How the Deaf and Dumb are Educated.
By Edward Salmon.
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IN the Census Returns of 1881 it was shown that a certain district in Ireland contained an unprecedentedly large number of deaf and dumb. Not only was the record of the proportion to the hearing and speaking broken, but the relative increase in the afflicted was so alarming, that special inquiry was made into the matter, with a view to ascertaining, if possible, what were the local conditions which had brought so many afflicted mortals into existence. The explanation was at once simple and reassuring. The enumerator, with a genius for actualities thoroughly Irish, had included under the heading Deaf and Dumb all babes who had neither learnt to speak nor to understand what was said to them. I am tempted to make a statement hardly less startling than that of the Irish census taker, and containing just about the same amount of truth. It is that I have heard the dumb speak! or rather, in order that a Commission may not be appointed to inquire into the accuracy of these words, let me say I have heard the reputed dumb speak. "But not really use their tongues?" some of my readers, like many of my personal friends, will no doubt exclaim. Yes, really: I have held converse by word of mouth with children who were born deaf or who became deaf at so early an age that if they ever heard a sound, it has been of the smallest possible use to them. Last year I was privileged to describe in these pages some of the remarkable triumphs accomplished in the education of those doomed to live their lives in darkness. Since then I have had before me, more or less constantly, the question of the education of the deaf, and have come across many things more extraordinary even than the placing of the blind on all but a practical footing of equality with the seeing.
In these days, what I may call the higher education of the deaf and dumb has reached a stage bordering on perfection and wonderland. During the last twenty years an animated controversy has been carried on by the respective advocates of two systems—the oral and the sign. At times it has waxed hot and strong. On the one hand, the friends of the "pure oral," or German system, seek to assure us that even a deaf child can be taught to speak, and to read with its eyes the words uttered by another person's lips. On the other, the supporters of the sign, or French system, declare that the natural means of communication between the deaf and dumb and their fellows is by motions and the manual alphabet. The general public has gone its way paying little heed to the pros and cons of this most fascinating problem. I may be permitted to say, in a quite judicial spirit, that, whether both are right or partially right, or one is utterly wrong, the enthusiasm and spirit with which both defend their positions are equally creditable. The end aimed at is to give the afflicted an education calculated to advance his or her welfare, spiritual and material, in after life. How differently placed is the deaf and dumb child to-day from the unhappy being born into the world in bygone centuries. Now, every civilised country is equipped with colleges, institutions, and homes for his education. England, which to-day, as the result of private enterprise and philanthropy, boasts many first-class institutions, had at the beginning of the century only one public institution for deaf mutes. In olden times, it was believed that it was hopeless to attempt to get at the brain of a being deprived of hearing, and he or she was regarded and treated as an idiot. To bring a deaf child into the world was a disgrace in the eyes of most people, and one or two cases in which the afflicted were reported to have been educated were looked upon as miracles. Wise men of old! It they lived to-day they would know that it is not only possible to educate a person who is deaf and dumb, but one who is deaf, dumb, and blind also. It was not till the sixteenth century that any serious effort seems to have been made to give the deaf
