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THE CONGRESS OE WOMEN.
must always remember that when a hearing child is learning to talk, its hearing gives it the advantage of every word spoken in its presence, while the deaf child has only the advantage of seeing the mouth of the person it happens to be looking at, or who is talking with it, and this difference must be made up to the deaf child by a greater amount of repetition of the words we are teaching it.
Everyone with whom a deaf child comes in contact should talk to it and encourage it and aid it to articulate. A deaf baby begins to say “ ma, ma, ma,” just as hearing babies do, but as a rule it is not encouraged; if it were, and the child perfectly guided to further articulation, it would talk. The ordinary practice, however, when an infant is discovered to be deaf, is to make no further effort to teach it to talk or read the lips, but to immediately begin to use motions with it. Just here begins the cruel system of training the deaf differently from the hearing, and thus making them feel from the very outset of life that they are peculiarly unlike those around them. The truth is, that it is this faulty system of training that makes them different by depriving them of the free and constant communication with other minds which the hearing have. No wonder they have come to have the reputation of being naturally jealous, suspicious and unhappy—an unjust reputation.
There is also a popular delusion that the vocal chords of deaf children are defective; the fact is, that such cases are the exception, and that the vocal chords of deaf children generally are normal. The articulation of certain consonant sounds depends on certain positions of the lips, tongue and teeth and palate. The quality of vowel sounds depends on certain positions of the tongue. Any deaf child who can cry and scream, and who has tongue, teeth, lips and palate, has the necessary vocal organs.
I know of three mothers who were fortunate enough to realize what they could accomplish for their deaf infants, and who, following the stated plan, have taught them to read the lips so well, and also to talk, that now that these children are grown up, no one would take them to be stone deaf. They are all women; two of them have married hearing men, and the third is a bright, happy girl of twenty-one, who is studying art in Chicago, on exactly the same footing with the hearing, having previously graduated at the High School in Chicago.
Although the deaf have been taught to talk in the schools of Germany for more than a century, and in the schools of Italy, Holland and Switzerland for more than a generation, and England, France and America are slowly adopting the oral method in the schools, the pupil can never make up the loss of the years before the school age, any more than hearing children could if they were deprived of all knowledge of speech and language until they are sent to school.
The next step in the education of the deaf, then, is to give every deaf child the same opportunities for learning speech and language at the natural age as the successful mothers already referred to gave their children. Not only the mothers, but the public, have a share in this work; as every one who has anything to do with the children should adopt the same policy with all the deaf. Until society learns that, by thus doing its whole duty to the deaf, they will become like normal people, we shall need efficiently and intelligently conducted “ homes ” for the training in speech of deaf children. At present there are only two or three private homes and home schools where the work is being done, and Pennsylvania leads the world in a government appropriation td this end. From June i, 1893, it gives state aid to the “ Home for Training in Speech of Deaf Children before School Age,” established at Belmont and Monument Avenues, Philadelphia, by my sister, Miss Emma Garrett, on P'ebruary 1, 1892, and maintained from that time to June 1, 1893, by funds raised privately by ourselves.
Children are admitted between the ages of two and eight, and are given a six- years’ course from time of entrance, uninterrupted by vacations, although parents are allowed to visit them when they please. The reason for giving them no vacation is that when hearing children are learning to talk there is no interruption to the process, and there should be none in the cases of deaf children. During the courses they are