DEAF AND DUMB, EDUCATION AND WELFARE OF THE. The term "deaf" is frequently applied to those who are deficient in hearing power in any degree, however slight, as well as to people who are unable to detect the loudest sounds. The reference here is to those who are so far handicapped as to be incapable of instruction by means of the ear. Deafness, then, is the incapacity to be instructed by means of the ear, and dumbness is ignorance of how to speak as an effect of deafness. Of such deaf people many can hear sounds to some extent. D. Kerr Love quotes several authorities (Deaf Mutism, p. 58) to show that 5o% or 6o% are absolutely deaf, while 25% can detect loud sounds, and the rest can distinguish vowels or even words. He thinks that the ability to hear speech exists in about one in four, while ten or fifteen in each hundred are only semi deaf. He warns against the use of tuning forks or other instru ments held on the bones of the head, when the vibration may be only felt not heard, as tests of hearing.
In the early ages the deaf were regarded as idiots and were killed out of hand. They had no place in the social order of things and were regarded as mere encumbrances. Later on, iso lated cases are on record of the deaf being taught. The Vener able Bede relates that in 70o St. John of Beverley taught a deaf mute to speak. But it was not until the i 6th century that any serious attempt was made to instruct the deaf. At this time, Jerome Cardan, who was born in Pavia in isoi, stated that the deaf could be instructed by writing. This method was put into practice by a Spanish Benedictine monk, Pedro Ponce (b. 152o). Another Spanish monk, Juan Paulo Bonet, taught the deaf to speak. He published a book on the subject in 162o.
Up to nearly the end of the 19th century the education of the deaf was provided for mostly by charity. In 1893, the report of the Royal Commission which had been appointed to consider the condition of the blind and deaf, was published. As a result, the Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act was passed. This provided for the compulsory attendance at school of deaf children between 7 and 16 years of age, and made it the duty of Local Education Authorities to make suitable provision for the education of 'the deaf. In this way State action was established.
Although the compulsory age for attendance at school is 7 years, children are admitted much earlier. Deaf children receive their education in day schools and residential schools. The day schools are maintained by Local Education Authorities and, with the exception of eight which are maintained by local education authorities, the residential schools are provided by voluntary com mittees. For the year ended March 1927 there were 5o schools, day and residential, with an accommodation for 4,826 pupils in England and Wales. Children are mostly taught by the oral method, that is by means of speech and speech-reading, although a proportion do not benefit by this method. These are taught by means of writing and a manual alphabet. The curriculum in schools for the deaf includes besides speech and speech-reading, the ordinary elementary school subjects. Vocational training is given in boot-making, cabinet-making, dress-making, laundry work, etc. The London County Council provides the following schools for its deaf children : (i ) Six day schools for deaf children up to 13 years of age. (2) Five day schools for partially-deaf children. (3) One residential school for deaf boys from 13 to 16 years of age, with provision for vocational training. (4) One residential school for deaf girls from 13 to 16 years of age, with provision for vocational training. (5) One residential school for deaf boys and girls up to 16 years of age who have a defect other than deafness.
The National College of Teachers of the Deaf has for many years past advocated the scientific classification of deaf children for the purposes of instruction according to the history and degree of their deafness and their mental condition. Clearly, the partially deaf and those who lose their hearing after the habit of speech has been naturally acquired, stand in a different relation to edu cation from the deaf born, whose minds have never been stimu lated by heard speech. Up to comparatively recent times, both types were grouped together for instructional purposes. The movement to give these children the advantages of a hearing environment and to train them by methods adapted to children who hear is steadily growing, and schools for partially deaf chil dren are increasing in number. This is only part of the classifica tion necessary to ensure that such type and condition of deafness shall receive the special educational care it needs. The London County Council Institution for the defective deaf at Penn is another step in this direction.
The Board of Education is the official department which issues statistics relating to the deaf and these necessarily apply to children. The incidence of deafness in children as shown in the returns of the local education authorities for 1924 was .81 per i,000 children. The incidence of deafness in school children varies very widely in different districts and is shown in the chief medical officer's report to be 5.18 per i,000 children in the Isles of Scilly and .33 in Southport.
The central authority controlling schools for the deaf in this country is the medical branch of the Board of Education and all schools are open to inspection by the chief medical inspector and his staff. The British Deaf and Dumb Association is a national body consisting of deaf adults together with the leaders, hearing and deaf, of the local welfare societies.
The great advance in the education of the deaf during the 2oth century established their fitness for higher educational and tech nical training. With this conviction the leaders of the schools and welfare societies for the deaf initiated in 1923 a movement for the reconstitution of the then national bureau for promoting the general welfare of the deaf, established in 1911, which was reorganized as the National Institute for the Deaf and came into being in April, 1925. The main attention of the Institute has been devoted to the industrial conditions of the deaf, the condi tions of the deaf in poor-law institutions and mental hospitals, fuller citizenship of the deaf.
The general objects of the Institute are:— The prevention of deafness; the education of the deaf including the proper admin istration of the law effecting the attendance of deaf children at suitable schools, and the furtherance of their early training; the re-education of the partially deaf through speech-reading; the provision of efficient training in trades for children leaving school, and of opportunities for continued academic study; the adjust ment of official and trade regulations where they operate harshly against the deaf worker; the provision of opportunities for the higher education of the deaf ; the adequate care of the blind deaf and the mentally defective deaf ; the social elevation and fuller citizenship of the deaf ; supplying information to, and ad vising public departments, private bodies, and individuals needing assistance, and generally, by propaganda, whether in the way of local or national action, to influence the public in favour of the deaf, with a view to bringing about necessary reforms.
The increasing emphasis on oralism in the United States is breaking down the barriers that separated the totally or partially deaf from normal people when only signs were used. The teach ing of speech and lip-reading is now generally prevalent so that the word "dumb" is stripped of its one-time significance in America. As the deaf are educated, they cease to be dumb. The latter word has been eliminated by law from titles of institutions. According to the 192o census the deaf numbered 44,885 but an unofficial estimate of totally and partially deaf runs into millions.
In May 1818 the New York Institution for the Deaf was opened. Of the 62 attending, 32 were "charity pupils" provided for by the city. Thirty-eight belonged to distant parts of New York State, 19 to the city, four to New Jersey and one to Con necticut. After an exhibition by the students in 1819 the State legislature appropriated $1o,000, and granted "a moiety of the tax on lotteries in the city of New York" which for 14 years formed a good income.
In Philadelphia, David Seixas began teaching deaf children in his home in 1819 or early in 182o. His work was noted by a group of citizens who, after an exhibition of results accomplished in 1821, helped to secure a charter and a per caput appropriation from the State of $16o. The Hartford school lent him Laurent Clerc. New Jersey began at once to send pupils to the Pennsyl vania institution, Maryland followed in 1827 and Delaware, Kentucky in 1823 was the fourth State to establish a school for the deaf, the Kentucky asylum at Danville, which was the first school established distinctly as a State enterprise. Other States followed, interest in many cases in the South being aroused by tours of the educated deaf who exhibited what could be done for these hitherto neglected members of society. In 1863, there were 22 schools for the deaf with 2,012 pupils. Within 6o years of the first founda tion, they were established in 31 States, great areas of public land being granted in several instances, as in Connecticut and Kentucky, for such purpose. In all the institutions, up to 1867, the manual system of instruction held sway, though the oral method had been tried at the New York institution.
In 1867 the Clarke school, Northampton, Mass., the first perma nent oral school in the United States, was established. Gardiner Hubbard, a Massachusetts senator, whose daughter lost her hear ing when four and one-half years old, tried to establish an oral school and unsuccessfully applied for a charter in 1864. Then the work of Harriet B. Rogers with Fannie Cushing, a deaf-mute, came to his notice. He and his friends financed a small, private oral school in i865. An exhibition by these pupils of Miss Rogers in 1867 convinced the legislature that so-called deaf-mutes could be taught to converse. A great step forward in the education of the deaf was thus made. Massachusetts voted for the incorporation of "an Institution of Deaf-Mutes at Northampton"; for "primary instruction of younger pupils than were then received"; and for "a longer term of instruction of pupils aided by the State." The Institution for the Improved Instruction of the Deaf, New York, also came into being in 1867 instituting oral instruction. Both schools exerted an influence on the early education of the deaf.
Educators of the deaf divided themselves into those who favoured the manual system supplemented by articulation and those who taught speech and lip-reading, vetoing the manual method. Manual teachers maintained that certain deaf-mutes would never learn to speak and to read lips; oral teachers con sidered it unjust to separate the deaf from the hearing because of lack of instruction in the use of vocal organs. Dr. Edward Hiner Gallaudet's stand for the teaching of speech to deaf chil dren after his extended European tour of 1867 influenced many instructors. In 1886 tension had sufficiently modified to permit the convention of Instructors of the Deaf to pass noteworthy resolutions urging endeavours in the schools to teach every pupil to speak and read from the lips. The resulting "combined sys tem" is defined in the American Annals of the Deaf, the instruc tor's official organ, as:— Speech and speech-reading are regarded as very important, but mental development and the acquisition of language are regarded as still more important. It is believed that in some cases mental development and the acquisition of language can be best promoted by the Manual or the Manual Alphabet method, and, so far as circum stances permit, such method is chosen for each pupil as seems best adapted for his individual case. Speech and speech-reading are taught where the measure of success seems likely to justify the labor expended, and in some of the classrooms of most of the Combined-System schools the Oral or the Auricular method is strictly followed.
The combined and the oral systems came into increasing use. Yet even in 1904 the World's Congress of the Deaf at St. Louis ruled that champions of the oral method were not friends of the deaf and that every teacher of the deaf ought to have a work ing command of the sign language. Oralism was helped forward by the establishment of day schools. The Horace Mann school, Boston, was the first, starting Nov. so, 1869, under Sarah Fuller, principal for 41 years, who gave Helen Keller her first lessons in speech. The number of day schools increased slowly up to 1894 when there were 15, and more rapidly thereaf ter. In 1901, for instance, they numbered 49, with 835 pupils; in 1915, 64 with 2,109 pupils; and in 1926, 1o1 with 2,972 pupils. Pupils from oral schools have passed on to high schools and colleges, holding their own with those who hear, and graduating successfully. New York State, to promote such higher education, provides a per caput sum of $300 that a hearing note-taker may attend college lectures with the deaf student and take full notes for the latter's use.
The situation may be summed up in the conclusions of the 1924-25 survey made by a committee of the National Research Council financed by the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial: The typical school does not prohibit the use of manual spelling. Pupils who after ample trial do not make satisfactory progress orally are transferred arid taught in the manual classes. Of the three methods of education in practice, the oral, manual and combined, no one method is superior to the others, taking into account the educational achievement of the pupils and their basic intelligence. The beginning of the 2oth century saw a further development in educational methods. It was realized that the percentage of the totally deaf is small. The 1924-25 survey dis closed that but 3% of the children tested were without any hear ing and the average had 25%. As early as 1886 attention had been drawn to auricular training by the commissioner of educa tion commenting on the work of the Nebraska Institution for the Deaf to educate the brain to use the hearing so that speech might be gained. Increasingly, greater stress is being laid on the development of the remnant of hearing, known as residual hearing, really an integral part of the oral method, so that sounds and language ideas are associated. Audiometer tests have shown pupils to have from 5% to 85% of available hearing acuity. Auricular training by means of exercises teaches the child to per ceive the sound of the human voice and to interpret it, giving a vocabulary, improving speech and increasing activity in the psychic acoustic centres.
Provision for the education of the deaf in local institutions is made by the different States as a general rule. Only in Delaware, New Hampshire, Nevada and Wyoming are deaf children sent at public expense to a school outside the State. Several of the southern States have at least two institutions, one for white chil dren and the other for coloured. Only nine States have compul sory attendance laws for deaf children: Indiana, where the age is 7-18; Iowa, 12-19; Maryland, 6-18; Minnesota, 8-2o; North Carolina; North Dakota, 7-21; Rhode Island, 7-18; West Vir ginia, 8-25; and Vermont.
Higher Education.—The United States is the only country with a college of accepted standard for the deaf, awarding the usual masters' and bachelors' degrees in art and science. It was established in Washington, D.C., in 1864 as the highest depart ment of the institution of the deaf and dumb founded by Con gress in 1857. First known as the National Deaf-Mute college, it was renamed Gallaudet college in 1893, and with the Kendall school (secondary) forms the Columbia Institution of the Deaf. In 1886-87 women were admitted to the college. Its graduates have successfully pursued special courses at Johns Hopkins, George Washington, McGill and the Universities of California and Pennsylvania. Of 353 graduates, 111 are teachers, 66 home managers, 36 printers and publishers, 24 farmers, 31 in business, 20 in chemistry, 17 in the ministry or training for it, and 1 s acting as supervisors or in charge of athletics in the schools.
Teachers of the deaf are educated in the oral method at Clarke school ; in the combined system at Gallaudet college ; at the Cen tral institute, St. Louis, Mo.; and at the Institution for the Im proved Instruction of Deaf-Mutes, New York. Several schools in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, New York, Connecticut, Virginia and other States have at differ ent times and for varying periods held normal classes.
The Volta Bureau for the increase and diffusion of knowledge relating to the deaf was founded in 1887 by Alexander Graham Bell (q.v.), who had taught his father's "visible speech" system at the Clarke school in 1872 and whose life was largely devoted to helping the deaf. In 1909, at its founder's suggestion, it was pre sented to the American Association to promote the teaching of speech to the deaf, the largest organization of teachers and friends of the deaf in the world.