stitution never intended that it should be used as an 'asylum' and such nomenclature properly has no place in our statute books, and we trust that all legislation in the future will look to this important distinction." Superintendent Sibley, of the Missouri School for the Blind, issues a printed circular: "In view of the fact that a want of proper information on the part of the public concerning this school has been the cause of many blind children growing up in ignorance. This institution is in no sense an asylum." Struggling against the same misconception Superintendent Jacobs, of the Indiana Institution for the Education of the Blind, remarks: Judging from the contents of many letters that I have received, there seems to be a lack of information relative to the real character and purposes of this institute among all classes of people. They fail to comprehend that this is not au asylum. * *" Superintendent Miller, of the Ohio Institution, remarks that "An erroneous impression seems to exist as to the intention of our institution. It is not a State infirmary, nor is it in any sense an asylum." Superintendent Clement, of the New York State Institution for the Blind, though not commenting on the evil complained of in the West, issues an "Address to the Parents and Friends of the Blind" ostensibly to advise the parent as to the course of home instruction to be pursued before the child is sent to school, but he carefully notes that the organic act declares "that the institution shall be considered as a department of public instruction." It will be observed that the new school for the blind in Alabama has received the name of Academy for the Blind.

*

The name "reformatory."-If the odium which attaches to the word "asylum," in which light it would seem the public persists in viewing the above institutions, their true names to the contrary notwithstanding, "has been the cause of many blind chil dren growing up in ignorance," it may be supposed that the graduate of a reform school would be at some pains to conceal the name of his alma mater rather than undergo the worst evil to a reformed person of having been “in jail." Superintendent Mallalieu, of the Nebraska State Reform School, observes, in suggesting that the name of his institution be changed to State Industrial School that "the word 'reform' when applied to penal institutions carries with it a stigma. It is frequently a misnomer. It projects itself into the future and springs up at the very time when the struggling youth is doing his best to lead an honorable life." The trustees of the Iowa school in recommending that the name be changed to the "State Industrial School" say: "The use of the name 'reform school' was considered inapplicable, although the school is reformatory in its work and character." Superintendent Charlton, of the Indiana School for Boys, however, takes another view of the matter, considering the question in the light of propriety of nomenclature and the life of the boy while in school. He very logically observes: "Let us call things by their right names. I try to impress upon every boy the fact that this is a reform school."

Attendance.-The attendance at these institutions suffers not only from the false conception of their object, but also from ignorance of their existence and, in some cases, a wilful neglect of the advantages proffered. Among several methods followed by superintendents of schools for the deaf to make the schools and their true character known (see page 822, Education of the Deaf-Convention), that pursued by Superintendent Noyes, of the Minnesota school, seems to be, not only ingenious in its conception and thorough in its operation, but highly valuable in its results. "That method alone," observed Mr. Noyes, "has given me tenfold more reliable information in the State of Minnesota than all the census returns that have been made, cither by the national or State government, since that [the Minnesota] institution was founded." This plan is based on the fact that a child in the public school will be more likely to know if there is a deaf and dumb child in the neighborhood than his father or his mother. Taking advantage of the superintendent of public instruction's annual distribution of blank forms to be filled out and returned, a table was added to the form; and on this, county superintendents and teachers were required to write the name, the age, and the parent's post-office address of each deaf or blind child in the State. The responses the State superintendent had tabulated and transmitted to Superintendent Noyes, who recommends that the word "dumb" be not used, "because some parties make the same child deaf, dumb, and blind" quite contrary to the fact. The matter of attendance was not formally before the ninth biennial meeting of instructors of the blind, but the same ignorance of the existence of schools for the blind was adverted to by several members.

I.-EDUCATION OF THE DEAF.

I. GENERAL REMARKS.

New institutions and buildings.-Three schools for the education of the deaf have been opened during the year and two provided for. Of the schools established those at Evansville, Ind., and La Crosse, Wis., are respectively a part of the common school sys

See page 856, Classification of pupils.

tem of the city, while that at Cincinnati, Ohio, is under the auspices of the Society for the Improved Instruction of Deaf-Mutes, of Cincinnati. The institution for the deaf and the blind lately established at Cheyenne by the Legislature of Wyoming is prepared to begin its work as soon as a sufficient number shall have presented themselves for instruction, and the institution for the education of the colored deaf and blind, provided for by the twentieth Legislature of Texas (1857), will be ready in September, through the activity of the three commissioners appointed to carry out the act and to whom the $50,000 appropriated was intrusted.

Two schools have ceased to exist, the private school of Prof. A. Graham Bell, in Washington, and the St. Joseph's Deaf-Mute School, Hannibal, Mo., whose pupils have been removed to the Convent of Maria Consilia Deaf-Mute Institute, Saint Louis, Mo. The school in Baltimore, known as F. Knapp's Institute, is supposed to have been discontinued as a school for the deaf, as no information of it or from it as such has been received for several years.

The Kansas, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Oregon, West Virginia, and the national institution have largely increased their accommodations. The central and the northern New York institutions are making preparations to begin the erection of institutional buildings, the State Legislature having appropriated $40,000 to each; while the appropriation of $40,000 by the Massachusetts Legislature to the Horace Mann School having been found inadequate to erect the building contemplated, work has not yet been begun. As to the plan and arrangement of these buildings, the Office possesses

no information.

Changes of the year.-The changes in the management of the institutions for the class under review are few but marked. The Alabama Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind has been separated into its elements and an institution established for each class of its inmates; the New Mexico institution has been adopted by the Territory; and the New England Industrial School for Deaf-Mutes, Beverly, Mass., has, for the first time, been aided (to the amount of $2,000) by the State. In the Pennsylvania and Wisconsin institutions the oral department has been enlarged, and in the former institution is now taught in a separate establishment. The "advanced class" of the Chicago schools for the deaf, or high school, in the language of the principal of this class of city schools, “bids fair to become an established feature, as it has done well and grows more and more useful." Another "experiment." the most important innovation of the year, has been the determination on the part of the board of directors of the National College to admit young women to the college on the same terms and conditions as have been applied to young men. The results will determine the future policy of the board.

Training of teachers for the deaf.-The normal department of the Eleventh Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf, the first of its kind, was opened on July 16, 1886, by its superintendent, Mr. Ely, of the Maryland School for Deaf and Dumb, in the following language:

"The first subject to be considered is primary language.

The idea is to

have set before us here the methods of the class-room-how we begin, how we go on, what means we use to reach the minds of our pupils to illustrate certain things, to get over certain difficulties, and in the progress of the discussion it is expected that the teachers present will ask questions, make suggestions, and offer remarks from their places in the room. It is to be as informal as is consistent with good order." Mr. Weed, of the Pennsylvania institution, was in charge of the exercises of the section of language for primary and intermediate classes, and selected as topics for discussion: (1) Vocabulary; (2) tense; (3) correction of mistakes; (4) methods of review; (5) exercises most profitable for primary teaching. Then followed in order arithmetic, in charge of Mr. F. W. Booth; kindergarten work, in charge of Mr. Z. F. Westervelt; geography, under Mr. Weston Jenkins; natural science, in charge of Mr. F. D. Clarke; art, in charge of Mrs. A. J. Griffith; history, in charge of Mr. George Goodall; and the sections of sign language, Mr. I. L. Peet, of articulation and lip reading, Miss L. D. Richards, and of auricular instruction, Mr. J. A. Gillespee. Space is wanting to follow the discussions. It is necessary, however, to say that the presiding officer's expectation that questions would be asked was fully realized.

Miss Garrett, principal of the Pennsylvania Oral School for the Deaf, Scranton, Pa., devotes a portion of her time to training teachers in the oral method. The course continues 10 months-4 of observation and 6 of practice. Twenty of those who have received instruction at the school are engaged in teaching; the class for the year just closed consisted of 3. The National College at Washington has done so much toward furnishing the institutions of the country with teachers that, though its object is the higher education of the deaf, it may in a manner be regarded as a normal institution. Eighteen per cent. of those who have been connected for a longer or shorter time with the college have been engaged in teaching, and it is interesting to note that not infrequently their work has been that of pioneers.

Articulation.-The electicism and the intelligent advocacy of teaching the deaf to Speak, and to read from a speaker's lips, as evinced in the resolution unanimously

adopted at the Eleventh Convention of American Instructors, contrasts with the enthusiastic preference given to the "pure oral method" by the Milan Convention,1 representing the opinion on the continent of Europe.

The desirability of teaching the deaf to speak, and to read from the lips, is fully appreciated by American instructors, but experience causes them to doubt the possibility of the congenitally deaf acquiring these arts, except in cases of exceptional brightness. A trial of the combined system in its second and fourth features, Professor Fay's classification (see page 823, Convention), at the Pennsylvania institution, showed, after a trial of several years, the second method to be unsatisfactory as regards articulation and lip-reading, while in the trial of the fourth method the oral department was found worthy of being continued, though the "results were not such as its most ardent friends had expected." "It is believed," says Superintendent Crouter, of the Pennsylvania institution, "that a large percentage of our pupils, namely, the semi-mutes and the semi-deaf, and such of the congenitally deaf (few in number probably) as are capable of receiving oral instruction, can and should be orally taught, and that all others, forming, to be sure, the majority of the pupils, should be taught by manual methods" (see page 823, Convention). Calculations by this Office, based upon replies made to the inquiry of the editor of the American Annals of the Deaf and published in that journal, show that 36 of the schools reporting statistics for the year 1856 used the combined method exclusively, 13 the oral, and 10 the manual. Of the whole number of pupils (excluding the pupils of the New York institution) of these institutions (about 8,000), 32.5 per cent. were instructed in articulation. In the 45 institutions reporting teachers of articulation as such, the average number of pupils to a teacher is 15, so far as this is not modified by the fact that some of the pupils that appear in the aggregate were only present for a part of the year, causing this average to be too high. In the London city schools for the deaf, 10 is the maximum number committed to the charge of one teacher, and this number was one of the "six cardinal demands" of the schools for the deaf in Germany, almost unanimously adopted at the convention of German instructors of the deaf. The teachers of articulation formed 24 per cent. of the whole teaching body.

The oral branch of the Pennsylvania institution, above referred to, is taught in a separate establishment, with accommodations increased to admit 100 pupils. The Wisconsin institution has enlarged its oral department, which now receives the entire attention of three teachers; and the board of directors of the Oregon school asks the legislature to provide the means of employing a teacher of articulation. Two of the new schools of the year are oral schools, the Evansville, Ind., school being taught on the manual system.

Auricular instruction.-This lately introduced and rapidly extending method of instruction has been defined by the auricular teacher of the Nebraska institution, Miss Plum, as "educating the brain to use the hearing so that speech may be gained," and Professor Currier, of the New York Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb, explains the phrase "aural development" as "the systematic training of an ear in abnormal condition to perform, with the aid of mechanical contrivance, the operations just described [the operations of the ear in a normal state]." To ascertain the number of semi-deaf, the tests made, and the number taught auricularly in the schools for the deaf, Superintendent Gillespie, during 1885-86, sent out a series of questions to the various institutions and received answers from 35. To the first question, "Has there been a general test of the hearing made in your school?" 22 answers are in the affirmative. To the question, "How many have you found with sufficient hearing to distinguish vowel sounds ?" the 22 institutions answering the previous question in the affirmative, answered, collectively, 80. To the question, "How many have you taught wholly aurally?" the answer was 35, including the Nebraska in

The resolutions adopted by the international convention at Milan were as follows:

"1. The convention, considering the incontestable superiority of speech over signs, (1) for restoring deaf-mutes to social life, (2) for giving them greater facility of language, declares that the method of articulation should have the preference over that of signs in the instruction and education of the deaf and dumb.

2. Considering that the simultaneous use of signs and speech has the disadvantage of injuring speech and lip-reading and precision of ideas, the convention declares that the pure oral method ought to be preferred."

The American instructors embodied their views in the following preamble and resolutions:

"Whereas the experience of many years in the instruction of the deaf has plainly shown that among the members of this class of persons great differences exist in mental and physical condition, and in capacity for improvement, making results easily possible in certain cases which are actually unat tainable in others, these differences suggesting very widely different treatment with different individ

uals: It is therefore

Resolved, That the system of instruction existing at present in America commends itself to the world, for the reason that its tendency is to include all known methods and expedients which have been found to be of value in the education of the deaf, while it allows diversity and independence of action, working at the same time in harmony, and aiming at the attainment of a common object by all. "Resolved, That earnest and persistent endeavors should be made in every school for the deaf to teach every pupil to speak and read from the lips, and that such efforts should only be abandoned when (after thorough tests by experienced teachers) it is plainly evident that the measure of success attain. able is so small as not to justify the necessary amount of labor."

stitution. To the inquiry, "How many are taught both aurally and orally?" intended to bring out the number taught with a view to cultivating the hearing, the answer was 399. Superintendent Gillespie, of the Nebraska institution, stated in the Eleventh Convention, at Berkeley, that experience had convinced him that his previous estimate of 15 per cent. was not too low as an estimate of the pupils at schools for the deaf who have sufficient hearing to be developed. At the Mississippi institution during 1885 a class of 10 were daily instructed in this method, and, although 5 could not at first distinguish vowel sounds, they could at the close of the year distinguish words and sentences.

Periodicals. Of the two journals that are not issued by institutions for the deaf, one, the American Annals of the Deaf, particularly demands attention as an educational publication of the highest class. This journal, 79 per cent. of whose running expenses are derived from assessments on American and Canadian institutions, contained during the year under review twenty-eight articles, three-fourths of which are of a pedagogical nature, the others being historical, biographical, or casual articles relating to persons or subjects connected with deaf-mutism. These constitute the general and largest part of each quarterly issue; the minor departments being a department for notice of the current literature of deaf-mutism, a school-items department, and a department of announcements, and record of current events. The articles, original or translated, are written, with but few exceptions, by instructors. In the other periodical, the Deaf-Mutes' Journal, social rather than educational information predominates. Besides these, the educational and the social journals of the deaf world, there is a class of periodicals printed for, and very frequently, if not in every case, by the pupils of the several institutions. The potential value of these papers, and that their influence is not confined to an institution, was happily illustrated by Superintendent Westervelt during the session of the normal section of the Eleventh Convention, at the close of Miss Harris's account of her method of teaching language at the Maryland institution. He said: "Would it not be a benefit to the profession and to all the institutions where papers are published, if such work as this done by Miss Harris were printed in such paper for the benefit of other institutions? We all look through

the institution papers, and we are very glad to get hold of something of this kind." Conrention. As the proceedings of the Eleventh Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf, at Berkeley, Cal., July 15-22, 1886, cover 320 pages of an octavo volume, it is impossible to do justice to them in a few paragraphs. A faint sketch of the proceedings of the normal department has been given under "Training of Teachers." Those desirous of information as to the intimate or social side of a transcontinental trip that appears to have been as pleasant as long, are referred to the article in the American Annals of the Deaf, and those who wish the full information, that can not be given here, to the volume of the proceedings. In calling the convention to order President Gallaudet, of the National College, gave a historical view of the previous conventions which, as a series, may be separated into two periods; the first from 1850 to 1858, held at intervals of about two years, with an attendance on the average of 35, representing from 3 to 10 institutions; the second, inaugurated after an interval of 10 years, at intervals of 4 years, and a constantly increasing attendance, until at Berkeley 41 institutions were represented by 230 delegates.

At the opening session Mr. I. N. Tate's paper on the means of securing a better attendance at schools for the deaf called forth the discussion intended, Rev. Thomas Gallaudet recommended a multiplication of institutions to accomplish the end, a proposition that was opposed by Mr. Erastus Brooks, of New York, as tending to weaken the power that could only be had by having one institution, and by Miss Black, principal of the Rhode Island school, who observed that notwithstanding the small extent of Rhode Island, not more than a fourth of the deaf children in the State could be gotten into the school. Dr. Peet advocated exhibitions at a central point in the State, as well as at home; Mr. Williams operated by sending out letters; President Gallaudet advocated the teaching of the manual system of conversing in the public schools; and Mr. Noyes gave his ingenious scheme, fully stated in the introduction of this chapter, for finding out deaf children. The session of the 16th was closed with a paper by Mr. James Denison, on "The Manual Alphabet as a Part of the Public School Course," a paper briefly anticipated the day before. As the utility of the proposition met with the unanimous support of the convention and may not be self-evident, the reasons for introducing this study into the public schools are given quite fully.

The Office takes occasion to thank the superintendents of the Nebraska and Ohio institutions for their courtesy in sending it the Nebraska Mute Journal and the Mutes' Chronicle, respectively, during the year, and the editor of the Deaf-Mutes' Journal for a similar favor.

2 Vol. XXXI, p. 244-252.

Proceedings of the Eleventh Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf, Sacramento, Cal., 8vo., pp. 328. To be had of Superintendent Wilkinson, of the California Institution, Berkeley. The postage is 7 cents.

4 By unanimous vote the executive committee of the convention was requested to have this article printed in the American Annals of the Deaf, and to "memorialize the Department of Public Educa tion at Washington on the subject, and that the principal of each institution in the United States be appointed a committee to memorialize the department of public instruction in that State to the effect that the recommendations of this paper shall be carried out in the public schools."

*

"There are indisputably times and places in which the finger alphabet fulfills, as writing can not do, the conditions of expression where vocal utterance is either not desirable or not possible. How often at social gatherings * + * do we see individuals separated from each other by the crowd or the length of the room, vainly striving information. to convey In concerts, and amid the noise and rattle of

in the church,

#

in the theatre,

* *

#

the machine-shop, factory, or railroad, how often arises an imperious necessity for making a communication to another. * Outside of the confessedly deaf, how many persons there are who are yet hardly ever addressed except in tones more or less raised above the conversational pitch. To the invalid and to the sick room the manual alphabet comes, as it were, with healing on its wings. ** How many last messages have been lost to the loving ones remaining behind; lost because the finger alphabet was not known." Mr. Denison then discusses the advantage of the manual alphabet to the hearing child as a student of the orthography of the English language, because "the more varied the form under which language is presented to the mind through the different senses, the more perfect will be the knowledge of it acquired and the more permanently will it be retained." Mr. Denison concludes with stating the undoubted benefits accruing to the deaf from ability to converse with the general public.

Saturday was a holiday, Sunday was devoted to the discussion of Sabbath Exercises in an institution for the deaf and dumb, and Monday to the great questions of the day in deaf-mute instruction, the relative merits of the oral, the manual, and the combined methods. Professor Crouter, in his paper on "The True Combined System of Instruction"-after quoting Professor Fay's subdivisions of the combined method into four classes, (1) the use of signs and articulation concurrently in the same class; (2) special classes in which lip-reading and articulation are taught as an accomplishment; (3) separate oral and manual classes in the same school; and (4) separate oral and manual schools or departments in the same institution-objected to the concurrent use of signs and articulation in the same class, since the "methods are diametrically opposed," and the semi-mutes are compelled to attend the advancement of the congenitally deaf, which is slow. To teaching articulation and lip-reading as an accomplishment he also objected as producing results inferior to the pure oral method. In the practice of the third species of the combined system, in which pupils are instructed in different classes by the oral or by the manual method, but are permitted to use signs on the play-ground, Mr. Crouter had found that such use of signs had tended to improve the pupil's intellectual faculties; he pronounced, however, for the fourth system of instruction in the following terms: "For all practical purposes and in order to secure immunity from error in the choice of methods, I would divide the deaf into three classes,-the congenitally deaf, the semi-deaf, and the semi-mute. With the first I would include those born deaf and those who lose their hearing from accidental causes very early in life, say within the age of three or four years. These, for the most part, I would instruct manually. The semi-mute and the semi-deaf, and such of the congenitally deaf as appear particularly bright and quick to learn, I would instruct orally." Professor Crouter's remarks are of especial interest, as the institution over which he presides is "working out for the benefit of the American schools," to quote from the paper that followed by Dr. Peet, "a most interesting problem" (see p. 821). Dr. Peet, in his paper on the combined system, after summarizing the progress of manual and oral instruction in this country, proceeded to describe the methods pursued in the New York institution, where, "Except in what we call our kindergarten department, the hours of instruction for each class are four daily. The first hour is devoted to the recitation of the lesson conned in the study hours out of school; the second hour, to exercises in the English language; the third hour, to arithmetic; and the fourth hour, to lip-reading and its corollary, articulation." Mr. G. O. Fay, in his paper on "Comprehensive Education in its Philosophy and Practice," advocated, in order "to secure the best results in existing institutions, sign and oral," a reorganization, gradual or summary; for, though the schools of France for a century, and of this country "have demonstrated only and mainly portance and possibilities of pantomime and the uses of the manual alphabet, supplemented by written speech, and have produced a remarkable body of silent scholars, easily superior to anything that "oralists have been able to produce," they have been backward in taking up and applying with equal skill and energy the teaching of oral speech." On the other hand, the schools devoted to the pure oral method of instruction "have yet to learn that in omitting the use of pantomime and finger spelling they ignore the uneducated mute's best friend. They take away a ladder, the only ladder known, by which all the deaf can easily rise." The reading of these papers was followed by a keen, though not acrimonious, colloquy as to the probability of error in a segregation of pupils unfit for oral instruction, that was not founded on a long trial, and even re-trials. The discussion was interrupted by Professor Gallaudet, president of the National College, who introduced the resolutions already given (p. 821, note), which, after some amendments in the interest of oral and auricular instruction, were unanimously passed.

the im