The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1897-06-16
Speech for the Totally Deaf.

The hearing child just learning TO
talk is quite unintelligible at first, but
gradually the organs learn their lesson,
and utterance 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 unaided observation an1
imitation of those motions. The teach
er must furnish the correction and
training that the ear ordinarily sup
plies. The teaching of speech TO q
totally deaf child who has never spoken
is truly wonderful achievement. He
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 a knowledge of the
motions that accompany sound, but are
no more the sound itself than the vi
brations that produce heat are the sen.
sation we call warmth.
To train the deaf child's organs to
take their proper positions for the ut
terance of words as unconsciously as
those of hearing person is very slow
process. The development of any set
of reflex actions is q laborious task even
where mistakes can be recognized and
corrected by the learner himself; in
this case, however, the learner cannot
correct his own errors, but must rely
upon the alert ear Of his teacher to
keep him from acquiring wrong set
of reflex actions and forming habits
that it will be almost impossible to
break up.
Side by side with articulation comes
the task of teaching language. Imag-
inc yourself in country whose speech
you did not know, and whose inhabi-
tants did not understand yours. Imag-
inc, in addition, that you were sudden
ly deprived of your hearing. How well
do you think you would succeed in
learning the new language? Yet the
congenitally deaf child is under even
greater disadvantage than this. He is
not only in foreign land the language
of which he does not understand, but,
to begin with, he has no conception of
what language is. He has no lam
guage of bis own which can be used as
a framework 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 indicate isolated objects or the
simple needs of his body, such as hun
cry, tired, thirsty; but these signs can
no more be called language than the
different movements of dogs tail and
ears which indicate his feelings or his
wapts can be dignifed by that name.
He has no conception of a structuraly
connected means of expression.
Is it any wonder, then, if, after some
years of instruction, the teacher occa-
sionally finds sentence like this, writ
ten by boy in his journal after COM
ing TO school one cold March morning:
"The wind is very blew, and am lit
tie shiver?" Or this substitution of
act for implement: "The man chopped
the ground with his dig, and the dog
hurrahed with his wag?" The irregu-
larities and inconsistencies of English
grammar and spelling make it much
harder, of course, to teach the deaf, and
no class of people would be more great
ly benefited by strictly phonetic spell
ing and an exceptionless grammar than
they. That the deaf child is not fright
ened by these Irregularities is shown
by the reply of bright little girl when
asked to give the principal parts of
some irregular verbs. Several were
given correctly, and then she began on
another: "Eat-ate"--she paused for
moment in Thought, and then added,
swallowed" -"Speech and Speech
Reading for the Deaf" by John Dut-
ton Wright, in the January Century.