Report of the Directors and Officers Volume 33 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1849 Excerpt: ...does not advance far enough to be able to use articulate language in that later period of life, for which school is to prepare him. Finally, in every institution which is not very rigorous in its terms of admission, there are occasionally found pupils who, after all the art, toil and patience of the teacher, make absolutely no progress in articulation and reading on the lips, so that at last the attempt to teach them is renounced. The difference in mental capacity is notoriously greater among deaf-mute children than among children who are in possession of all their senses; while many are endowed with superior powers, the feeble and limited mental life of others makes them approach imbeciles and idiots. If, now, as every teacher knows, the study of articulation and reading on the lips demand a certain degree of mental activity, attention, observation, and force of will, such as are not found in all our pupils, it will be readily acknowledged that exercises in articulation must be useless to many. These children, indeed, do not, strictly speaking, belong to our schools, as they cannot be taught after the method practised in them; but there is a difficulty in dismissing them; the feelings revolt against a step which would again plunge into the physical and moral misery from which they have been taken, the poor beings who can still derive some amelioration of their condition from the attention bestowed on them; and so they remain pupils through the whole term of instruction. What is to be done with these pupils, when the greater part of instruction is given orally, as it is in the second, or certainly in the third year 1 Is the teacher to subject himself, for the sake of a single pupil, or at most tor a very smal' number, to writing or to the more extended use ...