and Finland, Russia, Norway, Denmark and Austria are represented.
Canada has three.
There are many Church and other missions to the deaf in England and abroad, which are much needed owing to the difficulty the average deaf person has in understanding the archaic language of both Bible and Prayer-book. Until they have this explained to them it is useless to place these books in their hands, and even where they are well-educated and can follow the services, they fail to get the sermon. Chaplains and missioners engage in all branches of pastoral work among them, and also try to find them employment, interpret for them where necessary, and interview people on their behalf.
The difficulty of obtaining employment for the deaf has been increased in Great Britain by the Employers’ Liability and Workmen’s Compensation Acts, for masters are afraid—needlessly, as facts show—to employ them, under the impression that they are more liable to accidents owing to their affliction.
The new After-Care Committees of the London County Council are a late confession of a need which other bodies have long endeavoured to supply. Education should be a development of the whole nature of the child. The board of education in England provides for intellectual, industrial and physical training, but does not take cognizance of those parts of education which are far more important—the social, moral and spiritual. Some teachers, both oral and manual, do an incalculable amount of good at the cost of great self-sacrifice and in face of much discouragement. They deserve the highest praise for so doing, and such work needs to be carried on after their pupils leave school.
History.[1]—“Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh a man dumb, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I the Lord?” (Ex. iv. 11). Such is the first known reference to the deaf. But the significance of this statement was not realized by the ancients, who mercilessly destroyed all the defective, the deaf among the rest. Greek and Roman custom demanded their death, and they were thrown into the river, or otherwise killed, without causing any comment but that so many encumbrances had been removed. They were regarded as being on a mental level with idiots and utterly incapable of helping themselves. In later times Roman law forbade those who were deaf and dumb from birth to make a will or bequest, placing them under the care of guardians who were responsible for them to the state; though if a deaf person had lost hearing after having been educated, and could either speak or write, he retained his rights. Herodotus refers to a deaf son of Croesus, whom he declares to have suddenly recovered his speech upon seeing his father about to be killed. Gellius makes a similar statement with reference to a certain athlete. Hippocrates was in advance of Aristotle when he realized that deaf-mutes did not speak simply because they did not know how to; for the last-named seems to have considered that some defect of the intellect was the cause of their inability to utter articulate sounds. Pliny the elder and Messalla Corvinus mention deaf-mutes who could paint.
The true mental condition of the deaf was realized, however, by few, if any, before the time of Christ. He, as He opened the ears of the deaf man and loosened his tongue, talked to him in his own language, the language of signs.
St Augustine erred amazingly when he declared that the deaf could have no faith, since “faith comes by hearing only.” The Talmud, on the other hand, recognized that they could be taught, and were therefore not idiotic.
It is, however, with those who attempted to educate the deaf that we are here chiefly concerned. The first to call for notice is St John of Beverley. The Venerable Bede tells how this bishop made a mute speak and was credited with having performed a miracle in so doing. Probably it was nothing more than the first attempt to teach by the oral method, and the greatest credit is due to him for being so far in advance of his times as to try to instruct his pupil at all. Bede himself invented a system of counting on the hands; and also a “manual speech,” as he called it,—using his numerals to indicate the number of the letter of the alphabet; thus, the sign for “seven” would also signify the letter “g,” and so forth. But we do not know that he intended this alphabet for the use of the deaf.
It is not until the 16th century that we hear much of anybody else who was interested in the deaf, but at this date we find Girolamo Cardan stating that they can be instructed by writing, after they have been shown the signification of words, since their mental power is unaffected by their inability to hear.
Pedro Ponce de Leon (c. 1520–1584), a Spanish Benedictine monk, is more worthy of notice, as he, to use his own words, taught the deaf “to speak, read, write, reckon, pray, serve at the altar, know Christian doctrine, and confess with a loud voice.” Some he taught languages and science. That he was successful was proved by other witness than his own, for Panduro, Valles and de Morales all give details of his work, the last-named giving an account by one of Ponce’s pupils of his education. De Morales says further that Ponce de Leon addressed his scholars either by signs or writing, and that the reply came by speech. It appears that this master committed his methods to writing. Though this work is lost it is probable that his system was put into practice by Juan Pablo Bonet. This Spaniard successfully instructed a brother of his master the constable of Castile, who had lost hearing at the age of two. His method corresponded in a great measure to that which is now called the combined system, for, in the work which he wrote, he shows how the deaf can be taught to speak by reducing the letters to their phonetic value, and also urges that finger-spelling and writing should be used. The connexion between all three, he goes on to say, should be shown the pupils, but the manual alphabet should be mastered first. Nouns he taught by pointing to the objects they represented; verbs he expressed by pantomime; while the value of prepositions, adverbs and interjections, as well as the tenses of verbs, he believed could be learnt by repeated use. The pupil should be educated by interrogation, conversation, and carefully graduated reading. The success of Bonet’s endeavours are borne witness to by Sir Kenelm Digby, who met the teacher at Madrid.
Bonifacio’s work on signs, in which he uses every part of the body for conversational purposes, may be mentioned before passing to John Bulwer, the first Englishman to treat of teaching the deaf. In his three works, Philocophus, Chirologia and Chironomia, he enlarges upon Sir Kenelm Digby’s account, and argues about the possibility of teaching the deaf by speech. But he seems to have had no practical experience of the art.
Dr John Wallis is more important, though it has been disputed whether he was not indebted to his predecessors for some ideas. He taught by writing and articulation. He took the trouble to classify to a certain extent the various sounds, dividing both vowels and “open” consonants into gutturals, palatals and labials. The “closed” consonants he subdivided into mutes, semi-mutes and semi-vowels. Language, Wallis maintained, should be taught when the pupil had first learned to write, and the written characters should be associated with some sort of manual alphabet. Names of things should be given first, and then the parts of those things, e.g. “body” first, and then, under that, “head,” “arm,” “foot,” &c. Then the singular and plural should be given, then possessives and possessive pronouns, followed by particles, other pronouns and adjectives. These should be followed by the copulative verb; after which should come the intransitive verb and its nominative in the different tenses, and the transitive with its object in the same way. Lastly, prepositions and conjunctions should be taught. All this, Wallis held, ought to be done by writing as well as signing, for he did not lose sight of the fact that “we must learn the pupil’s language in order to teach him ours.”
Dr William Holder, who read an essay before the Royal Society in 1668–1669 on the “Elements of Speech,” added an appendix concerning the deaf and dumb. He describes the organs of speech and their positions in articulation, suggesting
- ↑ For our résumé of the history we are indebted solely to Arnold (Education of Deaf Mutes, Teachers’ Manual) as far as the date of the founding of the Old Kent Road Institution.
