Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "David, St" to "Demidov" / Volume 7, Slice 10

by Various

Some teachers have asked for the children to be sent to school at the age of five instead of seven. This savours of another confession that the “pure” oral method had not done what was expected of it at first. First, the demand was for the method itself; then came requests for more teachers, so that, the classes being smaller, each pupil should receive more attention; this meant more money, and so this was asked for; then day schools would remedy the failure by giving the pupils opportunities of talking with the public in general; then we were told the teachers were unskilful; finally, more time is needed. And yet the language of the pupils is no better to-day than it was in 1881, even though they were at school only four or five years then as opposed to nine or ten now.

To Addison’s Report on a Visit to some Continental Schools for the Deaf (1904-1905) we are indebted for the following information. The new school at Frankfort-on-Maine, accommodating forty or fifty children at a cost of £40 to £50 per head, is modelled on the plan of Foreign schools. a family home. The main objects are to obtain good speech and lip-reading and to use these colloquially; the work is very thorough and the teaching very skilful. At Munich those of the hundred pupils who have some hearing are separated from the others and taught by ear as well as eye. At Vienna (Royal Institution) a small proportion of the pupils are day scholars, as they are at Munich, and the teaching is, of course, carried on by the oral method, as it is all over Germany. Here, however, the teachers “think it impossible to educate fully all deaf-mutes by the oral method only.” In the Jews’ Home at Vienna the semi-deaf are taught by the acoustic method, and are not allowed to see the teacher’s lips at all. At Dresden, a large school of 240 pupils, the director favours smaller institutions than his own, considers the oral method possible for all but the “weak-minded deaf,” and divides his pupils into A, B and C divisions, according to intellect. In the first division good speech is obtained. Saxony boasts a home for deaf homeless women, grants premiums for deaf apprentices, and trains its teachers of the deaf in the institution itself—a good record and plan. In the royal institution at Berlin Addison saw good lip-reading and thorough work, though the deaf in the city—as in most of the schools—signed. The men in Berlin “like the adult deaf generally, were all in favour of a combination of methods, and condemned the pure oral theory as impracticable.” At Hamburg, again, “hand signs” were used at least for Sunday service. Schleswig has two schools. Pupils are admitted first to the residential institution, where they are instructed for a year, and are then divided into A, B and C classes, “according to intellect.” The lowest class (C) remain at this institution for the rest of the eight years, and a “certain amount of signing” is allowed in their instruction. A and B classes are boarded out in the town and attend classes at a day school specially built for them, being taught orally exclusively.

In Denmark Addison saw what impressed him most. All the children of school age go to Fredericia and remain for a year in the boarding institution. They are then examined and the semi-deaf—29% of the whole—are sent to Nyborg. The rest—all the totally deaf—remain another year at Fredericia and are then divided into the A, B and C divisions before mentioned, and on the same criterion—intellect. Those in C—the lowest class, 28% of the totally deaf—are sent to Copenhagen, where they are taught by the manual method, no oral work being attempted. Those in B class, numbering 19% of the deaf, remain in the residential institution in Fredericia and are taught orally, while the best pupils—A class—are boarded out in the town and attend a special day school. These form 26% of the deaf, and those with whom they live encourage them to speak when out of as well as when in school. The buildings and equipment generally are excellent. “Hand signs” are used at Nyborg, indicating the position of the vocal organs when speaking, and, as might be expected, the “lip”-reading is 90% more correct when these symbols—infinitely more visible than most of the movements of the vocal organs and face when speaking—are used at the same time. The idea of these hand signs, by the way, corresponds to that of Graham Bell’s Visible Speech, in which a written symbol is used to indicate the position of the vocal organs when uttering each sound; it is a kind of phonetic writing which is to a slight extent illustrative at the same time. We find natural signs of the utmost value when teaching articulation, to describe the position of the vocal organs. We give these details from Mr Addison’s notes because it is to Germany that so many look for guidance to-day, and it is the home of the so-called “pure” oral method; while the system of classification in Denmark into the four schools which are controlled by one authority, struck him very favourably and so is given rather fully.

In France most of the schools are supported by charity, and the only three government institutions are those at Paris for boys, with 263 pupils lately, at Bordeaux for girls, having 225 inmates, and at Chambéry with 86 boys and 38 girls. In the great majority the method of instruction is professedly pure oral. “But,” said Henri Gaillard (Report, World’s Congress of the Deaf, Missouri, 1904), “this is only in appearance. In reality all of the schools use the combined method; only they are not willing to admit it, because the oral method is the official method, imposed by the inspectors of the minister of the interior.”

In Italy, again, we are told that the teachers sign in most of the schools, which are professedly pure oral.

In Sweden, schools for the deaf have ceased to depend, as they did up to 1891, upon private benevolence. The system is generally the combined, and in schools where the oral method is adopted the pupils are divided into A, B and C divisions, as in Denmark and Dresden, in the two latter divisions of which signs are allowed. In Norway the method is the oral.

Methods of Teaching.—There have always been two principal methods of teaching the deaf, and all education at the present time is carried on by means of one or other or both of these. Where there is sufficient hearing to be utilized, instruction is sometimes given thereby as well, though this auricular method does not seem to make much headway, and experience is not in favour of believing that the sense of hearing, where a little exists, can be “cultivated” to any marked degree. It is really impossible to draw hard and fast lines between these means of instruction. One merges into another, and this other into the next; and no two teachers will, or can, adopt exactly the same lines. It is not desirable that they should, for much must be left to individuality. Orders, rules, methods, should not be absolute laws. Observe them generally, but dispense with them as circumstances, the pupil and opportunity may require. Strong individuality, sympathy, enthusiasm, long intercourse with the deaf, are needed in the teacher, and it is surely obvious that every teacher should have a full command of all the primary means of instruction to begin with, and not of one only.

Where deafness is absolute, or practically so, we have to seek for means that will appeal to the eye instead of the ear. Of these, we have the sign language, writing and printing, pictures, manual alphabets and lip-reading. We have to choose which of these is to be used, if not all, and which must be rejected, if any. Moreover, we have to decide how much or how little one or another is to be adopted if we employ more than one. Hence it is obvious that there may be many different systems and subdivisions of systems. But the two main methods are the manual, which generally depends upon all the above-mentioned means of appealing to the eye except lip-reading, and the oral, which adopts what the manual method rejects, uses writing and printing and perhaps pictures, but excludes finger-spelling and (theoretically) signs. To these two we must add a third means of instruction—the combined system—which rejects no means of teaching, but uses all in most cases. The dual method need hardly be called a separate method or system, for it implies simply the use of the manual method for some pupils and of the oral for others. Nor need we call the mother’s (= intuitive or natural) a separate method in the sense in which we are using the word here, for it is rather a mode of procedure which can be applied manually or orally indifferently. The same may be said of the grammatical “method”; also of the “word method,” which is really the “mother’s.” The “eclectic method” is practically the combined system, or something between that and the dual method, and hardly needs separate classification.

Let us notice the manual method, the oral method, and the combined system, considering with the last the “dual method.”

The chief elements of the manual method are finger-spelling, reading and writing and signing. These are used, that is to say, as means of teaching English and imparting ideas. Manual. Signs are used to awaken the child’s thoughts, finger-spelling and writing are used to express these thoughts in the vernacular. The latter are used to express English, the former to explain English.