Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/361

 EDUCATION

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EDUCATION

signed for writing Braille, the best known are those of Louis Braille, Ballu, Laas-d'Aguen, KrUger, KuU, Pablasek, Signora della Casa, T. R. Armitage ; and for writing New York Point, Mr. Wait's desk and pocket- tablet already mentioned. Essentially, all point-cell tablets consist of a board bearing a movable metal plate indented with pits and having connected with it, and over it, a metal guide with two rows of either ob- long or square holes. The paper is placed between the pitted plate and the metal guide. The writing is done with a blunt awl or bodkin, which forces the paper into pits, thereby producing the dots which represent the letters. When the paper is taken out and turned over, the writing which was from right to left appears in relief and is read from left to right. The metal guide has from four to five rows of openings, allowing for the writing of four or five lines; when these are written the guide is shifted tlownvvards and held fast to the frame by two little pins, when four or five more lines are written, and the operation is repeated until the end of the page is reached. The tliird class of ap- paratus are those designed for increase of speed in writing, not by hand, however, but by mechanical means. Among the principal writing machines for the ordinary line-letter alphabet, are those of Braille- Foucault (18-12), Thurber (1847), Hughes of Manches- ter (1850), Lariviere of Nancy, Saintard (1847), Hirzel of Lausanne, Oehlwein of Weimar, Marchesi, Colard Viennot, Gastaldon of Turin, Ballu (1861), the Ham- mond, Simplex, Yost, Blickensderfer, Caligraph, etc. Without any doubt, the most rapid and most satisfac- tory way for the blind to correspond with the seeing is by means of typewriters. All methods of writing, however, which are not tangible to the fingers are lia- ble to the objection that the written matter cannot be revised and corrected by the blind writer. Of ma- chines constructed for embossing Braille and New York Point, those chiefly in use in the United States are Hall's writer, for Braille, and Wait's kleidograph, for New York Point. In France, England, and Ger- many, a number of Braille machines have been de- signed on the lines of Hall's Braille-writer.

Geography. — The blind are fond of the study of geography, and with proper teaching are as capable of forming correct geographical notions as the seeing. Most of the detailed teaching of geography, however, must be from raised maps. In the elementary course, rough maps made by the pupils themselves on cushions by means of pins and string are very helpful. The first maps used by the blind were on embroidered cloth or canvas, the needle-work representing the land and the plain cloth the water; boundaries were marked by coarse corded stitches, and towns and cities by points made with the same coarse material. Vari- ous attempts were subsequently made to construct relief maps on paper or cardboard, the boundary lines, river courses, lakes, bays, positions of towns and cities, etc., being represented in a variety of ways. The best thus far made are the wooden dissected maps, in which the divisions of a country are repre- sented by a movable section, bodies of water by a de- pression in the wood, hills and mountains by a slight elevation, towns and cities by brass-headed nails. When all the movable sections are fitted together they form a complete map. The main objection to the dis- sected maps is that they are very expensive and better suited to individual than to class teaching.

The Teaching of Arithmetic. — Records are not want- ing to show that, from the very beginning, arithmetic and other branches of mathematics held an important place in the education provided by institutions for the blind. It was soon observed that the blind displayed great fondness for arithmetical calculations. While mental arithmetic was particularly encouraged, it be- came evident that in the more advanced branches of the science, the blind needed special apparatus, and various appliances were devised to meet this want.

Among the earliest attempts to construct a tangible device for the more abstruse calculations of arithmetic and algebra is that of the great mathematician, Nicholas Saunderson. Since his day a great many diiTerent ciphering boards, or tablets, have been con- structed. One of the best is Taylor's octagonal board with square pins and octagonal holes. On one end of the pin one of the edges is raised into a promi- nent ridge, and on the other end there is a similar ridge divided in the middle by a deep notch. The holes in the board are star-shaped, with eight points. The pin can be placed in eight different positions, and on reversing it, with the notched end uppermost, in eight more; this gives ten signs for the Arabic num- erals and six for the ordinary algebraic signs. For pure algebra another pin is needed, differing from that used in arithmetic. This gives sixteen additional signs, which are quite sufficient. It is es.sential for a good arithmetic board that the same pin should repre- .sent every character; otherwise time is lost in .sclect-

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Taylor's Ciphering-tablet

ing the required character and in distributing the type at the end of each operation. In the LTnited States a board is used with square holes, and two kinds of type are required to give even the Arabic numbers.

Music. — Since the days of Hauy, music has always been considered as one of the most potent factors in the education of the blind, offering them advantages which they can derive from no other source. Though a fair percentage of the blind attain to a high degree of musical skill, and find for themselves positions of re- sponsibility and importance, yet, contrary to the gen- eral belief, no larger proportion of persons with ex- ceptional musical talent is found among the blind than in any other class. The common idea that the blind are taught music by ear is erroneous; it arises partly from the assumption that those who are sightless must of course possess an abnormally acute sense of hearing, and partly from the fact that so many persons are unaware that a tactile musical notation exists. Since 1784 there have, in fact, been almost as many such systems as systems of embossed reading. Be- sides the common musical notation in relief, used by Valentin Hauy, by W. Taylor of Y'ork, and Alston of Glasgow, special systems were devised by Frere, Lucas, and Moon in England; by Guadet, Rousseau, and the Abbe Goupil, in France; by Klein, Kriihmer, Oehlwein, and Warschauer, in Germany; by Petzelt in Austria; by D. Pedro Llorens in Spain; and by M. Mahony in the United States. In most of these sys- tems the common letters in relief were used to express the notes and their values, the octave, finger, repeat, and time signs, etc. All of the above systems, how- ever, with the exception of the common musical nota- tion in relief, have long since been entirely superseded by the Braille and the New Y'ork Point systems of musical notation. Soon after Louis Braille had de- vised the literary code he adapted his punctographic system to musical notation. An outline of the New York Point musical notation was first presented in 1872, and the first edition of the notation was printed in the same year. In 1878 it received the unanimous approbation of the American Association of Instruc- tors of the Blind, and it was adopted a few years later