extent their educational character is recognized; but some of them are classified by law as "charitable," "eleemosynary," or "benevolent "; others are included with charitable and penal institutions in the acts making appropriations for their support; others are regarded as "semieducational and semicharitable "; and from two or three no information has been received. Two of the schools now reported as "charitable "-the Texas school and the North Carolina school at Morganton-will probably be transferred to the list of purely educational institutions during the coming year.

The 70 public day schools for the deaf are a part of the commonschool system of the cities and towns where they exist. To them and to the 11 private schools that are not denominational in character the stigma of charity has never been attached.

FREEDOM FROM POLITICAL CONTROL.

The second gratifying progress in the status of public residential schools for the deaf is in the direction of freedom from political interference and control. The endowed schools of the East have never had any trouble whatever from this source, but there are few of the Western and Southern States that have not at some period of their career suffered from it more or less. Many of the schools for the deaf have been made the football of political parties; superintendents have been changed with every change of administration, and men have been appointed who had no training or experience as teachers of the deaf. In one school two decades ago the superintendent was changed, for no other than political reasons, four times within five years.

At the present time 50 of the 64 public residential schools seem to be definitely on a nonpartisan basis. They are the schools in Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin. In Ohio and Indiana nonpartisan government is now insured by very strict laws.

Fourteen schools are not named in the above list, but it can not be said of all or even most of them that they are suffering at present from political interference or control. In some of them politics enters into the appointment of the governing board only, and not always there; but where it does or can enter there is always the possibility that it may easily be made to enter into the appointment of the superintendent and other officers also. In others of these schools politics. affects the position of superintendent and in one school the positions

of steward, matron, and physician. Concerning three schools no information has been received.

COMPULSORY EDUCATION.

The education of the deaf is even more essential to the welfare of the individual and the community than the education of those who hear. But from mistaken motives of affection, from ignorance of the possibilities and the advantages of education, and sometimes for the sake of pecuniary gain many parents of deaf children allow them to grow up in ignorance or withdraw them from school before their education is completed. Perhaps the greater offense of the two is the withdrawal of children from school when they have learned enough to render efficient help at home or to earn wages in shop or factory, but not enough to prepare them properly for the duties of life. In one State that has an excellent school 34 per cent of the pupils who have entered during the past 25 years have dropped out without graduation or discharge. The percentage of withdrawals is probably equally large in most of the other States. A recent investigation by Dr. J. N. Tate, superintendent of the Minnesota School for the Deaf, shows that only 12 States at the present time have compulsory attendance laws for the deaf that are at all satisfactory, and most of these he regards as inadequate in some respects.

A good law was passed by the Legislature of Indiana at its last session. By this law the compulsory period for the school attendance of the deaf is made to extend over 12 years, from the age of 7 to 19. The State School for the Deaf is designated as the place of instruction.

Any parent, guardian, or other person having charge of a child of school age not physically or mentally disqualified who refuses to send such child to school at any time during the compulsory years shall be fined from $1 to $25, to which may be added imprisonment in the county jail for from 2 to 90 days. Any parent, guardian, or other person having control of the child who shall permit its employment, and the person employing it, between the ages of 7 and 18 years (except during the summer vacation) without a certificate of discharge duly presented, is guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be fined from $10 to $50.

Provision is made for the traveling expenses of pupils, if the parents are in indigent circumstances; and severe penalties are imposed upon attendance officers for the neglect of their duties in relation to deaf children.

At the conference of superintendents and principals of American schools for the deaf, held at Indianapolis in the summer of 1913, a committee, of which Dr. Tate was made chairman, was appointed to collate the compulsory-education laws relating to the deaf in all the States and to frame a model law to be recommended for general adoption. A special meeting of the conference to consider and act

upon the report of this committee will be held in 1914 at Staunton, Va.

SCHOOL AGE.

There has been a strong tendency during the past few years to begin the instruction of deaf children at an earlier age than formerly. Instead of refusing them admission until they are 10 or 12 years old. many schools now receive them as young as 5 or 6, and some even at 3 or 4 years of age.

There are both advantages and disadvantages in this lowering of the age of admission. On one hand, deaf children have so much to learn, as compared with hearing children, that their education ought to be begun as early as possible; for oral teaching especially it is important that instruction begin not later than 5 years of age. On the other hand, there are obvious objections to taking children away from their homes-as in the great majority of cases it is necessary to do in order that they may receive proper instruction-while they are still very young.

The decision as to the proper school age for deaf children depends largely upon the circumstances of the individual and the facilities offered by the State in which he resides. Where the term of instruction afforded by the State is limited to six or seven years, and where children are surrounded by favorable influences at home, probably 10 or 12 is the best age for them to be sent to school, since experience has shown that the six or seven years following that age are those in which the most can be accomplished for their physical, mental, and moral development.

But where, as in some States, there is no limit to the term of instruction, where proper provision is made for the care and teaching of the little children by kindergarten or Montessori methods apart from the older pupils, and especially if the home influences are bad. it is desirable to receive them as young as 5 or 6 years of age or even younger. From 5 or 6 to 10 they will probably make less progress at school than from 10 to 14; but if, in addition to those four or five years under 10, they remain 6 or 7 years longer, as they now may in some States, they will be able to acquire a much fuller mastery of the language of their fellow men, to speak and to read the lips better, and to reach a far more advanced stage of education in all respects than if their education had not begun until the years of early childhood were passed.

SMALLER CLASSES.

The teaching of deaf children, especially teaching by the oral method, requires much individual work; it is essential therefore that the classes should be smaller than is usual in classes for hearing chil

dren. In this respect there has been much improvement in American schools for the deaf within recent years. The size of classes has been gradually reduced from an average of 20 pupils in a class until in 1912 the average number in oral classes was 10, in manual classes 12. Ten or even twelve is not an excessive number for an advanced class if the pupils are well graded; but for the first two or three years in school the number of children in a class should not be more than 5 or 6. But few schools have yet reached this ideal limit in the size of beginning classes.

ORAL TEACHING AND THE COMBINED SYSTEM.

The teaching of speech has continued to grow in favor during the past year. Of 13,193 pupils under instruction in the United States on the 10th of November, 1912, 9,878, or 75 per cent, were taught speech; of these, 8,661, or 66 per cent, were taught wholly or chiefly by the oral method, while 179, or 1.36 per cent, were taught wholly or chiefly by the auricular method. When we remember that the first school for the teaching of speech-Miss Harriet B. Rogers's little school of three pupils at Chelmsford, Mass.-was opened only 47 years ago, and that at that time the entire body of American teachers of the deaf regarded oral teaching as a foolish waste of time, the progress shown by the above statistics is remarkable. It is due. to the strong desire of the parents of deaf children that their children should speak, to the vigorous propaganda that has been carried on by the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf and other advocates of oral teaching, and to the openmindedness of the heads of schools, but more than all else to the increased skill of teachers, and to the remarkable results that have actually been achieved through the constantly growing knowledge of the physiological basis of speech and the visible movements upon which speech reading depends.

The greater part of the oral teaching in America is not done in the exclusively oral schools, but in the schools following the combined system. Of the 9,878 pupils who had been taught speech on the 10th of November, 1912, 6,450, or 65 per cent, were in combined-system schools; of the 8,661 pupils taught wholly or chiefly by the oral method, 5,289, or 61 per cent, were in combined-system schools; of the 179 taught wholly or chiefly by the auricular method, 127, or 71 per cent, were in combined-system schools. The oral schools, which in the United States include all the day schools but 2, all the private. schools but 1, and 12 of the 64 public residential schools, endeavor to educate all their pupils by the oral method. Some oralists claim that all deaf children who are capable of education by any method can be educated by the oral method, although it is conceded that

there may be a few who by reason of physical defect in their vocal or visual organs can not acquire intelligible speech or are unable to learn to read the lips. They admit that the success attained is very unsatisfactory in some cases, and many oralists favor the use of other means of instruction for children with whom only meager results can be achieved by the oral method. Thus Mr. F. W. Booth, superintendent of the Nebraska school, a prominent oralist, said in a paper read at the conference of superintendents and principals of American schools for the deaf held at Indianapolis in 1913:

I am an oralist, but an oralist with no prejudice against the principles of the combined system where the system is applied to give really distinctive treatment and distinctive classes of pupils; where, in short, each and every pupil shall have intensive instruction through the one method fitted to give to him the best education of which he may be capable.

The combined-system schools, which include 52 of the 64 public residential schools, all the denominational schools and 2 day schools, endeavor to choose for each child the method best suited to his individual capacity. "Fit the method to the child, not the child to the method," is their motto. At the beginning of the course all the children are usually placed in oral classes; but after two or three years' trial those with whom the measure of success in speech and speech reading is slight are transferred to manual classes, and their education is carried on by manual methods, which include the use of signs, the manual alphabet, and writing.

The methods of instruction in the oral classes of combined-system schools are identical with those of the oral schools. But outside the schoolroom the language of signs and the manual alphabet are employed in chapel exercises and public addresses, for which, on account of the difficulty and uncertainty in reading the lips of a public speaker, they are better adapted than speech; they are also the usual means of communication employed by the children in talking with one another out of school. In the oral schools, while the children do use signs more or less in communicating with one another, this habit is repressed as far as possible by those in authority, and the endeavor is made to surround the pupils with an oral atmosphere out of school as well as in the schoolroom.

The free use of signs by deaf children has its advantages and its disadvantages. On one hand it quickens and broadens the understanding and conveys much general information at a period when the language of words is still unknown; it reaches the mind and heart even of the educated deaf as no other means can. On the other hand its convenience and facility lead the children to continue its use even after they have learned to speak and read the lips; they have little practice in oral communication outside the schoolroom; the language of signs, the vernacular of the congenital deaf-mute, which in the