[285] The New York Institution, the Pennsylvania Institution and the Western Pennsylvania Institution notably started out as day schools, the first remaining so for eleven years. In some of the institutions also there have been at times day school pupils in attendance.
[286] Day schools have, moreover, been fostered and supported to a great extent by advocates of what is known as the oral method, in opposition to the manual, or sign method, which had been largely the method hitherto employed in the institutions. The day school may even be said to have entered the field in part as a protest against this method.
[287] A day school was started in Pittsburg two months previously; but it was soon made into the Western Pennsylvania Institution. Annals, xv., 1870, p. 165.
[288] A number of day schools which were started have been discontinued, but there were never so many as at present.
[289] Wisconsin was the first state to have a day school law, which was enacted in 1885. Bills were offered in 1881 and 1883, but were defeated. The movement in this state has been in large part due to the activities of the Wisconsin Phonological Institute to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, an organization formed in 1879. The question has even been considered in this state of abolishing the state school as a boarding institution. See Public Opinion, xxv., 1898, no. 16; Association Review, iii., 1901, p. 193.
[290] Proceedings, p. 88.
[291] Mr. C. W. Edson, Associate Superintendent of Schools of New York, Charities and the Commons, xix., 1908, p. 1357. See also Report of Illinois Institution, 1874, p. 65.
[292] See Report of Washington State School, 1910, p. 6. A like solution was offered before the National Educational Association in 1903. Certain children might be "trained in special schools and live at home if possible up to the age of adolescence, when they may acquire trades at special institutions maintained by the state". Proceedings, p. 1004.
[293] It is to be remembered that in Michigan and Wisconsin schools have, under the operation of the state law, been organized in comparatively small towns.
[294] Efforts have been made in several other states to secure laws. In Ohio in 1902 the state law was declared unconstitutional, as being class legislation in granting special aid to the cities of Cleveland and Cincinnati. See Report of Ohio School, 1903, p. 14.