The Mystic Oral School : an argument in its favor / by Alexander Graham Bell.

  • Bell, Alexander Graham, 1847-1922.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Mystic Oral School : an argument in its favor / by Alexander Graham Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    in an Oral school, the}' preferred to leave the State rather than send their children to the Hartford Scliool. ' Monopoly. The whole art of instructing the deaf in America is in a state of change. Old methods of instruction are dying out, and newer and better methods are coming into use. Under such circumstances would it be wise for the State of Con- necticut to allow any school, or any method, to have a monopoly of the art ? Competition is the soul of progress ; and in the competition of rival schools and rival methods you have the best guarantee of progress and efficiency. The Sign and Oral Methods are radically—and irrecon- cilably—opposed to one another, because one insists upon the use of the sign-language and the other insists upon its disuse. You have both of these methoc]^ in the State, and what are you going to do about it ? Is this committee going to settle the matter ? I hope not. The contest between these methods in Connecticut is a mere local phase of a more general struggle that has been going on elsewhere for more than a hundred years ; indeed, it extends back to the middle of the last century, when there were only three schools for the deaf in the whole world— the school of Braidwood in Scotland, the school of Hein- icke in Germany, and the school of the Abb^ de I'Ep^e in France. Oral methods of instruction were employed by Braidwood and Heinicke ; and the sign-method originated in the school of the Abb^ del'Epee, in Paris. It seems strange that the French method should have been adopted in the American school, and one naturally inquires Avhy British methods were not introduced. The history is a most inter- esting one, and shows well the evil results that may spring from monopoly. Four American deaf children in the last century were sent to the school of Braidwood, in Edinburgh, Avhere they were 4