November 28, 1890.] 



SCIENCE. 



297 



these the sign-language is constantly and freely used as a 

 means of instruction. In sixteen, the oral schools, with 777 

 pupils, the sign-language is said to he dispensed with in 

 teaching, but is known to be largely used hy the pupils 

 when not under the surveillance of instructors or officers. 

 In not one of the thirty schools existing previous to 1867, in 

 which 5,869 pupils are now taught, has the use of the sign- 

 language been abandoned. These thirty schools in 1867 had 

 less than 3,000 pupils. 



The latest statistics report 9,325 deaf children under in- 

 struction in the United States and Canada in eighty-one 

 schools. The number of oral schools from which it is at- 

 tempted, with partial success only, to exclude the sign-lan- 

 guage, is eighteen, with 1.113 pupils, — less than one-fourth 

 of the schools, and less than one-eighth of the pupils. 



These facts certainly lead to other conclusions than that 

 the sign-language is dying out in America, and that the 

 oral method is supplanting the manual. 



No error can be greater than the supposition that the ju- 

 dicious use of the sign-language is a hinderance to the best 

 results in teaching the deaf. Proofs to the contrary abound 

 in the history of the manual schools of America. The sign- 

 language, far from being a hinderance, is a most important, 

 •valuable, and sometimes even an indispensable, adjunct in 

 (teaching; and, where well-trained and competent instructors 

 rare employed, the results are far more satisfactory than un- 

 <der the method which rigidly excludes signs; and it is not 

 .•alone under the manual method or by manual teachers that 

 fthe value of signs is recognized. 



But before bringing forward the testimony of one of the 

 •world's most famous oral teachers of the deaf in favor of the 

 jise of signs, even in oral schools, I wish to direct attention 

 to, and emphasize, the fact that those who are loudest in 

 traducing the language of signs and in demanding its aboli- 

 tion from schools for the deaf, who assume to discourse 

 learnedly as to its baneful effects, have never even at- 

 tempted to learn it, and could not hold five minutes' conver- 

 sation in it to save their lives; and yet their pupils know 

 and use this language, and may insult or ridicule them in it 

 under their very noses with impunity. 



If one as ignorant of French or German as these critics 

 are of the sign language should undertake to enlighten the 

 world as to the effect on mental development of studying 

 and using the language of France or Germany, I think the 

 world would be apt to be amused. 



In 1867 I made an extensive examination of the promi- 

 nent schools for the deaf in Europe. Among others, I vis- 

 ited the renowned establishment at Weissenfels, an hour's 

 ride from Leipzig, where the first oral school for the deaf 

 ^was established, in 1772. At the head of this school I found 

 Frederick Moritz Hill, then in his sixty-second year, and in 

 :the thirty-seventh year of his service as a teacher of the deaf 

 under the oral method. As a writer of works relating to 

 ;the education of the deaf, as a teacher of deaf children, and 

 as a trainer of teachers, Hill occupies a place second to none 

 : among the instructors of the present century. In 1866 he 

 published his most important work, " Der gegenwartige 

 Zustand des Faubstummen Bildungswesen in Deutschland," 

 to which he called my attention as expressing views he had 

 -formed after nearly forty years of teaching. 



From this work I will make a few extracts, giving the 



opinions as to the value of signs in the instruction of the 

 deaf of a high priest of oral teaching in the land where oral- 

 ism came into being, and where it has been universally up- 

 held and practised, with all the success of which it is capa- 

 ble, to this day. 



Speaking of those who pretend that in the "German 

 method" every species of pantomimic language is proscribed. 

 Hill says, — 



"Such an idea must be attributed to malevolence or to 

 unpardonable levity. This pretence is contrary to nature 

 and repugnant to the rules of sound educational science. 



"If this system were put into execution, the moral life, 

 the intellectual development, of the deaf and dumb, would be 

 inhumanly hampered. It would be acting contrary to na- 

 ture to forbid the deaf-mute a means of expression employed 

 by e?en hearing and speaking persons. ... It is nonsense 

 to dream of depriving him of this means until he is in a 

 position to express himself orally [p. 88]. . . . Even in 

 teaching itself we cannot lay aside the language of gestures 

 (with the exception of that which consists in artificial signs 

 and in the manual alphabet, two elements proscribed by the 

 German school), — the language which the deaf-mute brings 

 with him to school, and which ought to serve as a basis for 

 his education. To banish the language of natural signs 

 from the school-room, and limit ourselves to articulation, is 

 like employing a gold key which does not fit the lock of the 

 door we would open, and refusing to use the iron one made 

 for it. ... At the best, it would be drilling the deaf-mute, 

 but not moulding him intellectually or morally. Where is 

 the teacher who can conscientiously declare that he has dis- 

 charged his duty in postponing moral and religious educa- 

 tion until he can impart it by means of articulation ? Al- 

 though the use of the language of pantomime acts in several 

 respects in an unfavorable manner on the teaching of articu- 

 lation, it ought to be remembered that institutions for the 

 deaf and dumb are not created solely to impart this latter 

 kind of instruction : their object is much more extensive, and 

 they have to meet wants which depend on education taken 

 in its entirety. It would therefore be a fault to exclude 

 prematurely the language of natural signs [pp. 89, 90]. 



"I have always expressed myself thus when gi'ving my 

 exposition of the value and mode of applying, as a means of 

 instruction, this language which we possess; and I have done 

 this, I believe, without equivocation. I acknowledge in this 

 language of natural signs — 



"1. One of the two universally intelligible innate forms 

 of expression granted by God to mankind, — a form which 

 is in reality more or less employed by every human being. 



"2. The only form of expression which by the deaf-and- 

 dumb child can be fashioned without the aid of extraordinary 

 practice, just as his mother-tongue suffices to the hearing 

 child, eventually arranging itself into forms of thought, and 

 unfolding itself into spoken language. 



"3. The reflex of actual experiences. 



"4. The element in which the mental life of the deaf-mute 

 begins to germinate and grow, — the only means whereby he, 

 on his admission to the school, may express his thoughts, 

 feelings, and wishes. 



"5. A very imperfect natural production, because it re- 

 mains for the most part abandoned to a limited sphere of 

 haphazard culture. 



