Chicago State University - Emblem Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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edge of language and speech reading, go into the high schools with hearing children. To-day we have several such in the city of Chicago. We are apt to think of deaf children as almost hopeless, but, in spite of this heavy handi- cap, many become skilled in a trade, some enter occupations, and a few take up advanced study, while practically all become self-supporting citizens. Miss McCowen writes in the Bi-AIonthly, December, 1910, Deaf graduates of Uni- versities and Technical Schools are now not at all uncommon, and are filling positions of trust and responsibility in all parts of the country. . . . Under present conditions many of the deaf become expert craftsmen, and rise to positions of authority in their chosen calling. There are deaf printers, deaf chemists, deaf foremen in factories, deaf directors of more or less intricate commercial enterprises, deaf inventors, artists, engravers, sculptors, architects, contractors, lawyers, bankers, etc. Indeed, few occupations are now closed to the deaf except as they are closed to the hearing man who lacks the intelligence necessary for success in those particular lines of work. Who Is It? Have you heard him hem and sigh ' Bout the moral situation. This, his ever daily cry In Education, Education. Pessimist? A lover of beauty, A fanatic on style. With all this and more She is certainly worth while. Have you had her Dickey Bird, Dickey Bird, Busy as a bee. Come into the library And pay your little fee. Have you e ' er don With a smile and a nod And a gay little sally She pins up some notices The classes to rally. Who? Don ' t start a music lesson With a little bit of Lit; Begin with the music And stick right to it. Whose advice?

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The Deaf Oral Department The Deaf Oral Department in the Chicago Teachers College was organized in the year 1906 with Miss Mary McCowen as head of the department. It is a one-year graduate course and scholarships of 300 each are offered by friends of the department. The classes for the deaf in the Parker Practice School furnish opportunity for practice work to students taking this course. There are at present nine such classes, and in them one may see all the steps in the process from the little children just beginning to learn the names of things to the larger children who are doing acceptable grammar grade work, using speech as the means of communication. Students who have visited these classes for the first time through curiosity will surely, if interested in psychological problems, wish to go again to observe the processes in the gradual development of mind, which are here made so clear. Past and Present of the Deaf The first record we have of a deaf person being instructed is mentioned by Bede in 685. The opinion which was generally held b)- people in early times is well expressed in the couplet of Lucretius: To instruct the deaf no art could ever reach. No care improve them, and no wisdom teach. As a result, the deaf who escaped the destruction which in some countries was meted out to all who were discovered to be defective were left entirely without education, utterh ' neglected by their families and often made to work beside the oxen in the fields. Pedro de Ponce (14 Cent.) is the first recorded to have taught speech to a deaf person. The first school to teach the deaf orally was established in Leipsic, Germany, by Heinicke, in 1778. The oral method has since been called the German method. The first school for the deaf in the United States, established at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1817, was not, however, a speech school, as it was impossible for teachers to study at Edinburgh, then the only English-speaking oral school, because of the exorbitant terms asked for tuition. In the Hartford school, manual training was incorporated as part of the curriculum. This was the first instance of manual training being taught in a school. All state schools for the deaf established afterwards adopted this work as part of the regular school course, and it has since gradually spread into the schools for hearing children. The boys were also taught various trades, as carpentry, cabinetmaking and tailoring, while the girls became skilled in sewing and housework. Other schools were founded not long after in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Since then, schools for the deaf have been established in almost every state in the union. The first class for deaf children in the Chicago Public Schools was started in 1875 by Mr. Philip Emery. The sign language and manual alphabet were used for many j-ears. In 1896 an oral class was opened in the Yale School at the request of some of the parents, and was conducted by a teacher from Miss McCowen ' s private school, which had been in operation in Chicago since 1883. At the present time there are twent)--nine oral classes in twelve different public schools in the city, and a training class for teachers of the deaf in the Chicago Teachers College. By using the oral method, as we do in the Parker Practice School, the children come in touch with hearing people. Those who graduate from the eighth grade with a good knowl- 1.5

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The Kindergarten and the Child As one grows older one wishes the days were very much longer than they really are. I can remember frequent periods of ennui when I had exhausted my childish capacity for play or tasks and didn ' t know what to do with myself on a long summer afternoon. Things seem greatly changed nowadays. So many things crowd in that it seems all one can do is to take as much of a thing as possible while it is in the taking and not to mourn, because things are so but to scramble on to something else which must also be accom- plished. So it is with some favorite occupation — the thing may be our favorite pursuit until we have met and tried something else. ' ery often through enforced study of a character — through studying his works — we may come to admire and know that person very well indeed. And so it is that after we have had our philosophy — Mother Play and frequent references to Froebel ' s other books — we look back on our other work with real enthusiasm and we see things in a very different light. However, we must soon drop that for something else, but finally when the gifts and occupations, our actual experience, songs and music begin to have some connection instead of being entirely separated, we realize that the kindergarten is not a mere waste of time, as so many people think. We find that it is real!} ' an education in itself and that, though it does not teach arithmetic and geography, there is a vast number of other things without which the individual is really not normal. The kindergartner begins here at the very bottom. There is a whole world of ignorance to the little child on which must be brought the light of intelligence. There are so many things to be heard, smelled, said, felt, remem- bered, and enjoyed. The child must have experiences, of course, and the kindergartner may help here. (If she does not, that is another affair which may be spoken of later.) The getting of experiences is a matter of chance, and the child may get the experiences he needs and he may not. Sometimes it is an overdose of one kind of experience and too small a dose of another. There is such a thing as in the case of the child who has no brothers or sisters, as getting every experience but the social one — this is where the kindergarten may help. Perhaps it may not be a lack of social experience from which another child may suffer, but something of a different type which the child needs just as much. There is 17