The diamond drill. (Crystal Falls, Iron County, Mich.) 1887-1996, 1897-01-23


IL In s.wondcrful Achievement to Teach
- 'ffen TO Use Language Properly.
The hearing child just learning 20
talk Is quite unintelligible at first, but
gradually the organs learn their les
son. and utterancc grows distinct. But
the ear Is the guide and critic of these
early attempts. The deaf child, how
ever, hears no sound. and sees only the
slight movements of the lips and tongue,
and can never learn to speak by his own
unaidcd observation and imitation or
those motions. The teacher must fur
nish the correction. and training that
the ear ordinarily supplies. The teach
ing OF speech 10 a totally deaf child who
has never spoken is truly wonderful
achievement. lie has no conception OF
sound. and can never have; for the
only sense by which he can be taught
the existence of such thing is that of
touch, which simply gives him know!-
edge of the motions that accompany
sound. but are no more the sound itself
than the vibrations that produce heat
are the sensation we call warmth.
To train the deaf child's organs 10
take their proper positions for the ut
tcrance of worlls as unconsciously as
those OF hearing person is a very slow
process. Tho development OF any set
OF reflex actions is a laborious task even
whore mistakNs can be recognized and
corrected by the learner himself: in this
case, however. the learner cannot cor
rect his own errors, but must rely upon
the alert ear OF his teacher 10 keep him
from acquiring n wrong set of reflex
actions and Forming habits that il will
bc almost impossible to break up.
Side by side with articulation comes
the task Of teaching language. Imagine
yourself in country whose speech you
did not knot, and whose Inhabitants
did not understand yours. Imagine, ia
addition, that you were suddenly de-
prived of your hearing How well do
you think YOU would succeed in learn
ing the new language? Yet the con-
genitally deaf child Is under even
greater disadvantage than this. He is
not only in "a foreign land The language
OF which he does not understand, but.
To begin with, he has no conception OF
what language is. lie has no language
OF his own which can be used as n frame
work on which and by which to build
the new. If he is more than two years
old, he may have invented for himself
few natural, gestural signs to indi-
cate isolated objects or the simple needs
OF his body such as hungry, tired,
thirsty; but these signs can no more
be called a language than the different
movements OF dogs tail aud ears which
IL. ~.
be dignified by that name. He has no
conception OF a structurnlly connected
means OF expression.
is il any wonder, then, II, after some
years Of instruction, the teacher otcn-
sionally finds a sentence like this. writ
ten by a boy in his journal after coming
TO school one cold March morning:
''fhc wind isvery blow, and am little
slliyer%,s Or this substitution Of act for
implement: '-''I'he man Nchopped The
ground with his dig, and me dog 9ll,~
ruhed with his wage" The irre0ulari-
Ties and Inconsistencies of English
grammar and spelling make it much
harder OF course, Go teach the deaf. and
no class Of people would be more greatly
benefited by a strictly phonetic spelling
and an eXceptionless grammar than
they. That the deaf child Is not fright
encd by these Irregularities Is shown
by the reply OF bright little girl when
asked 10 give the principal parts Of some
irregular verbs. Several were given cor
rccily. and then she began ON another;
"Eat--ate' paused for moment
in thought, and then added, 'swal
lowed."-John Dutton Wright, in Cen
tury.