are found to be lacking more or less in mental capacity ; some 

 have only a weak and inefiScient imitative faculty; with others an 

 infirmity of vision is discovered; others, again, have little "quick- 

 ness of tactile perception." 



It may have taken some specially constituted instructors to 

 come to such a conclusion ; it may be said with equal jiistice that 

 "a century and a half of experience" has proven conclusively that 

 it is impossible to teach all hearing children to speak or to write 

 correctly or intelligently. Any intelligent layman knows that a 

 lame child may also be near-sighted, and that one thus afHicted 

 will make neither a good foot-racer nor an expert hunter. All 

 hearing people are surely not on the same plane of intellectual, 

 physical, and moral vigor; for, if they were, such inadequate 

 means of instructing the deaf as the sign-language would never 

 have found favor. 



"In former times these doubly or trebly defective children were 



summarily dismissed from oral schools with the unjust and inhu- 

 man condemnation that they were imbeciles; and even at the 

 present they are quietly dropped from such schools under one 

 pretext or another, because the oral teachers are perfectly well 

 aware that they cannot be educated under their method." 



Even the intelligent congenital mute cannot get a fair education 

 at a school where the sign-language is used as the basis of instruc- 

 tion, much less t^ie feeble-minded ones. I admit, those feeble- 

 minded ones are retained at those schools at three hundred dollars 

 a year, as a matter of pecuniary interest only. 



" The essential defect in the oral method is, then, that it practi- 

 cally rejects a large proportion of the deaf as incapable of educa- 

 tion; that it fails with those who stand in greatest need of a help- 

 ing hand." 



Mind, that cannot be impressed with the meaning of a word,, 

 expressing abstract thought by articulation and by writing, can 

 neither be impressed with the meaning of an artificial sign. 



Dr. Gallaudet admits that "the radical deficiency of the manual 

 method is, that it makes no provision for imparting the extremely 

 valuable accomplishments of articulation and lip-reading to the 

 large percentage of the deaf that is certainly capable of acquiring 

 these great gifts." The radical deficiency of the manual method, 

 in better words, is, that it is a failure as a means of instructing 

 congenital mutes, and that it perpetrates a gross injustice upon 

 the semi-mutes, in that it renders them dumb. 



"The doors of the combined-system schools are wide open to all 

 the deaf, — to the weaker as well as to those more richly endowed 

 with capacity for improvement. In these schools no method or 

 appliance is rejected that can be shown to be of practical help to- 

 any number, however small, of the great class of the deaf." If 

 this were true, those schools should have established separate 

 classes or schools for the semi mutes, — an innovation so far never 

 even attempted. 



" He who would assume the responsibility of advising parents 

 as to the most desirable course to be pursued in the education of 

 a deaf child should never forget that to teach such a child ta 

 speak comes very far short of educating him." How considerate 

 and unselfish I 



" In oral schools there is a strong tendency to lay the stress and 

 emphasis of the work of instruction on speech; and to secure s,uc- 

 cess in this, many matters of greater importance to the pupil are 

 sacrificed, for, in spite of the zealous assurances of promoters of 

 oral teaching that speech is an inestimable boon to the deaf, — the 

 thing of paramount importance, —it remains true that there is not 

 one of the main objects sought to be accomplished in the general 

 education of the deaf which will not be seen, with a very little 

 reflection, to be of more consequence to a deaf child than the 

 mere ability to speak and to read from the lips of others." 



If the above is not a wilful misrepresentation, it betrays, cer- 

 tainly, ignorance of the subject under consideration; for, after a 

 class of congenital mutes has mastered the mechanism of articu- 

 lation which is completed within the first year, instruction goes. 

 on as in a school for hearing children. 



"To be able to read and write intelligently, to possess the 

 knowledge that is imparted in common-school training, to be 

 master of a trade by means of which one may gain a livelihood, 

 to be well grounded in principles of morality, to enjoy an abiding, 

 faith in God and a hope of immortal life, — surely each one of 

 these, weighed over against a mere ability to speak, would be 

 found of far greater value to the deaf." 



Congenital mutes who are educated by means of the sign-lan- 

 guage can hardly acquire a trade in common with the hearing, 

 for the reason that they cannot express themselves intelligently 

 by writing; and their artificial signs are not understood, and cer- 

 tainly look ridiculous, especially to the illiterate; while those 

 taught by articulation do not meet with these obstacles. To cover 

 the failure of their system of signs, those schools were compelled 

 to open workshops in connection with their schools. The reli- 

 gious training of the pupils in those schools cannot be so thorough 

 where the knowledge of language is so meagre. 



" The achievement of imparting speech to one who has it not 

 comes so near to being a miracle that one is dazzled by the bril- 

 liancy of the triumph, and is apt to feel that every thing else in 



