Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/124

112 Is the figure too complicated? A large number of the teachers of the deaf either teach, or allow the children to acquire from their schoolmates, a language of conventional signs. This language has a grammar and construction of its own, and an order differing from that of the English language; it is very comprehensive and flexible, and by means of it deaf children soon begin to enlarge their mental horizon. They find it tolerably easy to acquire, too, because many of the simpler signs are almost identical with the natural signs which they have learned or invented at home. By means of this sign language these teachers of the deaf impart ideas to their pupils, and these ideas they put into English, written English usually, and then spelled English (English spelled by the fingers), teaching the pupils to reproduce the English. To the children who show an aptitude for it they teach spoken English as well, and a comprehension of the spoken English of others, known as lip-reading. The deaf so taught usually converse among themselves by means of signs, and also use the sign language with such hearing persons as understand it. With such as do not understand signs they use the manual alphabet or writing, unless they are able to use speech intelligibly. The less intelligent think in signs; the more intelligent think in either written or spelled English, and, where they use speech, mentally translate. The method thus roughly outlined is known as the combined method. Nearly all the large institutions in the country use the combined method. The amount of speech, however, which is "combined" with the signs and written and spelled English varies greatly in the different States.

Two or three institutions, several day schools, some private schools, and many private teachers use another method, which differs radically from the one imperfectly described above. This method is the oral, or pure oral. Every child who enters an oral school is taught by speech, supplemented by writing. The sounds which make up the English language are taught to him—sometimes separately, sometimes in short words. He is made conscious of his own voice by feeling the vibration which it produces at the throat, under the chin, or at the point of the chin. His attention is called to the mouths of those about him moving in the motions of articulate speech on the first day of his school life, and, from that day until the last, he sees his teachers use only, as a method of communication with each other or the pupils, the English language, in either its spoken or written form. An atmosphere of English is created about him, and, as his vocabulary grows, he shapes his thoughts by means of words. His range of thought as he grows older is widened by means of the ordinary studies of the ordinary schools—stories, geography, history, physiology, biography, etc. What he does not understand is explained to him by