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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    All of the pupils of tlie Hartford School employ the sign- lauguage as a means of communicatiou ; whereas the Oralists are unanimous in insisting upon the entire disuse of that language as an essential feature of their method. [See defi- nition of the Oral Method endorsed by the Principals of all the Oral Schools in the country—Annah for 1893, vol. xxxviii, pp. 368-370.] Necessity or Advisability of a Separate Oral School. Whatever differences of opinion exist concerning the proper method of instructing pupils who are totally deaf from birth, teachers are substantially agreed that there are some children who can more profitably be taught in an Oral school than in a school where the sign-lauguage is used. These children belong to the class coXlediSemi-deaf who have sufficient hearing to be taught to understand speech by ear; or to the class called Semi-mute,'' who could speak well before they became deaf. From the Eleventh Census of the United States, 1890. Age. Deaf of Connecticut. Total. Deaf and Dumb. Deaf but not Dumb. Total 180 2125 21 129 365 5 51 1760 16 2326 499 1827 The census of 1890 credits your State with 51 children under 20 years of age who are deaf but not dumb. These are not simply hard-of-hearing cases, but are all specifically designated as too deaf to hear loud conversation. These children cannot hear sufficiently to profit by instruction in the public schools, and yet are not deaf-mutes. They, at