A very considerable number of schools for the deaf in the United States and Canada still use manual, or silent, methods of instruction, at least in part.  But the speech, or oral, method is steadily growing in popularity, and gradually supplanting manual spelling and gestural signs.  The time will certainly come when the public will be too intelligent to any longer tolerate the use between teacher and pupil, or between any employee and the pupils, in a school for the deaf, any system of manual communication.

Every deaf child, no matter if born totally deaf and of a low order of intelligence, can be given as much education by the exclusive use of the speech method as it can by any manual, or silent, method or by a combination of the speech and the silent method. This is not the mere expression of an opinion, but the statement of a fact; a fact firmly established by actual results in state institutions where, unfortunately, the law requires the admission of pupils too poorly equipped intellectually to belong in a school with normally bright children.  In addition to acquiring all the education of which his mental endowment makes him capable, he can be taught to speak and to understand when spoken to.  The degree of perfection attainable depends upon the ability of the child, the skill of the teaching, and especially upon the environment in which the child passes its formative educational years.  The probability of the child’s acquiring a maximum proficiency in speaking and in understanding others when they speak, is lessened in direct proportion to the extent to which he is permitted to use the silent or manual means of communication.  In the so-called “combined” schools, the environment is largely manual.  A visit to the playgrounds, the baseball fields, the shops, dining rooms, and dormitories of “combined” schools will disclose the pupils using silent means of communication, not only between themselves, but with those in charge of them.  They do not think in spoken forms, but in finger spelling and signs.  The powerful influence of environment in those schools is against the acquisition of the speech and lip-reading habit.

The mother who has faithfully followed the suggestions offered in the foregoing pages will be able to appreciate what she sees on visiting the schools, and will gain much more from such visits than one who is entirely inexperienced in the problem.  Every mother should make it her business to visit at least one purely oral school, in order that she may make herself thoroughly intelligent on what may be expected of a deaf child.

Unfortunately, pure oral schools are not as plentiful as “combined” schools, but it will well repay any parent to make a journey, even across the continent, if necessary, in order to study the workings of some good, purely oral, school.  Do not be satisfied with a visit to the nearest “combined” school.

You owe it to your child to make yourself thoroughly intelligent as to the possibilities open to a deaf child.  You will not be intelligent till you have personally visited some good purely oral school.