There appears to be no cure for deafness that is other than partial; but with the advance of science preventive treatment is expected to be efficacious in scarlet fever, measles, &c.
Condition of the Deaf.
1. In Childhood.—It is difficult to impress people with two facts in connexion with teaching language to the average child who was born deaf, or lost hearing in early infancy. One is the necessity of the undertaking, and the other is that this necessity is not due to mental deficiency in the pupil. To the born deaf-mute in an English-speaking country English is a foreign language. His inability to speak is due to his never having heard that tongue which his mother uses. The same reason holds good for his entire ignorance of that language. The hearing child does not know a word of English when he is born, and never would learn it if taken away from where it is spoken. He learns English unconsciously by imitating what he hears. The deaf child never hears English, and so he never learns it till he goes to school. Here he has to start learning English—or whatever is the language of his native land—in the same way as a hearing boy learns a foreign language.
But another reason exists which renders his task much more difficult than that of a normal English schoolboy learning, say, German. The latter has two channels of information, the eye and the ear; the deaf boy has only one, the eye. The hearing boy learns German by what he hears of it in class as well as by reading it; the deaf boy can only learn by what he sees. It is as if you tried to fill two cisterns of the same capacity with two inlets to one and only one inlet to the other; supposing the inlets to be the same size, the former will fill twice as fast. So it is in the case of the hearing boy as compared with his deaf brother. The cerebral capacity and quality are the same, but in one case one of the avenues to the brain is closed, and consequently the development is less rapid. Moreover, the thoughts are precisely those which would be expected in people who form them only from what they see. We were often asked by our deaf playmates in our childhood such questions (in signs) as “What does the cat say?”—“The dog talks, does he not?”—“Is the rainbow very hot on the roof of that house?” They have often told us such things as that they used to think someone went to the end of the earth and climbed up the sky to light the stars, and to pour down rain through a sieve.
But there is yet a third disadvantage for the already handicapped deaf boy. He has no other language to build upon, while the other has his mother tongue with which to compare the foreign language he is learning. The latter already has a general idea of sentences and clauses, of tense and mood, of gender, number and case, of substantives, verbs and prepositions; and he knows that one language must form some sort of parallel to another. He is already prepared to find a subject, predicate and object, in the sentence of a foreign language, even when he knows not a word of any but his own mother tongue. If he is told that a certain word in German is an adjective, he understands what its function is, even when he has yet to learn the meaning of the word. All this goes for nothing in the case of the deaf pupil. The very elementary fact that certain words denote certain objects—that there is such a class of word as substantives—comes as a revelation to most deaf children. They have to begin at seven laboriously and artificially to learn what an ordinary baby has unconsciously and naturally discovered at the age of two. English, spoken, written, printed or finger-spelled, is no more natural, comprehensible or easy of acquirement to the deaf than is Chinese. The manual alphabet is simply one way of expressing the vernacular on the fingers; it is no more the deaf-mute’s “natural” language than speech or writing, and if he cannot express himself by the latter modes of communicating, he cannot by spelling on the fingers. The last is simply a case of vicaria linguae manus. None of these are languages in themselves; whether you use pen or type, hand or voice, you are but adopting one or other method of expressing one and the same tongue—English or whatever it may be, that of a “people of a strange speech and of a hard language, whose words they cannot understand.” The deaf child’s natural mode of communication—more natural to him than any verbal language is to hearing people—is the world-wide, natural language of signs.
2. Natural Language of the Deaf.—We have just called signs a natural language. While a purist might properly object to this adjective being applied to all signs, yet it is not an unfair term to use as regards this method of conversing as a whole, even in the United States, where signs, being to a great extent the French signs invented by de l’Epée, are more artificial than in England. The old story, by the way, of the pupil of de l’Epée failing to write more than “hand, breast,” as describing what an incredulous investigator did when he laid his hand on his breast, proves nothing. In all probability he had no idea that he was expected to describe an action, and thought that he was being asked the names of certain parts of the body. The hand was held out to him and he wrote “hand.” Then the breast was indicated by placing the hand on it, and he wrote “breast.” Moreover, the artificial element is much less pronounced than is supposed by most of those who are loudest in their condemnation of signs, there being almost invariably an obvious connexion between the sign and idea. These critics are generally people whose acquaintance with the subject is rather limited, and the thermometer of whose zeal in waging war against gestures generally falls in proportion as the photometer of their knowledge about them shows an increasing light. We may go still further and point out that to object to any sign on the ground of artificiality per se, is to strain at the gnat and to swallow the camel, for English itself is one of the most artificial languages in existence, and certainly is more open to such an objection than signs. If we apply the same test to English that is applied to signs by those who would rule out any which they suppose cannot come under the head of natural gesture or pantomime, what fraction of our so-called natural language should we have left? For a spoken word to be “natural” in this sense it must be onomatopoetic, and what infinitesimal percentage of English words are such? A foreigner, unacquainted with the language, could not glean the drift of a conversation in English, except perhaps a trifle from the tone of the voices and more from the natural signs used—the smiles and frowns, the expressions of the faces, the play of eyes, lips, hands and whole body. The only words he could possibly understand without such aids are some such onomatopoetic words as the cries of animals—“mew,” “chirrup,” &c., and a few more like “bang” or “swish.”
The reason why we insist emphatically upon the importance of teaching English in schools for the deaf in English-speaking countries, is, firstly, because that is the language which the pupil will be called upon to use in his intercourse with his fellow-men after he leaves school, and secondly, because, if his grasp of that tongue only be sufficient and his interest in books be properly aroused, he can go on educating himself in after-life by means of reading. Time tables are overcrowded with kindergarten, clay modelling, wood-carving, carpentry, and other things which are excellent in themselves. But there is not time for everything, and these are not as important in the case of the deaf pupil as language. Putting aside the question of religion and moral training, we consider the flooding of their minds with general knowledge, and the teaching of English to enable them to express their thoughts to their neighbours, to be of paramount importance, so paramount that all other branches of education in their turn pale into insignificance by comparison with these, while the question of methods of instruction should be subservient to these main ends. Too many make speech in itself an end. This is a mistake. Speech is not in itself English; it is only one way of expressing that language. And we are little concerned to inquire by what means the deaf pupil expresses himself in English so long as he does so express himself, whether by speech or writing, or as he does so express himself, whether by speech or writing or finger-spelling—for if he can finger-spell he can write. It is not the mere fact that he can make certain sounds or write certain letters or form the alphabet on his hands that should signify. It is the actual language that he uses, whatever be the means, and the thoughts that are enshrined in the language, that should be our criterion when judging of his education.
The importance of English is insisted upon because to place the deaf child in touch with his English-speaking fellow-men we must teach him their language, and also because he can thereby educate himself by means of books if, and when, he has a sufficient command of that language. The reason is not because the vernacular is actually superior to signs as a means of conversation. The sign language is quite equal to the vernacular as a means of expression. The former is as much our mother tongue, if we may say so, as the latter; we used one language as soon as the other, in our earliest infancy; and, after a lifelong experience of both, we affirm that signs are a more beautiful language than English, and provide possibilities of a wealth of expression which English does not possess, and which probably no other language possesses.
That others whose knowledge of signs is lifelong hold similar opinions is shown by the following extract from The Deaf and their Possibilities, by Dr Gallaudet:—
“Thinking that the question may arise in the minds of some, ‘Does the sign language give the deaf, when used in public addresses, all that speech affords to the hearing?’ I will say that my experience and observation lead me to answer with a decided affirmative. On occasions almost without number it has been my privilege to interpret, through signs to the deaf, addresses given in speech; I have addressed hundreds of assemblages of deaf persons in the college, in schools I have visited, and elsewhere, using signs for the original expression of thought; I have seen many more lectures and public debates given originally in signs; I have seen conventions of deaf-mutes in which no word was spoken, and yet all the forms of parliamentary proceedings were observed, and the most earnest, and even excited, discussions were carried on. I have seen the ordinances of religion administered, and the full service of the Church rendered in signs; and all this with the assurance growing out of my complete understanding of the language—a knowledge which dates from my earliest childhood—that for all the purposes enumerated gestural expression is in no respect inferior, and is in many respects superior, to oral, verbal utterance as a means of communicating ideas.”