Sum raised by taxes, and income of funds at the option of the Number of incorporated academies Whole number of students for the year Amount of tuition paid Number of private schools Whole number attending for the year Amount paid to maintain public schools: For wages, fuel, care of fires and schoolrooms, supervision, repairing and erecting schoolhouses, printing reports of school committees, providing apparatus and books, stationery, maps, globes, schoolroom supplies, etc. Amount for each person in the State between the ages of 5 and 15 years $18.474 Amount for each person in the State between the ages of 5 and 15 years, exclusive of expense of repairing and erecting schoolhouses $15.516 Percentage of valuation of 1881 (3 mills) $0.0035 In addition to the amount paid for her public schools, Massa For many years it has been the policy of the Commonwealth to afford this unfortunate class the means of securing a good education. The doors of the American Asylum at Hartford, Conn., of the Clarke Institution at Northampton, and of the Horace Mann School at Boston, are open to them; excellent facilities for instruction are furnished, and the State, as appears elsewhere in this report, bears a part of the expense. From the report of the Principal of the American Asylum, bearing date April 23, 1881, it appears that there were at that time 179 pupils in the institution, and that 61 of them were from Massachusetts. The report says,— a case of "The general health of the pupils throughout the year has been exceptionally good. There has been but one case of serious illness, pneumonia, and in that the recovery was speedy and complete." Of the graduates from the institution it says, "Our graduates are to be found in all parts of New England, and, indeed, scattered all over the United States. With few exceptions they are honest, industrious, and respected citizens, earning a comfortable support for themselves and their families. They are engaged in a great variety of occupations, and in all of them take good rank as workmen." The method of instruction followed at the American Asylum is that known as the sign method, while the other schools adopt the method of articulation. The different methods of these schools, and the interest awakened in the subject, lead the principal of the American Asylum to restate the arguments in favor of the method practised there; and in his report we find the following: "In the discussion we shall use the term, 'Pure Oral System,' being that adopted by the Milan convention, to designate the articulation system; and the term ' American System,' to designate that comprehensive system in general use in this country, where signs, the manual alphabet, and writing are used as the means of instruction, and articulation and lip-reading are taught as accomplishments. That a certain portion of the deaf may be taught articulation, and through it receive an education, is conceded by all. This portion includes the semi-mutes and the semi-deaf, and exceptionally bright cases of total congenital deafness. These can be taught in this way, as they may soon acquire, if they do not already possess it on entering school, sufficient articulation and lip-reading to enable them to communicate with their instructors. There is another class, comprising a large proportion of deaf-mutes, who never would attain facility in articulation and lip-reading. This class nearly all teachers of the deaf, including a large part of the most pronounced articulationists, admit can be better taught through the sign system. Concerning the most profitable way of instructing those occupying the middle ground between these two classes, there is earnest dispute. It is conceded by most advocates of articulation, that the general education of this medium class can be carried on much more rapidly, and a broader development given, in the time allotted them at school, through the American system, than through the pure oral' system; but they strenuously claim that the benefits of the articulation and lip-reading, which they acquire, more than compensate for the loss in general development. On the other hand, the advocates of the American system maintain that this medium class may carry on their general instruction by the sign system, and, at the same time, under special teachers, acquire nearly as much of articulation and lip-reading as they would if taught by the 'pure oral' system. This is the theory and practice of this institution. 66 Again, the advocates of the 'pure oral' system almost invariably claim that the use of signs in the instruction of the deaf hinders their progress in the acquisition of language. They claim that the imperfections in the language of the pupils of the sign schools are caused by the habit of thinking in signs. But we find the same imperfections in the language of pupils who have been taught exclusively by articulation, and who, their teachers claim, have no knowledge of signs. Precisely the same kind of mistakes are made, also, by foreigners who attempt to write the English language before they have thoroughly mastered it. The following quotations will illustrate this point. "No. 1 is an extract from an imaginary story suggested by a picture which lay before the pupil while it was written. The writer lost hearing at the age of two and one-half years, and had been at school only where the use of signs was prohibited. "No. 2 is an extract from a letter written by a little Indian boy at school at Carlisle Barracks, Penn. "No. 3 is an extract from a letter of a Japanese gentleman to a friend living in this city. "No. 4 is a letter written by a young Mexican, who is now attending a private school in this State. "No. 1.-'A woman sat in the street, and some people want eat apples and we gave money to her about it. Two boys asked how much cost a apple. She said five cents. He don't pay it, and we walked all around in the street, and woman stay is too long time, because she is very tired, and two boys saw her sleeped, and he walked no noise thief and ran off. He are very bad boy because we thief apples to poor woman.' ... "No. 2. This is a very beautiful morning, because my heart is very cheerful now about something just a little talk to you again this time. I want you answer back to me very well. I think to try. I want to please me every day. What you said them, I want hear them all you truth because good man every day. I very hard try read this time. . . . I was very excuse all the time at this Carlisle Children's School.' "No. 3.-'You will like not with a slightest doubt this kind walk should you be chanced to be in E- during that time. But I must confess that I like better to enjoy with our little circle under the trees overhanging upon your house where we played many a time croquet, or anywhere we used to spend many but summer eves to joyously on green grass, which rather difficult to get in E, on account the stiffness of society in E-, or which is found should we go to the public places, parks, but very much unpleasant through mixing yourself with the commons who are rough and ignorant beyond expression.' 7 "No. 4. 'N, CONN., April 13th, 1881. "DEAR SIR, Last vacation I had very pleasant time. I went to Hartford and spend day and a half. The time seemed to me very short indeed. I saw many thing that I never have seen them before. I came very happy from my trip. Next week I went to New York to see my friend, but I did not met him. I saw the Obelisk from far distance, because the policeman did not let us go near it. In the afternoon I started to Buffalo. Before I went to Buffalo, I went to Niagara Falls. 'Yours truly, 'J. M "How can these mistakes be accounted for? They surely cannot be attributed to signs. No: in all these cases the trouble comes simply and only from an imperfect knowledge of the English language. The remedy for these imperfections must be found in an increased familiarity with the language, and this familiarity must come through practice in the use of language. The pure oralists claim that their pupils get more practice in language than the pupils of the sign schools; but observation of the working of their system leads us to believe that this claim is unfounded. The method of communication is so much slower, and must be so much more individual in its working, that the pupils taught by the American system actually get much more practice in the use of the English language than the pupils taught by the 'pure oral' system. - never as “Signs are used by teachers only as a means of instruction, an end. The mastery of the English language is a chief end of the whole course. Written language and the manual alphabet, by which sentences are spelled out letter by letter in the same way as in writing, are used incessantly. Ideas must be acquired from the printed page, and acquired ideas must be expressed in written language. These two processes we crowd to the utmost of our ability. "Another evidence that the use of signs is no hinderance to the acquisition of written language is the fact that, almost invariably, the best language pupils are to be found among the best and clearest sign-makers. Before a thought can be clearly expressed, it must be clearly comprehended by the mind; and in no way can an idea be so quickly and so clearly conveyed to the mind of an imperfectly educated mute as through signs. Again and again have we seen pupils, taught exclusively by articulation, where signs were forbidden, yet whose language was full of imperfections, rapidly improve in the correct use of written language when brought under instruction by signs. 66 'But, say the pure oralists, suppose the progress is slow at first, the pupils taught by articulation soon attain such ready communication that they more than regain the time lost in the first steps. This theory is good: would that facts sustained the theory! But with a large majority of the pupils in articulation schools, ready communication is not reached. It is labored and slow and uncertain to the end of the course; and they leave school with a little articulation and some ability to read on the lips, but with much less general education and mental development, and so are far less fitted for the practical duties of life than those who have been under instruction for the same length of time by the American system. << Again, it is claimed that the pure oral method restores mutes to society by giving them the same means of communication as is in general use by the community about them. This theory is also good, but is sustained by facts only in a small minority of cases. Some of the pupils taught by the pure oral system do acquire the ability to communicate readily by articulation and lip-reading. So also do some of those taught by the American system acquire the same ability. In both cases they are the exceptions, and not the rule. "Pupils taught by the 'pure oral' method neither understand books better, nor use language with more facility or accuracy, than pupils of the same average ability taught by the American system for the same length of time. In fact, so far as our observation goes, the former are quite behind the latter in these respects. "Both classes of schools have pupils who have learned language through the ear. They are either partially deaf now, or they acquired language before losing their hearing. These use language readily either in reading or in writing. They form an entirely different class of pupils from the toto-congenital mutes, and they have nearly as much advantage over the latter as pupils possessing all their faculties have over semi-mutes. They occupy a medium ground between the two other classes. They cannot be measured by the same gauge: they start on their school course under very different conditions. In the acquisition of language the toto-congenital mute is heavily weighted in the race with his semi-mute schoolmate. Whatever the system of instruction, this wide difference cannot be overcome. To judge fairly of the merits of productions of pupils, this difference of conditions must always be taken into consideration. That which in the one case would deserve the highest praise would merit very little in the other. "Among pupils possessing all their faculties are always to be found a certain proportion who never attain to respectable scholarship. Among deafmutes this proportion is greater than among hearing children, the minds of some of them having been affected by the same disease which deprived them of their hearing. Many of these are never able to surmount the difficulties, in the acquisition of the English language, which stand in their way; and consequently in all schools for the deaf we find numerous murders of the king's English;' and the sin can be attributed to no system of instruction, but is due to unalterable conditions imposed by Providence. course. "It seems to be taken for granted in some quarters, that children taught by the sign method have no means of communication except by signs. Again and again we have heard it said that such pupils have no means of communication with their friends, and cannot enjoy ordinary social interThis is an entirely mistaken idea. The only method of communication of which they are deprived is that of speech (a great deprivation, it is true); but every other mode of communication is open to them. The eye speaks; the hand speaks; pencil and slate or paper are used with the utmost facility; and of many a social circle an intelligent mute is the most attractive member. "Once more, there is, in some quarters, an unreasonable scepticism as to whether pupils understand thoroughly the ideas which they translate from signs into written language. If an incident were related, or a story told, in French to a class of hearing children, and immediately reproduced in good |