In 1886 a royal commission investigated the condition and
education of the deaf in Great Britain, and in 1889 issued its
report. Some of the recommendations most worthy of notice
were that deaf children from seven to sixteen years of age should
be compelled to attend a day school or institution, part, or the
whole, of the expense being borne by the local school authority;
that technical instruction should be given, and that all the
children should be taught to speak and lip-read on the “pure”
oral method unless physically or mentally disqualified, those who
had partial hearing or remains of speech being entirely educated
by that method. To the last mentioned recommendation—concerning
the method to be adopted—two of the commissioners
took exception, and another stated his recognition of some
advantage in the manual method.
As a result of the report of the royal commission a bill was passed in 1893 making it compulsory for all deaf children to be educated. This was to be done by the local education authority, either by providing day classes or an institution for them, or by sending them to an already existing institution, parents having the choice, within reasonable limits, of the school to which the child should go. School-board classes came into existence in almost every large town where there was no institution, and sometimes where one existed. Those who uphold the day-school system advance the arguments that the pupils are not, under it, cut off from the influence of home life as they are in institutions; that such influences are of great advantage; that this system permits the deaf to mix freely with their hearing brethren, &c. The objections, however, to this arrangement outweigh its possible advantages. The latter, indeed, amount to little; for home influences in many cases, especially in the poorer parts of the large cities, are not the best, and communication with the hearing children who attend some of the day schools may not be an unmixed blessing, nor is freedom to run wild on the streets between school hours. But it may be urged further that it is difficult, except in very large towns, to obtain a sufficient number of deaf children attending a day school to classify them according to their status, while it is more than one teacher can do to give sufficient attention to several children, each at a different stage of instruction from any other. Moreover, the deaf need more than mere school work; they need training in morals and manners, and receive much less of it from their parents than their hearing brothers and sisters. This can only be given in an institution wherein they board and lodge as well as attend classes. The existing institutions were from 1893 placed, by the act of that date, either partly or wholly under the control of the school board. They were put under the inspection of the government, and as long as they fulfilled the requirements of the inspectors as regards education, manual and physical training, outdoor recreation and suitable class-room and dormitory accommodation, they might remain in the hands of a committee who collected, or otherwise provided, one-third of the total expenditure, and received two-thirds from public sources. Or else, the institution might be surrendered entirely to the management of the public school authority, and then the whole of the expenditure was to be borne by that body. Extra government grants of five guineas per pupil are now given for class work and manual or technical training. Such is the state of things at the present day, except, of course, that the school board has given place to the county council as local authority.
Some teachers have asked for the children to be sent to school at the age of five instead of seven. This savours of another confession that the “pure” oral method had not done what was expected of it at first. First, the demand was for the method itself; then came requests for more teachers, so that, the classes being smaller, each pupil should receive more attention; this meant more money, and so this was asked for; then day schools would remedy the failure by giving the pupils opportunities of talking with the public in general; then we were told the teachers were unskilful; finally, more time is needed. And yet the language of the pupils is no better to-day than it was in 1881, even though they were at school only four or five years then as opposed to nine or ten now.
To Addison’s Report on a Visit to some Continental Schools for the Deaf (1904–1905) we are indebted for the following information. The new school at Frankfort-on-Maine, accommodating forty or fifty children at a cost of £40 to £50 per head, is modelled on the plan of a family home. The main objects are to obtain good speech and lip-reading Foreign schools. and to use these colloquially; the work is very thorough and the teaching very skilful. At Munich those of the hundred pupils who have some hearing are separated from the others and taught by ear as well as eye. At Vienna (Royal Institution) a small proportion of the pupils are day scholars, as they are at Munich, and the teaching is, of course, carried on by the oral method, as it is all over Germany. Here, however, the teachers “think it impossible to educate fully all deaf-mutes by the oral method only.” In the Jews’ Home at Vienna the semi-deaf are taught by the acoustic method, and are not allowed to see the teacher’s lips at all. At Dresden, a large school of 240 pupils, the director favours smaller institutions than his own, considers the oral method possible for all but the “weak-minded deaf,” and divides his pupils into A, B and C divisions, according to intellect. In the first division good speech is obtained. Saxony boasts a home for deaf homeless women, grants premiums for deaf apprentices, and trains its teachers of the deaf in the institution itself—a good record and plan. In the royal institution at Berlin Addison saw good lip-reading and thorough work, though the deaf in the city—as in most of the schools—signed. The men in Berlin “like the adult deaf generally, were all in favour of a combination of methods, and condemned the pure oral theory as impracticable.” At Hamburg, again, “hand signs” were used at least for Sunday service. Schleswig has two schools. Pupils are admitted first to the residential institution, where they are instructed for a year, and are then divided into A, B and C classes, “according to intellect.” The lowest class (C) remain at this institution for the rest of the eight years, and a “certain amount of signing” is allowed in their instruction. A and B classes are boarded out in the town and attend classes at a day school specially built for them, being taught orally exclusively.
In Denmark Addison saw what impressed him most. All the children of school age go to Fredericia and remain for a year in the boarding institution. They are then examined and the semi-deaf—29% of the whole—are sent to Nyborg. The rest—all the totally deaf—remain another year at Fredericia and are then divided into the A, B and C divisions before mentioned, and on the same criterion—intellect. Those in C—the lowest class, 28% of the totally deaf—are sent to Copenhagen, where they are taught by the manual method, no oral work being attempted. Those in B class, numbering 19% of the deaf, remain in the residential institution in Fredericia and are taught orally, while the best pupils—A class—are boarded out in the town and attend a special day school. These form 26% of the deaf, and those with whom they live encourage them to speak when out of as well as when in school. The buildings and equipment generally are excellent. “Hand signs” are used at Nyborg, indicating the position of the vocal organs when speaking, and, as might be expected, the “lip”-reading is 90% more correct when these symbols—infinitely more visible than most of the movements of the vocal organs and face when speaking—are used at the same time. The idea of these hand signs, by the way, corresponds to that of Graham Bell’s Visible Speech, in which a written symbol is used to indicate the position of the vocal organs when uttering each sound; it is a kind of phonetic writing which is to a slight extent illustrative at the same time. We find natural signs of the utmost value when teaching articulation, to describe the position of the vocal organs. We give these details from Mr Addison’s notes because it is to Germany that so many look for guidance to-day, and it is the home of the so-called “pure” oral method; while the system of classification in Denmark into the four schools which are controlled by one authority, struck him very favourably and so is given rather fully.
In France most of the schools are supported by charity, and the only three government institutions are those at Paris for boys, with 263 pupils lately, at Bordeaux for girls, having 225 inmates, and at Chambéry with 86 boys and 38 girls. In the great majority the method of instruction is professedly pure oral. “But,” said Henri Gaillard (Report, World’s Congress of the Deaf, Missouri, 1904), “this is only in appearance. In reality all of the schools use the combined method; only they are not willing to admit it, because the oral method is the official method, imposed by the inspectors of the minister of the interior.”
In Italy, again, we are told that the teachers sign in most of the schools, which are professedly pure oral.
In Sweden, schools for the deaf have ceased to depend, as they did up to 1891, upon private benevolence. The system is generally the combined, and in schools where the oral method is adopted the pupils are divided into A, B and C divisions, as in Denmark and Dresden, in the two latter divisions of which signs are allowed. In Norway the method is the oral.
Methods of Teaching.—There have always been two principal methods of teaching the deaf, and all education at the present time is carried on by means of one or other or both of these. Where there is sufficient hearing to be utilized, instruction is sometimes given thereby as well, though this auricular method does not seem to make much headway, and experience is not in favour of believing that the sense of hearing, where a little exists, can be “cultivated” to any marked degree. It is really
