AUBER FORESTIER.
THE INSTRUCTION OF DEAF MUTES.
While I was a teacher in the Illinois Institution for the Deaf and Dumb the following letters were written by some of the pupils. The first was written the day after Thanksgiving, and ran thus:
"DEAR MOTHER: We had Thanks be unto God, no school yesterday, Turkey mince-pies, and many other kinds of fruits."
The day after Christmas a boy wrote: "We had Glory to God in the highest, no school yesterday, and a fine time." What he really meant to say was, that they had a motto in evergreens of "Glory to God in the Highest," and they had also a holiday.
This motto, by the way, got up by the pupils themselves, was striking. It was placed over one of the dining-room doors, and the ceiling being very low it was necessarily put just under it. A single glance sufficed to show the utter impossibility of getting the "Glory" any higher.
The younger pupils write in almost every letter, "There are —— pupils in this institution, —— boys and —— girls. All of the pupils are well, but some are sick." This is English pretty badly broken.
These letters serve to illustrate a remark which Principal Peet of the New York institution made to me not long ago: "The great difficulty in instructing deaf mutes is in teaching them the English language." In this, of course, he had reference to the deaf mutes of our own country, and his statement appears, on its face, paradoxical. That American children should learn at least to read the English language, even when they cannot speak it, seems quite a matter of course. The fact is, however, different. The first disadvantage under which the deaf mute labors is the limited extent to which his mental powers have been developed. This deficiency is attributable to two causes—his deprivation of the immense amount of information to be gained by the sense of hearing, and his want of language. Before an infant, one possessed of all its faculties, has acquired at least an understanding of articulate language, it has but vague and feeble ideas. No clear, distinct conception is shaped in its mind. "Ideas," says M. Marcel in his essay on the Study of Languages, "are not innate: they must be received before they can be communicated. This is so true that native curiosity impels us to listen long before we can speak.... Impression ... must therefore precede expression." Real thought, therefore, it will be seen, grows with the child's acquisition of language—an acquisition which is obtained in the earlier years entirely through the organ of hearing. This principal avenue to the mind is closed to the deaf mute. It is evident, therefore, that, lacking these two fundamental sources of all knowledge, his mental growth is incredibly slower than that of the hearing child. All that can be learned by means of the other senses is, however, learned rapidly, these being quickened and stimulated by the absence of one. Hence, the deaf-mute child of eight or ten years of age often appears as bright and intelligent as his more favored playmate. The latter, however, has a store of knowledge and a fund of thought wholly unknown to the deaf mute.
But it is the want of written language, and the obstacles in the way of its acquirement, which constitute the chief disability of the deaf mute in the attempt to gain an education. If you set a child of seven years of age to learn Greek, requiring him to receive and express his ideas wholly in that language, you would not hope for any very clear expression of those ideas with less than a year's instruction, nor would you expect him to appreciate the delicate beauties of the Odyssey in that length of time. The progress of the deaf mute in any language, even the most simply constructed, is greatly slower than that of the hearing child. The latter is assisted at every step by his previous knowledge of his vernacular. The former does not think in words, as you have done from your earliest recollection. Undertake to do your thinking in a foreign tongue, of which you have but a limited knowledge: the attempt is discouraging. The deaf mute thinks in signs. This, his only vehicle of thought, is a hindrance instead of a help in learning written language, there being no analogy whatever between the two methods of expressing ideas.