combined-system schools has been highly developed as a means of communication, tends to become confirmed as their natural medium of thought and expression; speech and speech reading, though they may be mastered as a hearing student masters a foreign tongue, remain to them something strange, foreign, artificial, an adjunct of the schoolroom rather than a spontaneous instrument of human inter

course.

The best application of the principle of the combined system, affording the most scientific and most efficient means of instruction. for the deaf, is probably to be found in Denmark. All the deaf children of that country are first sent to a preparatory and testing school at Fredericia. At the end of the year there is a sifting out of those who have considerable hearing, constituting 28.4 per cent of the whole number. These are removed to a school at Nyborg and are taught orally. Thus only the totally (or almost totally) deaf are left at Fredericia, and at the end of the second year these are divided into three classes, called "A," "B," and "C" classes. The A children are the totally deaf of bright intellect, constituting 25 per cent of the whole number of the deaf. They are taught orally at Fredericia, in a school that is separate and distinct from the preparatory school above mentioned. The B children are the totally deaf of medium mental capacity, constituting 19 per cent. They remain in the preparatory school and are taught orally. The C children are the totally deaf who are mentally dull, constituting 27.6 per cent. They are removed to a school in Copenhagen and are taught manually. In the larger American schools, some of which contain each more pupils than all the schools of Denmark put together, it might be desirable to carry the Danish system of classification still further, forming an additional class of "semimute" children-those who have acquired verbal language in the natural way through the ear before hearing was lost-to be taught orally. Thus each class of the deaf would receive the kind of instruction by which it could profit most and each method would do its work to the best advantage. Dr. James Kerr Love, an aural surgeon of Glasgow, who has made a careful study of the education of the deaf in the various countries of Europe and America, says the ideal system would consist of "a combination of the Danish classification with American thoroughness."

While teachers of the deaf still differ concerning methods of instruction, the bitterness of feeling on the subject that formerly prevailed has passed away. The adherents of either method now acknowledge that excellent work is done by the other. In a recent article in the American Annals of the Deaf, Miss Sarah Harvey Porter, a prominent advocate of the combined system, while declaring her "strong belief in the judicious use of signs in the class

room and in their free use outside," admitted that "a good oral school will forever be able to show better lip reading than any combined-system school can produce." On the other hand, Dr. A. L. E. Crouter, superintendent of the Pennsylvania Institution—the largest and one of the best oral schools in the world-and long president of the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, said at the last convention of American instructors of the deaf:

We freely concede that great good has resulted and will continue to result to the deaf from the honest and sincere application of methods that are not oral and heartily rejoice in their success.

If any bitterness of feeling still remains on the part of the educated deaf, the great majority of whom, by whatever method they have been instructed, are ardent supporters of the combined system. it is not because they are opposed to oral teaching, for they are not. but because they can not bear to see deaf children deprived of the language of signs, from which they themselves have derived so much pleasure and profit and which they appreciate as no hearing person can. Their attitude is shown by the following resolutions adopted by the National Association of the Deaf at a largely attended convention held at Colorado Springs in 1910 and reiterated at their convention in Cleveland in 1913:

Whereas the sign language, as introduced in America by Clerc and developed by Gallaudet and other early educators of the deaf, is a most beautiful language, of priceless value to the deaf;

Resolved, That any policy of education which tends to impair or destroy or restrict the use of this beautiful language is opposed to the best interests of the deaf;

Resolved, That we call upon schools for the deaf not only to preserve, but to improve this sign language, and to give systematic instruction in the proper and correct use thereof.

Whereas, while we fully recognize and appreciate the value of speech to the deaf, we also recognize the difficulty and even the impossibility of acquiring it by many of the deaf;

Resolved, That we favor the best oral instruction for those deaf who can profit by it.

Resolved. That where the attempt to acquire speech results in the sacrifice of mental development, we favor the employment of such methods as will secure the highest mental development.

That is what the combined system aims to do, and therefore we indorse the combined system.

Whereas speech reading is practicable only for individual conversation, and does not enable the deaf to understand sermons, lectures, debates, and the like; and

Whereas the sign language offers the only practicable and satisfactory means by which the deaf may understand sermons and lectures, participate in debates and discussion, and enjoy mental recreation and culture;

Resolved, That it is the sense of this convention that all the deaf, including those taught by the oral method, should have the privilege of using the sign language while at school.

AURICULAR INSTRUCTION.

Few persons are totally deaf, and in nearly all the schools for the deaf there are some pupils with a considerable residuum of hearing. In some schools such pupils are trained by special teachers who endeavor to educate and, by education, develop the existing hearing power so that during the latter part of the course the ear may be made the principal means of receiving instruction and the pupils may be graduated as hard-of-hearing rather than deaf persons. In other schools the same end is sought, but with less success, by means of such special training as can be given in connection with other teaching.

Not all the pupils in American schools for the deaf who possess sufficient hearing are taught through the hearing, partly on account of the expense involved in the employment of special teachers and the impossibility of giving the requisite time in connection with other teaching, and partly because many heads of schools regard the development of imperfect hearing as less valuable on the whole than the acquisition of good lip reading, and they deem it best to concentrate all the attention upon the latter. The proportion of pupils taught wholly or chiefly by the auricular method, however, while fluctuating somewhat from year to year, tends gradually to increase. It has risen from 0.58 per cent in 1902 to 1.36 per cent in 1912.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

American teachers of the deaf in residential schools have always attached great importance to industrial training. By this is meant not merely manual training, such as has been introduced within recent years into the common schools, but also what is now called vocational training. As Dr. Francis D. Clarke said at the conference of superintendents and principals held at Indianapolis in 1913:

The first trades school ever established in America was established in 1823 at what was then the American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb (now the American School for the Deaf, at Hartford), and for years the schools for the deaf were the only schools that made any effort to teach trades to their pupils. The aim of this industrial training is to give every pupil, pari passu with the education acquired in the schoolroom, the mastery of some trade by which he may secure independent self-support immediately after graduation. This ideal is not attained in all the schools, but in the best residential schools it is. In those that fall short of it through insufficient pecuniary resources, the pupils at least form habits of industry, learn the use of tools, and acquire the rudiments of a trade. The discipline of the shop is everywhere regarded as no less valuable and important than that of the schoolroom. To it may be attributed in large measure the general

independence, thrift, and success in life of the graduates of the residential schools. There are very few deaf beggars or paupers in America, and deaf people seldom "trade in their misfortune." In nine cases out of ten, persons who appeal to the sympathy of the public by exhibiting written or printed cards saying "I am deaf and dumb" are impostors, with unimpaired hearing and speech. It is not always easy for the average citizen to detect the fraud, but an educated deaf person or a teacher of the deaf can readily do so. At the present time the National Association of the Deaf is making a vigorous effort to put a stop to these impositions, which bring upon the deaf a discredit that is wholly unmerited.

More than 70 different industries are taught in American schools for the deaf. The occupations generally regarded as most desirable and which therefore occupy leading places in the curriculum of the schools are, for the boys, farming (including dairying, gardening, and poultry raising), carpentry and cabinetmaking, shoemaking and repairing, printing, tailoring, baking, painting and glazing, masonry, chair caning, weaving, barbering, and blacksmithing; for the girls, cooking, housework, sewing and mending, dressmaking, embroidery. and millinery. Local conditions lead to the introduction of other industries. The deaf do not always follow the occupations they have learned in school, but where proper care has been exercised in choosing the occupation to be taught, and where the pupil has been so thoroughly trained that he has become a master of his trade, he usually follows it after graduation. In the cases where he does not, the habits of industry he has formed and the practice he has had in the use of tools enable him to take up a new occupation with comparative ease.

The proper division of the day's work between general education and industrial training is a subject that has been much discussed by the heads of schools for the deaf. In most of the schools five hours are given to work in the schoolroom, with one or two hours of study in the evening, and two and a half or three hours are given to work in the shops. This arrangement, however, does not always allow a sufficient length of time to enable the pupil to become a master of a trade. In some schools, as the New York, Illinois, and Michigan schools, this difficulty is met by keeping the pupils, during the latter part of their course, in the shop for four hours and reducing the school hours to the same length; in other schools, as those of New Jersey and Indiana, postgraduate industrial courses are provided to which former pupils are admitted and where they are given additional training in the shops for eight hours a day. Where the circumstances of the school are such as to render a postgraduate course feasible, this plan seems preferable to that of abridg ing the school hours during the undergraduate term of instruction;

for deaf pupils as a rule need for their proper mental development five hours a day in the schoolroom.

MONTESSORI TRAINING.

Teachers of the deaf were among the first to greet the Montessori method when it was brought to the attention of the American public two years ago. Believing that it might prove helpful in the education of deaf children, several of them went to Rome last year and studied the method at first hand in Dr. Montessori's training class during the winter of 1912-13. Two of them-Mrs. A. Reno Margulies, of New York, who was Dr. Montessori's assistant in organizing the training school in Rome, and Mrs. J. Scott Anderson, of Philadelphia on their return to America introduced the method into their private schools and established Montessori training classes for teachers. Mrs. Edwin G. Hurd, wife of the principal of the Rhode Island Institute for the Deaf and head teacher of that school, was the first actually to apply the Montessori method to the education of the deaf. In January, 1913, she began training by this method eight little deaf children from 3 to 5 years of age.

Dr. Montessori, in her Metodo della Pedagogia Scientifica, acknowledges her great indebtedness to Dr. Séguin and Dr. Itard, who was Dr. Séguin's instructor. Dr. Itard was the resident physician of the National Institution for the Deaf in Paris from 1800 to 1838, and there made experiments in the education of deaf children, taught "the wild boy of Aveyron," and established the "classe d'instruction complémentaire," which later gave an impetus to the formation of the "high classes" in American schools for the deaf. Much of the Montessori didactic material for the training of the senses has long been in use in schools for the deaf, and when the method was first acclaimed in the American magazines it was asserted by some teachers of the deaf that there was nothing in it that was new to them. Now, however, that the method has been more profoundly studied, it has become evident that the sense-training material and the technique, to which so much prominence was given in the magazine articles, by no means constitute the whole of the method. In applying the principles of modern psychology to the education of little children, Dr. Montessori has shown better than any of her predecessors the natural order in which subjects of study should be introduced, and has taught us how to train our children from the beginning in habits of selfcontrol and respect for the rights of others; she has shown us how to develop their initiative, strengthen their will power, and broaden the field of their mental activity.

Mrs. Hurd's experiments in the application of the Montessori method to the education of little deaf children have already been 17726°-ED 1913-VOL 1-30