Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/125

Rh means of what he does understand; simple language is used to make complex language more clear; but whatever is done is done by means of language, either spoken or written, so that what he writes or speaks is his own thought unhindered by mental translation.

There are cases which both these methods fail to teach, very moderate successes under both methods, and, besides, some very brilliant examples of highly educated, cultured, deaf ladies and gentlemen who have so far mastered the difficulties which beset them that they are able to take their places in life almost as though one sense were not lacking. The representatives of this last class who are personally known to me were all but one educated by the oral method. This one exception is a very warm advocate of the oral method, in spite of the fact that he was educated under the combined system.

The large number of average cases—the deaf people who are neither brilliant scholars nor apparent failures—are generally advocates of the system under which they were educated. The combined-method pupil claims that he enjoys life better because he has his signs by means of which he can take pleasure in the company of his deaf friends, and the oral-method pupil claims that with his speech and lip-reading he can accommodate himself to his environment in the speaking world; and that, if his speech is not understood, his written English is just as good as his brother's of the combined method.

And so it goes. Each thinks his own way the best.

in Blackwood's Magazine, on the philosophy of blunders committed by persons under examination, assumes that the questions asked by the examiner are intended t awaken a recollection or to develop a kind of process of reasoning in the candidate. If the reasoning fails at any point or from any cause, a blunder appears in the answer. Some of the blunders cited by the writer, particularly in the scientific examinations, betray great confusion of mind, and are hardly accountable except on the supposition of inexact teaching or too hasty cramming. What did the pupil mean who answered that during summer "the weather is getting gradually warmer, caused by the rotation of the sun"; or that one who said that "the Tropic of Cancer is the meridian which passes round the earth midway between the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn"? Various pupils answered questions about the tides by saying that they were "caused by evaporation," "by prevailing winds," "by different oceans meeting each other," "by the undercurrents meeting," "by the waves of the Atlantic pushing the surface waters westward," or other phrases, all betraying a confused recollection of some of the words they have read in the text-books, without the most remote conception of their meaning or their relation to the subject. Such obvious illustrations of the faults of defective teaching bear their own comments.