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The Education Of Deaf Mutes: Shall It Be By Signs Or Articulation?

Creator: Gardiner Greene Hubbard (author)
Date: 1867
Publisher: A. Williams & Co., Boston
Source: Available at selected libraries

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To the Twenty-Second Report of the American Asylum are annexed several questions addressed to a number of pupils whose average age on joining the school was about fourteen. "Before you were instructed in the Asylum had you any idea of the Creator? "The answers, substantially alike, are given by thirteen pupils. "No, I did not know that a Creator existed. I had no idea of God at all before I entered the Asylum." "Had you reasoned or thought about the world, or the beings and things it contains?" "I never attempted to suppose who had made the world, nor how it had ever come into existence." "Had you any idea of your own soul? ""I never conceived such a thing as a soul, nor was I ever conscious that my mind had faculties and operations different and distinct from those of my body." Their answers show how little their friends at home had been able to teach them.

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These pupils therefore enter the Asylum with less cultivation of mind than children ordinarily possess on entering infant or primary schools. "They are not only utterly ignorant of words, but destitute of most of the ideas represented by words." (4) "Their mental faculties are but little developed, and they have no medium of communication but a few simple signs," (5) and those "are crude, imperfect, and semi-barbarous." (6) "Their eyes are indeed open, but they have hardly been employed as avenues to the mind. Thought is as yet unawakened, except upon the most trivial subjects, and even the language of signs is unknown, save in its rudest form." (7)


(4) Forty-Seventh Report New York Institution, for 1866, p. 48.

(5) Forty-Sixth Report American Asylum, for 1862, p. 13.

(6) Twenty-Ninth Report American Asylum, for 1845, p. 55.

(7) Forty-Fifth Report New York Institution, for 1864, p. 61.

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"The chief object of the instruction in these schools is to teach these pupils the English language," (8) to elevate their minds and hearts, and enable them to communicate with the world at large. To accomplish this end "the natural language of signs "is used in our American Asylums. What is this natural sign language? There is an innate propensity in man to attach signs to thoughts, so as to communicate them to others, that is, to make use of language. Among men thoughts are ordinarily expressed by audible signs or spoken words; when the senses of speech and hearing are wanting, the mental and moral powers are limited to the perceptive faculties and the affections; wants and feelings are expressed by visible language or signs, and these signs do not relate to immaterial objects, but are intelligible to animals, idiots, infants, and uninstructed deaf mutes. Upon these few natural signs the institutions build up a language of conventional signs, and "strive to elevate to as high a degree of excellence as possible this language, so as to make it a complete medium of communication between the instructor and the pupil on all subjects." (9) And as it "is almost entirely destitute of pronouns, conjugations, adverbs, and the moods and tenses of verbs, these must be taught, and the difficulty can be more easily conceived than described." (10)


(8) Thirty-Sixth Report American Asylum, for 1852, p. 1.

(9) Twentieth Report American Asylum, for 1836, p. 18.

(10) Sixth Report American Asylum, for 1822, p. 3.

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The Abbé Sicard attempted to give to this language a development equal to that of speech, having a distinct sign for every spoken word, with necessary signs to denote grammatical characters. This plan would seem to have some advantages over the signs now in use; but his system has been gradually changed, and the "sign language perfected by forty years of familiar use has been adapted to the expression of abstract thoughts and nice shades of ideas, as well as the simpler and more patent conceptions." (11) Attempts have been made to describe these natural signs in books; the best work of this kind was published by Sicard in 1808, but it was of no practical use, "for it is a herculean and often vain labor even to describe the principal of the unintelligible signs of this pantomimic dialect." (12)


(11) Forty-Second Report New York Institution, for 1861, p. 28.

(12) Twenty-Sixth Report New York Institution, for 1845.

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"Any intelligent person would find himself beset with not a few difficulties were he to attempt to learn from written descriptions only all the motions of a fencing-master or a teacher of gymnastics. But all these are but a drop in the ocean when compared with the countless number and ceaseless variations of the movements of the body, hands, head, eyes, countenance, &c., &c., which are required in the peculiar language of the deaf and dumb. But the skilful use of signs is far from all that is required. A teacher must not only know the language of signs, but the various exercises, the contrivances which are resorted to, and the ingenious modes of illustration which have been devised to aid the pupils in the more difficult part of their progress." (13) "It may seem almost incredible that there are many professional teachers, who have spent the best part of their lives among the deaf and dumb, who are incompetent to carry on a discursive conversation in sign language." (14) We can easily understand why the instructors, most of whom are graduates of colleges, should need "five or six years of application to acquire and practise this art." (15)


(13) Twelfth Report American Asylum, for 1828.

(14) Hawkins on the Constitution of the Deaf and Dumb, p. 78.

(15) Forty-Third Report American Asylum, for 1859, p. 21.

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