Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/744

 740 DEAF AND DUMB Single-hand Alphabet. begin with a copious vocabulary ; others frame sentences as soon as a few words have been learned ; others begin with sentences and deduce the component words. Names of visible ob- jects, their obvious properties, numerals, person- al pronouns, and verbs of action are most readily apprehended. The adjectives first taught are usually those of size and color ; the prepositions, those of locality. The simple tenses are ex- emplified by calling attention to a succession of actions. Much use is made of contrast. A considerable step has been taken when the pupil can unite" two sentences or clauses, and another when he comprehends the variation of mood and voice. A child of ordinary intelligence, beginning at the age of 10 or 12, will learn in one year to write simple sentences concerning every-day affairs. During the first two or three years, works prepared expressly for the deaf and dumb are used principally ; after that, text books prepared for hearing children are taken. Want of means is the only reason why BO few advanced works for the deaf and dumb are published. Elementary manuals have been published in America by H. B. Peet, Jacobs, Keep, and J. S. Hutton, and in England by Baker, Hopper, Scott, Patterson, and others. Peet's and Jacobs's are the most extensive and popular. In most of the United States the legal term of attendance is seven years, but the ac- tual average is five. In this time, however, the pupil usually acquires a command of written language and acquaintance with the common school branches sufficient for the ordinary de- mands of life. The higher classes pursue the studies usually taught in high schools ; Latin, French,'geometry, and surveying are taught to those who exhibit special aptitude. The college at "Washington is designed to afford a course equivalent to that pursued in other colleges; and one object of it is to qualify deaf mutes better to be themselves teachers of the deaf and dumb: The chief modification of the course is in giying more time to English and less to classics and mathematics. It has been objected to special institutions for both the deaf and the blind, that their peculiarities are intensified- by aggregation. Arrowsmith in England, in 1817, Graser in Germany, about 1830, and more recently Blanchet of Paris, proposed to educate the deaf and dumb in common schools, along with their hearing brothers and sisters. The experiment has been tried in Ireland, Prussia, France, and Belgium ; everywhere it has been found that its incon- veniences and disadvantages far counterbalance any attending the other system. This, how- ever, was in the elementary instruction. In a few recent cases deaf persons have with bene- fit and credit attended the higher schools for the hearing. The legal status of the deaf and dumb who were unable to read and write was, under the Roman law and the codes founded upon it, practically that of the insane and the idiotic. The English common law early recog- nized that intelligence sufficient for the enjoy- ment of all civil rights, and for credibility and accountability in courts of law, might be mani- fested otherwise than by the use of verbal language. The principle is now settled by nu- merous precedents, both in England and in the United States, that the degree of intelligence in a deaf mute is to be decided as a matter of fact, and any means whereby he can express himself intelligibly, directly or through an in- terpreter, is admissible. A will made by a deaf and dumb lady, at an advanced age, and after she had become blind, was lately declared valid in England. It is only in the case of the totally uneducated that there is any question