say "love mamma," the amount of work sank into insignificance in comparison to the happiness of that mother, who has been waiting so long to hear the voice which she had thought silent forever speak her name. Men and women have spent their lives working for children. Froebel and Pestalozzi have been quite as great benefactors of the deaf children as of the hearing. It is a matter long ago settled without question that the first years are the ones that need the most careful attention. No one would think of planting a choice flower and to allow it simply to grow without any care at all. Instead it is placed in a sunny bed, is carefully watered, is watched and worked with each day. So, in our child garden, we must be painstaking and indefatigable gardeners.

ALL ALONG The line

BY MRS. KATHERINE T. BINGHAM, PALO ALTO, CAL.

The keynote of educational thought today is child study. No more may teachers blindly follow the traditions of the past. The drift of educational effort and the trend of educational progress are in the direction of keen insight into and careful consideration of the child's mind and ways; and upon these are based the new methods.

It is the glory of this kind of study that it includes of necessity all classes of children- -the feeble-minded no less than the highly gifted; the blind child whose objective impressions are limited by the reach of his arm, and the deaf one whose world is bounded by his range of vision.

The knowledge of each class throws light upon other classes. Horace Mann first declared the true status of the deaf. Before his day the public regard classed them as peculiar objects of charity, to be relegated to the "asylums," and "for whose instruction," in Mrs. Bell's words, "strange and mysterious methods must be employed." Horace Mann first recognized the deaf child as an individual, as capable of the same kind and degree of education as any child, and he first set forth the idea of the co-ordination of his education with that of the hearing.

How would his noble heart have rejoiced to see the fruit of his planting as shown in this department of the National Educational Association! To him also is due the awakening of interest in oral teaching which speedily resulted in its introduction into this country from Germany, where it had been established for nearly half a century. The fatal mistake was made, however, from the start of trying to unite the two radically opposed systems of speech and sign language; and, tho resulting invariably in failure to the former, the combination is still maintained in many of our institutions.

A few fallacies and misconceptions prevail concerning the deaf that I long to see corrected. First is that bête noir of signs, about which more words have been wasted than about any other educational topic, I am sure.

The most oft-repeated and specious claim of their advocates is that signs are the natural language of the deaf, and are therefore superior to all other means of communication for them, entirely overlooking the fact that they are no less natural to the hearing, but are not for that reason allowed to supersede speech.

Every baby, the deaf and the hearing alike, learns to "pat-a-cake" and to imitate the entrancing pantomime of the "ten little piggies," told off on the rosy toe-tips, long before he can speak a word.

To deaf children signs are just as natural as to hearing children, but no more so. The deaf child also laughs and cries audibly, and expresses its baby emotions in the same inarticulate cooing and babbling as does the hearing baby, until he reaches the age when the latter begins to imitate the speech of those about him, while the former continues to make inarticulate and meaningless sounds because of not hearing those about him. This causes him to appear less intelligent than he should, and his mother begins to suppress these vocal utterances and to substitute signs for speech; thus the fatal habit of silence is formed and the pernicious practice of pantomime confirmed.

The continued use of signs, after the natural period for them has passed, instead of being natural, is the result of assiduous cultivation, and does, moreover, a distinct injury to the child, by retarding his mental growth and his acquirement of speech.

Another fallacy, repeated often by those who ought to know better, is that speech is not natural to the deaf child, but at best only a mechanical and artificial acquirement. The truth is that deaf children are no more naturally speechless than are hearing children. Both are alike born incapable of speech until it is taught to them. The hearing child acquires it (after some two years or so of natural mental preparation) unconsciously, by imitating the sounds he hears others use to express their thoughts.

Deaf children do not, indeed, gain what has been aptly termed "the unspeakable gift of speech" by nature's own process of unconscious acquirement, but yet they are undeniably aided by "the cumulative inheritance of a thousand generations of ancestors" who have communicated their thoughts by this means. They have an undoubted constitutional tendency toward speech. A special organ and set of muscles are set apart for them to utilize in this manner. The deaf child differs not at all from the hearing child, save only that his instinct and native aptitude cannot serve him without intelligent help at the right stage.

One out of every fifteen hundred of the children of the United States is born deaf, it is said; but it is only the ignorance or neglect of their friends that renders them dumb.

There exist in deaf, as in hearing, children the nerves and muscles connected with the organs of speech, and the use of these means of cerebral stimulation in deaf children results in a higher mental development than could otherwise be attained.

Sir Richard Burton, the famous traveler, tells of finding somewhere in the ends of the earth, where no gleam of civilization had penetrated, a people of the lowest type, who could not communicate with each other in the dark, but lighted blazing fires in their huts at night, before which they exchanged such limited ideas as they possessed, using the identical "natural" signs, no doubt, that are so eloquently extolled and so' sedulously cultivated in the great institutions of our land at the present day. "Natural" they are, no doubt, to the infants of the race as to those of the civilized family, but they belong alone to the period of infancy. As wisely might you keep the sturdy youth in swaddling clothes as confine him deaf or otherwise-to the sign language. There is a natural age for signs, and it is the same in the man as in the race- -the age of infancy— to which signs correspond as an expression of mental power.

To this period of signs there succeeds, in the order of nature, that of ⚫ articulate language as a means of conveying thought. This power develops later in all children, because it marks a higher stage of mental developAll other things being equal, the child educated by speech attains a fuller and more harmonious development than the one educated without it-by whatever other means.

ment.

We shall all agree about this when we are informed in the scientific facts of the matter and have no professional prejudice, or family fame, or selfish interest to warp our judgment. These are potential "ifs,” I am well aware, but yet they are all fading swiftly away in the searching light of this day of the new education.

Examination of the records of the schools for the deaf of the United States shows that the importance of early instruction has only lately come to be recognized. At first the theory was held that "the pupil" (in the words of an early report of the first institution) "should be old enough to profit by the advantages offered him at public expense." Of late years it is found that the younger the pupil, the better the results. The Hartford Asylum, established in 1817 (by natural evolution this name has lately become the American School for the Deaf), fixed upon four years, and afterward twelve," as the best time," as it was expressed, "for the commencement of their education." In 1843 the age was again reduced to eight years.

The movement for earlier admission has extended thruout the country, with few exceptions, several schools now admitting pupils at two and a half and even two years of age. Many of the older schools and institutions have several times reduced the age of admission.

In the matter of the time allowed for instruction, too, great advance has been made. The seventh annual report of the Hartford School — at

that time the only one in the country-speaks as follows: "Some pupils stay at the school only two years, and four is thought by many a pretty comfortable time for completing their education." A course of four years was then prescribed, "that being," to quote from the resolution adopted, "the least time in which they can acquire even an ordinary education." In 1835 the term was again extended to five years. As time has elapsed, the necessities of the case came to be better appreciated, and the period of instruction has been gradually increased, until now forty-four out of the seventy-eight schools of the United States allow a term of ten years and upward.

The first " day school" for the deaf was established about thirty years ago the Horace Mann School of Boston, which is today one of the best equipped schools in the United States. There are now thirty-four of these schools in the country, which employ seventy-four teachers and accommodate 555 pupils. Twenty-three out of the thirty-four are oral schools, and they are located in nine different states.

In Chicago a unique and most excellent plan is in operation, which places the schools for the young children as near as possible to their homes. A class is opened in the nearest vacant schoolroom, where six. to eight deaf children are gathered, while the older and more advanced pupils are expected to attend schools located at central points at greater distances from their homes.

The highest mark of advance attained in the education of the deaf up to the present time is the establishment of oral day schools for the deaf, as an integral part of the public-school system. This idea, and its first realization in Wisconsin some thirteen years ago, is one of the many great achievements for the deaf of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, to whose worldwide fame as a scientist is added the yet greater honor of being the veritable apostle of speech for the deaf.

In the oral day school the deaf child may be educated at home, and his parents spared the anguish of separation during his childhood; they may co-operate in his education, and his instruction may be begun at a much earlier period than otherwise an all-important consideration this, as the first years are the natural period for acquiring speech, and the lack of such opportunity has been the greatest obstacle to success heretofore. His education may be accomplished at far less expense, also, than is now the case where the state provides costly buildings and charges itself with the maintenance of its deaf as well as their education. A room is set apart in the ordinary public-school building, where a teacher specially trained for the purpose instructs a small class of deaf children in the same branches that are taught in the other rooms of the building. This is done by means of speech mainly, and in all cases by the English language. They join with their hearing companions of the other rooms in not a few of their exercises in which the eye may serve instead of the

ear; they mingle freely on the playground, gaining thereby abundant practice in speech and speech-reading, and in all ways come to affiliate with, and to assume their natural place among, the hearing.

On the other hand, the special training in phonetics and articulation given by their particular teacher is open also to the hearing pupils, and the numerous speech defects of foreign children, and of those having any impediment of speech, may be corrected. Moreover, those children, of whom late researches have disclosed so large a proportion in our public. schools, whose hearing is so defective as to interfere sadly with their progress, serving to class them, oftentimes quite wrongly, as dull scholars, may be trained to make sight supplement hearing; or they may, in many cases, gain auricular development-ability in which art is an important part of the oral teacher's equipment, since there are numerous kinds and degrees of deafness among his pupils.

This plan is no longer an experiment, having been in successful operation in several eastern states for years, and it has even made its way of late to this coast. My hearers may see an illustration of this plan in the Spring Street School of this city, and the Los Angeles school board is to be commended for the progressive spirit shown in adopting this school, in advance of legislative enactment. The natural adjunct of the parents' association is also in operation here.

In San Francisco there is also an excellent private day school, whose teachers, in connection with the Parents' Association of Northern California, are active in every interest pertaining to the education and welfare of deaf children.

The oral method is fast supplanting the sign method, so that out of over five hundred schools in the world more than half are now oral schools. Dr. Bell's declaration at the Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf, at Flint, Mich., in 1895, was a prophecy that is being swiftly fulfilled. "Oralism," said he, "has come to stay; it will be the system of the twentieth century." I venture to predict, further, that before the end of the new century special teaching for the deaf child will have become a matter only of the very first few years of his life.

The education of the deaf child should begin in earliest infancy, precisely as does that of the hearing child. To this end the co-operation of the mother is indispensable. She must be assisted to do consciously for her deaf baby what she does unconsciously for her hearing one. Thus prepared to enter the kindergarten at the proper age, he will profit. doubly by his training, and with such early preparation the battle of speech for the deaf child will be won before he even becomes aware of it; and as this plan of intelligent co-operation of parents and teachers comes to be more fully and perfectly realized, it is altogether probable that the whole problem of his education will be solved by the time he finishes his kindergarten course, so that he will no longer require special instruction.