Vol. LI.

No. 24

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Isolation of Teachers.

In too many cases teachers lead a life as thoroughly apart from the community in which they dwell as though they belonged to a monastic order. Sometimes, like poor Ichabod Crane, they are simply "tarrying," till a new turn of politics scatters them, in spite of earnestness and competence, it may be. Uncertainty of tenure often deters teachers from establishing homes and sharing warmly in common social interests. Among the women, the rank and file of the teaching body, this separation is especially marked.

A young lady may live in a town an entire year, meeting no one but her associates, a patron or two-quite likely disaffected, and perhaps a few ladies of the church she attends. Her evenings are passed poring over her pupils' papers, and preparing herself for the manifold subjects she is expected to teach,- music and drawing, bookkeeping and entomology, physiology and history. Saturday brings its teachers' meeting or special class. On Sundays she writes home, and feels too much a stranger to go out among people. Thus she fails to learn in the natural way about the home life of her charges, family traits, and the spirit of the community, and many things are harder for her on that account.

In a large city, and after years of experience, it will be no better for her if an autocratic superintendent demands Saturdays and requires so many gradings and reports as to burden the hours after school.

Many a teacher is too weary, too heartsore at times, to go beyond her little room in the boarding house, or to say more than "Good-morning" and some commonplace about the weather to the people who breakfast at the same table. How can such a teacher,—her horizon bounded by the school-room walls,--to secure high standings from her pupils her sole ambitions,-give vita] training and truly prepare boys and girls for the great, busy world of men?

What a hold upon the boys has the teacher who knows something about birds, dogs and horses, yacht-races and football, as well as subjunctive modes and the map of Asia.

When the community realizes that unhappy, homeless, nerveworn teachers cannot do well by the children, and that every social courtesy which brightens the life of the teacher, sweetens the school-room, there will be better and more joyous teaching.

Of course, society is not a charity organization, and teachers, like others, must give as well as get. Yet the

apathy of many parents to the personality of their children's instructors is surprising, and to be explained in part, only by the machinery which separates the schools from the people. And the best interests of the children can never be conserved while it continues.

No work demands buoyant spirits and intellectual nimbleness more strenuously than does teaching. So a teacher's first care should be to secure these, by tennis playing, tramps into the country, boating, anything, in fact, which gives pleasure and fresh air. When we mix more out-door life with our education the influences which tend to break down the health of both pupils and teachers will be overcome.

On the other hand, minds should not be allowed to fossilize or degenerate to the caliber of the callow associates in the class-room. Those only who are in touch with the world's thought, are trustworthy guides of these men and women to be. Unfortunately the hours of actual service required from teachers in school work, seldom leave much mental vigor or time for study. The worst of it is, that not the actual hours in school and necessary duties result thus, but the useless records and reports, or perhaps struggles to control the unruly.

Really, too much is said nowadays in behalf of the troublesome boy. Better dispose of him summarily (by electrocution or otherwise) than that the energies of his conscientious, hard-working teacher should be diverted from the majority of well meaning pupils on his account. If a few make large demands on a teacher's attention the others must suffer. There can be no doubt of that. And still in many a school, marks are a fetich. It certainly is of far less consequence that Jimmy should know whether his history standing is seventy-six or seventy seven, than that Jimmy's teacher should have time to know present history.

But there are the vacations when some solid progress may be made if work during the term has not been too hard. Under ideal conditions of school work no prudent teacher would ever become weary in body or inert in mind. Moreover, so much inspiration comes from association with these fresh, enthusiastic young lives, that in the school-room one can endure more than a usual amount of nervous drain.

Some Features in this Number.

Letter by State-Superintendent Charles R. Skinner, New York, on "Need of Public Interest."

"Oral Education of the Deaf." By Dr. S. Millington Miller.

High School Extension: The Moline, Illinois, Plan.

Oral Education of the Deaf.

By S. MILLINGTON MILLER.

A woman who is assistant editor of one of the great magazines, which has an enormous circulation, declared in a recent interview that the editor--in-chief declined point blank to publish anything in that periodical about any one that was dead, or any one that was afflicted. And in the next breath she burst out with the wish that "they had never taught the deaf to speak." She had seen Helen Keller, the deaf, dumb, and blind girl of Boston, who was taught to speak by Miss Sarah Fuller. And the naturally unhuman utterances of that sorely afflicted girl had impressed her in much the same way as would the wink of the eye of a corpse, or the sound of a voice from the dead, or the leering features of a head severed from the body.

The impulsive words which this woman uttered, however, sound the keynote of the question "How shall the deaf be taught?" Shall they be kept together and isolated as an afflicted class by themselves, or shall every effort be made so to modify the outward visible signs of their affliction that they shall pass in a crowd as ordinary normal members of society? When a man of means loses an arm, or a leg, or an ear in the war, or by any accident, his first effort is to obtain an artificial member. This so closely resembles the part he has lost, and performs so many of its functions, as to relieve him of the stigma of affliction.

For the notoriety which any pronounced affliction induces does render it a stigma. It is positively painful to a person of average sensibility to walk along the street with one of his ears missing, or without an arm, and with an empty sleeve pinned to his vest, or swinging at one side. The necessity for an ear trumpet is at once painful to the deaf person who uses it and even more so to the friend or acquaintance who is forced to adopt such unusual and annoying methods of conversation. It is doubly painful to a publican by the wayside in his walk: a benevolent Samaritan to come across a publican in manifest and great pain, and to find that this publican is deaf and dumb and can only express himself by gestures and signs-a language with which the benefactor has not the remotest acquaintance.

Deaf mutes can be taught to speak. All over Continental Europe to-day dumb children are learning how to use their voices articulately, and the old manual system of communication between them by signs has been abandoned.

In this country short-sighted self-interest blocks the way to this radical reform. The United States, which ought to be the first, is the last of nations in this branch of education. There are some 55,000 deaf people in the United States. Two-thirds of this number were congenitally deaf and are therefore dumb.

Out of 86 schools for the deaf in the United States, only some 17 follow pure oral methods. Out of 9,542 pupils in the 86 schools only Soo are taught the pure oral system.

It may seem a startling proposition that a child that is born dumb" as they say, can learn to talk. Most people imagine that dumbness is the result of some constitutional defect in the organs of speech; that a child is born without a voice, or that it is lacking in some necessary physical attribute.

This is a mistaken notion. Every child, with rare exceptions, possesses at birth all the vocal organs. To every child is given a voice. But thousands of children are born, grow up to be adults, and live to old age without ever speaking. They are said to be dumb.

Every

But you will always notice that such people are deaf. The dumbness is the result of the deafness. child that is born deaf will inevitably be dumb also unless taught by the new oral method.

A child that is born with good hearing will always learn to speak. Did you ever hear of a case of a child that could hear well and grew up in dumbness?

It will therefore be seen that children that are dumb are so because they cannot hear. Congenital deafness is a defect that can never be thoroughly remedied. A

child that is deaf. at birth rarely if ever acquires the faculty of hearing well.

But a child that is born with good ears begins to pick up first one word, then another, and in a few years can talk well.

The lesson to be drawn from these few facts is obvious. A child is imitative. The first years of its life are given over wholly to imitation. If it hears a sound it tries to imitate it, but if it cannot hear a sound it will never make the attempt.

The first utterances of a child, as every fond parent in the country knows who has seen the light of the household try to say "papa" or "mamma,' are crude and awkward compared with the same utterances a few months later. Everybody knows the difficulties children experience in learning even an approximately correct pronunciation of such words as begin with y and w, for instance. But after a time correct pronunciation is acquired through incessant practice.

All this goes to show that the voice-the capability of pronouncing words, of making intelligible sounds, is a thing which has to be carefully cultivated. No child ever woke up in the morning and found itself able to speak. It had to learn to speak as it learned to walk. Nothing could more clearly demonstrate that the vocal organs in the perfect condition to which they have been brought by every adult who converses are the result of cultivation. Every child that is born deaf has these vocal chords in their normal state. But, being unable to hear, the child never uses them, and that is the reason it is dumb. The result of this disuse is that the chords are flabby and undeveloped.

These vocal chords constitute one of the most deli cate pieces of mechanism with which the human frame is endowed. They are wonderfully adapted to their purpose, but there is reason to believe that through the countless generations of men who have preceded us on this globe they have been steadily improved until their highest capabilities of expression are found in such singers as Patti.

There was a period when man did not possess any power of speech. The human race has undergone a gradual development in this as in other respects. Races still differ very widely in capacity to express ideas by spoken words. We may therefore regard the development of a race of speaking animals as dependent upon a corresponding advance in brain structure.

Pathology teaches that when certain parts of the brain (speech center) of man are injured by accident or disease, the power of speech may be lost. From this it is evident that the vocal apparatus may be perfect and yet speech be wanting. It thus becomes comprehensible why the vocal powers of a dog are so limited in spite of its highly developed larynx. It lacks the energizing and directive machinery of the speech centers in the brain.

The vocal chords are like the strings of a piano. They are placed in such a position that, when played upon by the breath they are susceptible of producing an infinite variety of sounds. They respond readily to the human will working through the muscles.

In every normal adult the vocal chords are stretched tight. They are in a high state of development through constant use, but there is reason to believe that it a man were to cease speaking for a term of years he would lose control of these organs of speech to a very large extent. Alexander Selkirk reported to Defoe his difficulties in reacquiring control of his powers of speech after his long imprisonment on the island of Juan Fernandez.

All of this goes to prove that people have to be taught how to use their vocal chords and that the latter are kept in a state of perfection by constant practice. But right here comes in another curious fact. A person who becomes deaf temporarily, from a cold or other cause, never loses the power of speech at the same time. This establishes the fact that speaking is, when it has been once acquired, a muscular habit.

Just as a man can eat in the dark, so can one who has become temporarily deaf continue to speak. There

are thousands of men in everyday life who have become deaf and whose powers of speech have not become impaired to any extent.

It will thus be seen that speaking and hearing are two separate and distinct faculties, but that when unable to hear a child will not naturally learn to speak. The complete success of the oral system of teaching the dumb to speak has conclusively established the fact that there is no other connection between these two faculties.

The oral system is designed to enable the child to cultivate its powers of speech. Although the child can not hear, yet it has been found that this system of education enables it to acquire such fine mastery of the delicate organism of the voice as to deceive even the shrewdest observers. Without hearing a word they utter, these children, taught under the oral method, carry on long conversations with people who never suspect that their speaking is purely mechanical.

When once attention has been called to it, however, the speech of these children is notable for a lack of resonance and "color." It is almost altogether in one key. It sounds something like the talking of a phonograph.

It is a well known fact that the volume of one note of any instrument is made up not only of its own tone, but also from five to twenty overtones. It is this overtone quality in the human voice which gives it its resonance -this resonance being produced by reverberations of the voice through the cavities which communicate with the nose and throat. As the acoustic properties of these cavities are very much damaged in the blind and deaf, their voices resemble the pitch of a tuning fork, which has practically no overtone. The peculiar "timber" of the voice of the deaf can only be understood by listening to them speak.

St. Denis, New York.

Orthoepic Right and Wrong.

By F. HORACE TEALL.
(CONTINUED FROM DEC. 21.)

Many people who think they know how to pronounce correctly all common words, and among them some who do not actually mispronounce many such words, would be surprised at finding how many differences there are between their own practice and that given in any dic

tionary. It seems a safe assertion that few of those who adopt Worcester as unquestioned authority pronounce bulletin as he did-as if spelled teen in the last syllable. Bulletin was considered by Dr. Worcester and most of his contemporaries as a French word. Some of the English authorities of that time even represented the sound of its final syllable as tang, in imitation of the natural French sound of tin. Many foreign words have been first used by Englishmen with their native sounds, and have afterward, on becoming common in English, assumed the English sound natural to their particular combinations of letters, though some such words never become fully naturalized in sound. Depot and débris are two of the latter class.

It is a curious fact that while a large number of scientific words are pronounced quite differently in different dictionaries, they are mainly spoken by those who use them most in a way not fully recorded in any dictionary. A young woman read, before a gathering of scientists, a thesis containing many words not commonly heard, and in preparation she studied carefully the pronunciations given in a' dictionary. Her auditors commended her paper, but laughed at her pronunciation.

Chemists make a great many words by joining a number of elementary names. A short word of this kind is acetal. Both Webster and Worcester accent this on the second syllable, according to a common principle, but chemists are guided by a principle utterly at variance with the most common one in such cases, and preserve the distinct sound of each element of the word. Thus, acetal is to them merely the first parts of the words acetic and alcohol, and they preserve the plain sound of the terminal syllable just as it is in alcohol and so accent both the first and last syllables of acetal.

A long chemical word is aldelhydodimethylprotocatechuic, and in speech the elements should be heard as if they were separate words-aldehydo (for aldehyde), di-, methyl, proto-, and catechuic.

Among those who best know this principle of speech one would probably seldom hear the common mispronunciation of cocaine as two syllables-co-caine'. To them the word is probably always just what it is represented as in the books, trisyllabic (co'ca-in), as showing the elements, coca and ine.

In contrast with the principle that preserves the primary sounds in scientific words, the common principle above alluded to is that of lessening or removing the