porizing expedients that our crude theories suggest. So we turn from the normal child, in whom nature reigns with her even sway, to a distinctive class or to distinctive classes of abnormal or sub-normal children in whom nature has herself, in some vagary and in heroic and irrevocable sacrifice, simplified our problems by the removal of one or another of the chief learning factors, leaving the remaining factors thereby and in that much unobscured and unconfused for purposes of didactic research and study. Why not, then, to the end that there may be developed a true philosophy of education, an exact science, if may be, of pedagogy, turn to the defective classes for the material and the conditions needed, and that they provide freely and abundantly for our purposes; to the deaf child, with the elimination in him of the greatest of the educative senses, to study and learn wherein, and how, and how much the sense of hearing, and by the contrasts afforded, the remaining senses are severally contributive in the great educative processes; to the blind child, with the closing of still another great learning channel with the effects of it on the mind and character; and finally to the deaf-blind, who, for the purpose of our pedagogical clinic, is undoubtedly the case extreme, and therefore the case that presents the greatest possibilities for didactic study and experimentation ?

It would seem, then, that it is to the field of special education that we must come to find the soil and material and conditions for the growth and construction of a true and exact science of pedagogy.

It is axiomatic that as you increase the difficulty you must in like measure increase the efficiency of the method employed for its overcoming. In the teaching of the deaf, the blind, the deaf-blind, or the feeble-minded, difficulties as they present themselves are extreme; it fol lows that the methods employed, to be effective of the ends that they aim at and attain, must be superlatively excellent. And they are. I am thoroly convinced that in all cases where measurable success is attained in the instruction of the special classes the methods employed are superior to the methods used to secure the same general results in the work of the instruction of the normal child.

The

Turning to our subject, we are to inquire what lessons the general teacher may learn from the work of the instruction of the deaf, and more specifically from the work of teaching language to the deaf. subject is a large one, for the teaching of language to the deaf involves for this class practically the whole work of education. To gain an education the deaf child learns language, and in learning language he perforce acquires education; and thus for our purpose today language may be conceived of for the deaf as the whole aim and end of instruction. To save misconception in the beginning it should be said that language for the deaf is not speech; it may be, and usually is, speech in part. Speech, however, is only a mode of expression; another equally impor

tant, and far less difficult to learn, is writing. But language in the whole and in its substance is a psychological problem far more than one either of vocal or graphic mechanics.

Passing over, then, the work of mere articulation teaching in the instruction of the deaf and the very practical lessons that may be learned from it by the general teacher to aid him in correcting faults in the speech of hearing children, and with only a passing reference to the phonetic method of spelling and reading in common use by teachers of the deaf, and which is now so rapidly supplanting the A, B, C method in the schools for the hearing, to the great benefit and the much more rapid advancement of the children in acquiring the art of reading, we may bring ourselves at once to the work of language teaching in its essence, as it presents itself to the teacher of the deaf and of the hearing alike in its psychological-pedagogical aspects.

It will be accepted that language learning is not the accumulation of vocabulary. That is to be sure a part of it, and a not unimportant part, but vocabulary may be likened to the dead body without the spirit. Our aim in language teaching must be to give vocabulary, but much more than that, to give power to use it to give the art and graces of expression. The lack of the art of expression is the great lack of the deaf upon entrance to school, and it is the teacher's ever-present task to lessen it thruout the school course. It is also the great lack, as I count it, of the hearing child under present educational methods thru the school course, and continuing necessarily thru life. We then have the common lack in the two classes, that of the art of graceful, free, and forceful expression. And it is here that we find the great difference in the methods of instruction employed with the two classes, and it may be suggested that we also find the essential element of superiority of the methods employed with the deaf over that employed with the hearing.

The deaf child starting with nothing, with no language, with no means or facility of expression, the aim from the beginning and continuously is to meet the great lack, and the school curriculum is one unending program of talk and write, write and talk, with all else subordinate and contributive, with the result that the deaf child has power at every stage of his progress to say or write a very considerable part of what he knows and thinks. Instruction is centered and intensified along this one line of development, to give ability for full and free and effective expression. There is reading, the using of text-books, the acquiring of facts, but these are all incidental to the main thing, which is to give practice in quantity in the use of language for the giving forth of the child's own thought and knowledge. The success attained in giving language to the deaf, coupled with fair facility in its use, thus thru abundant practice in composition work, is evidence of the excellence of the method employed, as it is suggestive of its superiority.

The hearing child enters school with already a certain power of expres sion, and so neglect to develop or train the power is met by the plea of lack of necessity. The teacher accepts this present power of expression and uses it, but rarely with the aim or thought to cultivate and increase it. The child learns to read that which he already knows as spoken language; to write, the mechanical part of it; and to cipher. If his education proceeds farther, it is for the most part but an enlargement of acquaintance with text-book knowledge in the absorption of the facts that they contain. This is education, so far as it goes: it is the education of the schools of today as they give it, and it serves the purposes of life fairly well. But it is not enough, and not enough because a fuller and truer and far more serviceable education is possible in the time spent and with the material and the means employed. The high-school principal of today considers it unnecessary to have his pupils prepare and read graduating essays, so little do they characterize and illustrate the work of the school curriculum as pursued and completed. The writer knows of an instance of this omission at a recent high-school commencement, where a professional entertainer was brought in to fill in the lack. Is it any wonder, when the art of composition is thus discredited and neglected, that the school children of today leave school practically in the same condition as they entered with relation to the great art of free, graceful, and forceful expression? How many men or women met with in business or social circles can even tell a story effectively, and of the few who can, how many acquired this delightful accomplishment as, in any part of it, a result of school training? How many, again, can speak or write with any appreciable effect upon other minds, outside the limits of business intercourse? Except those trained in certain professional lines and the few self-developed, the world is practically made up of men and women wholly lacking in the art of ready and forceful expression. Measured in terms of vocabulary, it may be believed that in but few cases does the speaking or writing vocabulary approximate the half of the reading vocabulary. Most of us find exceeding great difficulty in expressing our thoughts in words and conveying them clearly to others, and in this the illiterate man not seldom excels, being self-trained to it. Why should we not all, without exception, be able to clothe our thoughts in graceful and expressive words. as easily as we clothe our bodies in graceful and becoming garb, since in the former case we have unlimited wardrobe to draw upon? Is there any possible answer to this that is not a condemnation of our public-school methods? Homer, it is said, was untaught, and recited without the aid of literary models, and Shakespeare even has need in these days to prove his schooling; but measured by truer standards, who will deny them their place and rank among the truly educated and scholarly? They were not taught, as they needed not to be taught, the art of expression in the schools; but right instruction would scarcely have harmed them, while

wrong, misdirected educative methods might indeed have had effects fatally blighting.

A man counts in a community, not as he controls himself, his own mind alone (he is a cipher who does only that, and he is not missed when he dies), but as he controls others, thus increasing himself in his power and influence two, ten, ten thousand fold. Should not our public schools aim at making something more than educated ciphers?

The great lesson that we may draw, then, is that in our curriculums with normal children, as with deaf children, the common lack must be recognized, and it must be met by the same methods. We must emphasize and intensify all teaching to give the art of composition, of free and forceful speech and writing, well knowing that in giving this we give all, for it implies and includes all. Expression is a fundamental educative force. The more a man speaks or writes the more he thinks; and the more he thinks the more he is induced to read and study and seek out knowledge. Expression is thus retroactive in its effects.

Expression measures education, as it gives to it its efficiency and power and usefulness. May we not hope, then, that with absolute demonstration of this as a principle in the work with the deaf, the inquiring spirit of the age will turn to the work and accept from it the lesson that it teaches, and make profit from it for remodeling methods to even greater possibilities of accomplishment for the hearing? May the day, indeed, not be distant when the school curriculum for our children, hearing as well as deaf, shall be in its sum and substance, and from its beginning to its end, practice, practice, practice in expression, in composition, in the use of language for all its purposes, to please, to inform, to persuade, to convince, giving therein and thereby mind culture the highest and mind power the greatest attainable, and thus giving the truest education, as useful as it may be in any instance and degree complete.

WHAT IS MINNESOTA DOING for her deaf children?

J. N. TATE, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF,
FARIBAULT, MINN.

In answering the question, "What is Minnesota doing for her deaf children?" we presume we may claim that she is doing as much as any of the commonwealths. We think we are not presumptuous in this; tho when we realize that the United States leads the nations of the world in the training she is giving the deaf, both in an intellectual and industrial way, we can readily understand that our claim is not a small one.

The Act Establishing the Minnesota School for the Deaf was approved March 4, 1863. The location is ideal. The city of Faribault, the site of the three state schools, for the Blind, Feeble-minded, and the Deaf, and a

number of Church schools, is acknowledged to be one of the most attractive towns in the state.

There are something over sixty acres of land connected with the School for the Deaf. This, one of six state and church schools, is located along the bluffs on the east side of Straight river, the town being upon the west. The grounds of these institutions form a beautiful park.

There are now 268 pupils in attendance. Of these 149 are boys and 119 are girls. The school is absolutely free to all deaf children from eight to twenty-five years of age. The cost of clothing and traveling expenses only are to be paid by parents or counties from which the pupil comes. The minimum course now is eight years, and the maximum is thirteen. During the thirty-nine years of the existence of the school, 947 pupils have received instruction. The school has sent 22 students to the college. This constitutes about 13 per cent. of the number of regular graduates. I think it can be shown that a larger per cent. of those who entered the college graduated than from any other school.

I copy the following from a paper read by Mr. J. L. Smith before the Fifth Convention of the Minnesota Association of the Deaf. As this data applies to the 947 pupils who have attended this school I think it applicable and interesting:

Not one of these is the occupant of a state prison, only one known as the inmate of a poorhouse, and only one is in an insane asylum. Nearly all who have attained to adult age are independent citizens of the state. They are found in all occupations side by side with their hearing brothers and sisters. Following is a partial list of occupations that are now followed, or have been followed, by the deaf of Minnesota: Architect, artist, barber, bookkeeper; book agent, bicycle repairer and manufacturer, carpenter, college student, collector, cutter, cooper, cigar-maker, dressmaker, domestic, editor, fireman, superintendent of school, supervisor, seamstress, saw-mill employe, paper-mill employe, shoemaker, fruit seller, farmer, farm laborer, government clerk, glass stainer, grocer, harness maker, inventor, janitor, machinist, merchant, matron of school, painter, printer, photographer, poultry raiser, rattan worker, teacher, tailor, teamster, wood turner.

While it is true that pupils after leaving school often do not follow the trade learned while there, still they have acquired the habit of application and ideas as well. I deem the industrial training given at state institutions for the deaf to be hardly second to the intellectual in fitting a student for practical life.

You may be interested in knowing something of the means of a general nature employed in developing our pupils - devices not all found in other institutions of the kind, at least in the form used in our school. Blank books, comprising several hundreds of pages, are issued to the teachers of beginning classes, and, to start the scheme, to all teachers. A summary of all work done is supposed to be copied into these books. The book goes with the class and is a guide to the succeeding teacher. In the end it is a complete history of the class during its entire period in school.