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But in order to be able to attain these ideals the schools must have books-books far in excess of the reference works or supplementary textbooks which the school library is able to supply; and for these they must turn to the public library. So important does this latter factor become that the school in a certain sense appears to be merely an adjunct to the library. That I may not appear too extravagant in this statement, I will here appeal for aid to our honored Commissioner of Education. Says Dr. Harris: "The school is set at the task of teaching the pupil how to use the library in the best manner- that, I take it, is the central object toward which our American schools have been unconsciously tending." Words as forcible as these, uttered by the head of American schools, and backed up by the scholarly, thoughtful, extremely conservative nature of the man who gave them utterance, cannot fail to have their weight.

So to the library we come as teachers, and to our gratification find not only the door open, but the most cordially welcoming hand stretched out to greet us. The library wants trained readers; we are seeking to train readers. No wonder, then, that we are gladly welcomed. And to the librarian, whose province it is, we may safely intrust the methods by which the books shall be put into our hands. Whether he adopt the Worcester plan or the Denver plan or the Milwaukee plan or the San Francisco plan will depend upon local conditions and restrictions, and, after all, really matters very little. Our business just now is not with the librarian, but with the teacher; our highest aim for the present should be to awaken upon his part a livelier interest in and a deeper insight into this, one of the greatest of modern educational movements.

DEPARTMENT OF THE EDUCATION OF

DEFECTIVES

SECRETARY'S MINUTES

FIRST SESSION. - WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 1899

EDUCATION OF THE DEAF

The department was called to order at 2: 30 P. M. in Broadway Church, Los Angeles, with Mrs. Kath. T. Bingham, Palo Alto, Cal., in the chair. After brief introductory remarks by President David Starr Jordan of Leland Stanford Jr. University, papers were read on the following topics:

“Time Allowed for the Public Schooling of the Deaf as Compared with Hearing Children, and How to Make the Most of It," by Professor Charles S. Perry, California State School for the Deaf, Berkeley, Cal.

"All along the Line," by Mrs. Katherine T. Bingham, Palo Alto, Cal.

"Importance of a Right Beginning," by Miss Helen Taylor, kindergartner in Public Day Schools for the Deaf, Los Angeles, Cal.

"Vacation Schools for the Deaf," by Miss Mary McCowen, principal of Chicago Public Day Schools for the Deaf.

A general discussion followed by Dr. Warring Wilkinson and Professor O'Donnell, of the State Institution for the Deaf at Berkeley, Cal.; Miss West, of the State Institution for the Deaf, Mt. Arey, Pa.; J. A. Foshay, superintendent of city schools, Los Angeles, Cal.; Albert G. Lane, district superintendent of schools, Chicago, Ill.; Dr. William E. Waddell, president of Parents' Association, Los Angeles, Cal.

In the school exhibit, which was held in the Spring Street School building, this department was represented by only one school, the Los Angeles Day School for the Deaf. Here two groups of deaf children in charge of their teachers, the Misses Mary Bennett and Helen Taylor, gave brief class exercises on alternate days. At other times they explained to interested visitors the results of the regular class work of the year, as shown in the drawing, painting, writing, and other expression and construction work, which was exhibited in the room, and which elicited warm praise for its evidence of genuineness, originality, and ártistic excellence.

SECOND SESSION.-THURSDAY, JULY 13

EDUCATION OF THE BLIND

The department convened at 2: 30 P. M., with J. E. Carter, of Oregon, in the chair. "In what Respects should the Education and Training of the Blind Differ from the Education and Training of Normal Pupils ?" was the subject of a paper by Dr. Warring Wilkinson, superintendent of the State Institution for the Deaf and Blind, Berkeley, Cal.

Discussion followed by Professor Chappell, of the Minnesota State School for the Blind; Professor J. L. Carter, of the Oregon State School for the Blind, and Professor Charles Wilkinson, of the California Institution for the Blind.

THIRD SESSION. — FRIDAY, JULY 14

EDUCATION OF THE FEEBLE-MINDED

The department convened at 2: 30 P. M., with Superintendent J. W. Jones, Columbus, O., in the chair.

Professor Thomas P. Bailey, of the University of California, read a paper on “Character Types among the Feeble-Minded."

At the business session the following-named were duly elected as officers of the department for the ensuing year:

For President-Warring Wilkinson, Berkeley, Cal.

For Vice-President, Subdepartment for the Deaf - Miss Mary McCowen, Chicago, Ill.

For Vice-President, Subdepartment for the Blind - E. E. Allen, Philadelphia, Pa.

For Vice-President, Subdepartment for the Feeble-Minded-Arthur C. Rogers, Faribault, Minn. For Secretary-Edgar Allan Fay, Washington, D. C.

The register of the department showed the names of teachers of defective classes from twenty states.

The department adjourned.

MARY MCCOWEN,

Secretary.

PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS

TIME ALLOWED FOR THE PUBLIC SCHOOLING OF DEAF AS COMPARED WITH HEARING CHILDREN, AND HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF IT

BY PROFESSOR CHARLES S. PERRY, STATE SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF, BERKELEY, CAL.

A few weeks since, at a festal board spread less than a thousand miles from where we sit as members of a national council of educators, one of the business magnates of this state and country voiced his conviction that the youths of our land are drinking too deeply at the Pierian springs of knowledge; that, in fact, our American masses are getting overeducated, and that a fifteen-year limit should be set to student life. His assertion was emphatically seconded shortly afterward by no less a business authority than Mr. Russell Sage, of New York, who, under the old régime, "quit school and went into business at eighteen," and, as he modestly puts it, "has done very well." These somewhat startling expressions of opinion have, as you are aware, given rise to a good deal of newspaper talk and interviewing of prominent educators in this state and elsewhere; for, if California takes to herself pride in aught, after her ever-glorious "climate," it is in her broad-gauged and excellent system of public instruction. These opinions have generally been adverse to the utterances of our millionaire friends, and the consensus seems to be that

our present public-school age limits are not a day too long for the development of our present common-school and academic scheme of education. Such being the voice of the people, a discussion at this time and upon this occasion of school privileges accorded to our deaf, as contrasted with our hearing, youth becomes singularly opportune. This subject, if the writer states it from memory correctly, is worded in the form of a question assuming a fact, to wit: "Why should deaf children be allowed from five to ten years less time under instruction than their hearing associates ?"

While the law in this matter, as all know, varies in different sections of our country, custom, if the writer mistakes not, is coming to allow to those charged with the education of the deaf large discretionary or advisory powers in defining the duration of their pupilage as wards of the state. Here in California, as Dr. Wilkinson informs us, the trend of legislation has steadily favored extension of this age limit, and year by year has aimed to make it correspond more closely with that of pupils in our hearing grades.

The same disposition has manifested itself in Ohio, where not very many years ago deaf children were fated virtually, in the majority of cases, to lose twelve years of life's most receptive period, educationally, unschooled at home. And it was a common and, to the thoughtful instructor, a most disheartening sight to see, in a class-room of beginners at that late age, young people approaching or beyond the opposed age line of twenty years present themselves for education. Five years was the time granted at that date in which to compass this momentous task, eked out in special cases by the grudging addition of two years more. Then followed, in 1867, under Dr. Fay, the admission of the deaf to school privileges at the age of ten, twenty remaining the final age limit. Seven years were allotted for the course, with three years more as a bonus in cases of exceptional promise. The year 1873 was signalized for the deaf of Ohio by further time concessions, the school being thrown open to all deaf youths of sound mind between the ages of six and twenty-one, thus approximating closely to the time law and custom obtaining in schools. for hearing people. In 1881 the age of admission was set at eight years, a measure reluctantly taken, but necessitated by the overcrowded condition of the Columbus school at that time.

These statistics are quoted to substantiate the statement just made, that more and more latitude is being granted to educators of the deaf as to time limits. The sentiment of the public regarding us and our work may, in brief, be worded thus: "Take your own time, but give us the best results attainable;" and the question now before us is, not so much the gaining for ourselves, by public consent, of more time for our task, as how to make more of the time that already is accorded to us in advancing this great and growing work. As this is, or ought to be, an "experience meeting" for the interchange less of pedagogic theories than of actual and

approved practices in teaching our common profession, the writer may be permitted to describe, or rather to hint at, certain means to this end, to approve ourselves living agents in quickening and informing the intelligence of our pupils, thus most effectively stimulating their powers of expression, and so bringing them more and more into touch with those about them. The stream cannot rise higher than its source, nor can language outstrip the mental wealth and activity of which it is the exponent. Of course, we cannot expect our charges, as a rule, to be Helen Kellers in mental grasp and retentiveness, nor can they hope to be blessed, like her, with the individual companionship for an unlimited period of a devoted instructor. Yet the writer speaks from experience in maintaining that special methods and appliances may be made to aid vastly the development in our deaf children of this alertness of apprehension, this "catching on" faculty, that distinguishes the "quick," perceptively speaking, from the "dead."

First, then, let the personal intelligence of the would-be instructor of the deaf be alert and sympathetic. "That which we are," asserts Emerson, that prince of teachers, "we shall teach, voluntarily, involuntarily." The heavy, unresponsive "logy" teacher-we all have seen and recognize the type tho versed in all of the 'ologies, chirology included, has no call to teach the deaf. A little leaven, we are assured, leaveneth the lump; but be it little or much, leaven it must be; and tho that type of instructor may, under a long-suffering Providence and forbearing school boards, achieve a measure of success, it should not be at the expense of pupils already heavily handicapped in their race toward education's goal. In personal sympathy, after all, must we recognize the touchstone of successful teaching of the deaf-a sympathy quick to avail itself of every accredited aid to this end, contemning none; enlisting in this exacting service heart and hand, tongue and thought; a sympathy making itself "eyes to the blind," ears for the deaf; literally "feeling with" them the stress of their life-burden, while philanthropically striving to lessen its weight; seeking not private gains; broad and enduring in its nature as life itself. "Unless you expect to make instruction of the deaf your life-work, let it alone!" was the curt and wholesome advice of a veteran in our profession to the writer at the outset of his teaching experience. Again, let instruction be presented in the most attractive and condensed form possible to the deaf; knowledge in nutshells, as it were. In his own teaching the writer has found. the use of card abstracts, historical, biographical, geographical, etc., to be a distinct time-saving. Such helps may be procured of educational publishers, or may readily be prepared by the teacher, and handled as teaching experience will quickly suggest. It has been amply proved that in this simple manner the memories of a class may be stored with grouped facts in endless variety, and, as they pass in review, unflagging interes may be maintained in the series thruout the school year.

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