was based on the work of Thomas A. Gallaudet, who had developed a way to teach deaf children to read. Since deaf children had no ability to "sound out" letters, syllables, or words, the constant repetition of "sight" words from a controlled vocabulary seemed to be the most efficient way to teach them to read. Adapting the work of Gallaudet, Horace Mann and his wife Mary developed a reading program that applied the same principles to students who had no hearing impairment. His method was tried for about six years in the Boston schools, and then soundly rejected by the Boston School Masters in 1844. Samuel Stillwell Greene, then principal of the Phillips Grammar School in Boston, expressed the views of the Boston School Masters, and the following excerpt from his essay is as relevant today as it was in 1844: "Education is a great concern; it has often been tampered with by vain theorists; it has suffered much from the stupid folly and the delusive wisdom of its treacherous friends; and we hardly know which have injured it most. Our conviction is, that it has much more to hope from the collected wisdom and common prudence of the community, than from the suggestions of the individual. Locke injured it by his theories, and so did Rousseau, and so did Milton. All their plans were too splendid to be true. It is to be advanced by conceptions, neither soaring above the clouds, nor groveling on the earth, -- but by